Gravitational pull

Poker stacks, like celestial bodies, possess gravitational pull. The larger a poker stack is, the more it attracts additional chips to itself (provided its owner plays correctly). The reason is simple - owners of big stacks can win pots with substandard cards. All the big stack has to do with a mediocre holding is bet big enough to make it not worthwhile for most of his opponents to call. Let's say the big stack has 10 times the number of chips of the average opponent; for just a tenth of his stack, he can force opponents to make all in decisions. For just a twentieth of his stack, he can make life very uncomfortable for the other players.

My first mistake last night was choosing a table that had a bunch of big stacks. Here were the stack sizes at the table just after I joined:

Seat 1: (182070 in chips)
Seat 4: (38300 in chips)
Seat 5: (71000 in chips)
Seat 6: (123200 in chips)
Seat 7: (74450 in chips)
Seat 8: (37400 in chips)
Seat 9: neostreet (40000 in chips)

Seat 1 was playing very well, and built his stack up to over $470,000 during the course of the session. He really knew how to work a big stack. I hit the felt twice, the second time to him. Like a fool, I was on a draw. You should basically never go on a draw against a big stack, since they'll generally put you all in and you'll usually lose. My last four sessions have been very eventful; I've lost $240,000 in them, which comes in second on my all-time list of worst 4 session aggregate loss amounts. Tonight, I'll make sure to join a table where no one has more than $70,000!

During current Hold'em session you were dealt 61 hands and saw flop:
- 3 out of 9 times while in big blind (33%)
- 4 out of 7 times while in small blind (57%)
- 18 out of 45 times in other positions (40%)
- a total of 25 out of 61 (40%)
Pots won at showdown - 2 of 7 (28%)
Pots won without showdown - 2

delta: $-80,000
balance: $3,142,504