Sucker punch

On Saturday night, I lost $20,917 on a "sucker punch" hand. The most salient feature of a sucker punch is that you can't see it coming, so you're defenseless against it. On the hand in question, my ace high flush got clobbered by four of a kind, sixes. The player with the quads had been dealt two sixes, and flopped two more. He held off betting anything until the river. Only the fact that I started the hand with more chips than him prevented me from hitting the felt, as he ended up going all in and I called. My read on his river betting was that he also had a good flush, maybe king or queen high. He disguised his hand excellently.

What all good poker players have the ability to do is to take a sucker punch and roll with it. They don't go on tilt, as many lesser players would. They chalk up the hit to the poker gods, keep believing in themselves, keep making good poker decisions, and do everything they can to grind their way back to the top. I'm happy to be able to say I did all those things. The sucker punch came on hand 29, and took my stack from $34,100 all the way down to $13,183. My stack hit a low of $5,783 on hand 47. With some luck and some skill, I hung in there, eventually got my stack back up to its starting amount, and finally went significantly into the black on hand 142. In a bit of poetic justice, the amount I won on hand 142 was a squeak more than what I'd lost on hand 29.

During current Hold'em session you were dealt 143 hands and saw flop:
- 15 out of 18 times while in big blind (83%)
- 10 out of 20 times while in small blind (50%)
- 68 out of 105 times in other positions (64%)
- a total of 93 out of 143 (65%)
Pots won at showdown - 17 of 23 (73%)
Pots won without showdown - 7

delta: $28,548
balance: $1,892,883