Savior hand

Last night, a single hand made my night. Savior hands like that are rare, but you have to realize they exist and play accordingly. This particular saving hand was a gutshot I made on the turn. I had to put up a decent amount of chips to see the turn, but I had a hunch it was going to hit. There's no way to determine the accuracy of such hunches; when they don't pan out, there's no point in dwelling on them, and you soon forget you even had them. When they do pan out, though, you certainly don't forget! I know this will sound silly, but I actually believe there's such a thing as poker ESP; when it's on, it's a wonderful thing.

A practical side-note: in my experience, if a gutshot's going to hit, it will hit on the turn way more often than it will on the river, so there's little point (and a lot of chips to be lost) by pursuing it to the river. Of course, that's statistical horseshit; the logical part of my brain knows that, but the ESP poker part can't be convinced :-)

At the start of my savior hand, I had $22.5K in chips; at the end, I had $70K. I ended my night posthaste.

delta: $30,290
balance: $867,203