Looking, thinking, and listening

The title of tonight's post was the original title I'd decided on for last night's post before I sat down to write it. When I did sit down, however, the theme which bubbled up to the surface was the difference between short-term greed and long-term greed. I know it's not a good idea to clutter up a post with too many ideas, so I saved the original idea for tonight.

In the session before last night's, I lost the $110K I'd built up because I failed in three poker fundamentals -- looking, thinking, and listening. I've listed them in what I consider to be the correct order of their importance. If you're looking and thinking, very often you can get away with not listening. If you're looking and listening, you can sometimes get away with not thinking. However, no matter how much you're thinking and listening, you can rarely get away with not looking.

Here are my definitions of these three fundamentals:

Looking means determining what hands your opponents possibly have that beat yours.

Thinking means using logic to determine what hands your opponents probably have.

Listening means taking note of the betting patterns of your opponents.

By failing to look properly, I lost a hand where I had a set but my opponent had a straight.

By failing to think properly, I lost a hand where I had a full house but my opponent had a better one.

By failing to listen properly, I lost a hand where I had a flush but my opponent had a better one (the dreaded uberflush). I went all in, and hit the felt.

Thankfully, last night I suffered from none of these lapses.

During current Hold'em session you were dealt 61 hands and saw flop:
- 11 out of 13 times while in big blind (84%)
- 12 out of 13 times while in small blind (92%)
- 29 out of 35 times in other positions (82%)
- a total of 52 out of 61 (85%)
Pots won at showdown - 6 of 16 (37%)
Pots won without showdown - 6

delta: $21,585
balance: $856,772