Two deadly hands

On Saturday night, I played 89 hands. I lost massive amounts of chips on two of them. If those two hands had somehow never occurred, I would have lost a mere $170 on the night. Since they did occur, however, I lost a hefty $8,000. Looking back over the hand histories of those two deadly hands, I see that I got frisky on the first one, but played the second one soundly.

What I did wrong on the first deadly hand was to make a big bet after the third draw, when I'd stood pat. I had an 8 6 5 4 3, which is certainly a reasonable hand, but not a hand to bet heavily on. I lost to a 7 low. If I'd had the sense to check, and the 7 low had bet heavily, I might have had the additional sense to lay down the hand. As it actually played out, however, my big bet essentially had me pot-committed when the 7 low raised to put me all in.

On the second deadly hand, I was subjected to some cruel and unusual treatment (that's a favorite phrase of my father's, by the way). My 7 6 5 3 2 low lost to a 7 6 4 3 2. To rub salt in the wound, the winning hand was made on a 3 discard draw. The odds of that happening are minuscule.

It feels like I've entered the poker doldrums, when one's winning percentage tends towards what I call the lead ratio - one winning session per losing session. Don't get me wrong, though; I'm not discouraged. I know I'll break out of the doldrums sometime.

During current 2-7 Triple Draw session you were dealt 89 hands
Pots won if drawing - 14 of 63 (22%)
Pots won at showdown - 10 of 19 (52%)
Pots won without showdown - 4

delta: $-8,000
balance: $2,035,282