Break

As I've got a bit of a stomach bug and as I'm still running worse then ever at the turbos ( lost another $200 yesterday over a ton of games at Stars and up $70 from some Party $22's)I'm taking a blogging break for 10-14 days.I'm not too disheartened by my current sng downswing and will keep battering away at them.It's just the way poker goes sometimes and I need to grin,bear it and grind my way through it.It's been a rough couple of months in sng land but ( and this month may be the first!)I've not had a losing month for as long as I can recall and I need to remember I'm a hugely over bankrolled hobby player and the swings I'm seeing are pretty standard for the games I'm playing.

Ok,thanks for reading,back in a while and here's a post I'd saved from ages ago...

I've almost always stuck to the premise that showing my mucked/uncalled hand is a bad idea as it's giving away free information, and in poker information is like gold dust.I also don't think I'm smart enough to flash my uncalled hands and then deal with the change in table image this may bring.( showing a big bluff for example)

I still believe that, but will now occasionally show if it's folded round to me and I've raised with a premium hand and taken the blinds uncontested.This helps solidfy the tight image I like to project and means the first time I make the same move with garbage ( if required) I should still get some respect.

I'm sure we've all been in situations where the big blind gets a walk, everyone folds, the big blind takes the pot and flashes a premium hand as if to say "you were right not to steal as I had a monster and would have played back at you".I've also seen plenty of cases where the big blind proudly shows some crappy Ace rag hand and you can just tell he would have been proud to defend with that too.

Here's a secret,I don't often defend my big blind in tourneys.I will reraise with a wide range if I feel an individual is taking liberties, but generally I want to be first into the pot and not be the one calling.It may affect the whole dynamic of my game, but I wondered if it's worth proudly showing an average hand to the table if I get a walk in the big blind to try and give the impression I'd be happy to defend with a much wider range than is really true.

On another note poker is a game of never say never and I recall calling a regular fairly shortstacked players raise with 89 off the other day.Although I had a decent sized stack and the pot was offering me reasonable odds,I'm fairly sure in terms of that hand ( even though I knew the regular was shoving very wide) it was an -ev call.( it would lose money long term).I called because I felt I wasn't a huge underdog,I had the chance to take out one of the better players left and I wouldn't lose a ton of equity if I did lose the hand.

I did lose the hand above and was telling myself not to be so daft in future when I realised my "fishy call" meant that I'd gained several walks in my big blind ,most probably due to the fact the solid regular in the small blind was suddenly worried that he couldn't shove on me because I'd call with a very wide range.It struck me that perhaps the occasional very loose call ( when you have enough chips to afford it) may have some value later in the game,even if you actually lose the initial hand.