Well, no doubt about it, KK is definitely my jinx hand for sure. Yesterday, I decided that a visit to The Vic was in order and after arriving at 4:30PM and an hour long wait, grabbed my seat at a £1/£2 cash game and bought in for £300. The stacks to my right were huge (one player had about £800 and another around £1000), while the stacks to my left were pretty meaty as well (two players with about £600 each). It was time to play cautious.
Fortunately, as play progressed, due to solid play, I managed to build up a strong solid image but wasn't making a great deal of money. After about 3 hours play, the better players and big stacks had left and of the new players that arrived, no one appeared to pose any real threat. Despite this, with about £330 in front of me, my thoughts turned to locking up the £30 profit and moving on to Bluff @ The Mint in Kensington - a place I had intended to try tonight for the first time.
In retrospect, that IS exactly what I should have done but soon after dismissing thoughts of leaving I lost about £60 to a fairly loose player who pushed me off my hand on the river while I held QQ to a K x x x A board. Slightly tilted by this my mind said "go for a stroll" but my heart said "stay for a bit and see what happens"; I went with my heart. Unfortunately, this is where it went wrong. The QQs were the first premium hole cards I had held in the entire three hours; a few hands later, I got my second premium hand, KK in late position - surely I was going to win with these! I raised it £15 and got a call from the button and the small blind (but I thought that only the SB had called at the time). The flop came low and uncoordinated so I raised another £20. I saw the old guy in the small blind fold his hand and thought I had taken it down but then noticed that the button had, in actual fact, called the £20. (Something in my head had already told me I had won the hand.)
Well, I'm sorry to say that this is when the red mist set in. Without even putting the villain on a hand, I told myself that, surely, I had him beat. I checked the 10 on the turn anyway, to see what he would do, and when he put in £30 just told myself that he was surely on a bluff and I stupidly went all-in. He insta-called and when the river came he announced full-house to have me well and truly crushed. Yep, he called on the button preflop with 5 6 and hit his full-house. Pocket kings cracked once again!! It wasn't a complete wipe-out as I had him covered but enough to make me get on my coat and leave.
When I think back, I realise that I was not thinking about ranges or the player at all (he was a relative newcomer to the table) but the fact that I had "finally" been dealt a premium hand and that I deserved to be paid off at last. The loss with QQ a few hands before certainly didn't help with my mindset and I know now that I shouldn't have put so much value on the monster preflop premiums. It really was the basic schoolboy error of falling in love with KK, not being able to get away from the hand and then being caught off-guard. I really should be beyond that by now and I feel stupid for falling for it. KK has been a nightmare for me in live games in this second part of the year. I've lost three big hands of well over £800 while I've held them. Not nice.
It was a long journey home after this but now that the dust has settled I think a break from the live game has to be the answer. Tilting is NOT usually my thing and although a little bit wiser, it's almost as if I'm back to square one all over again. It may be that work issues are still clouding my judgement and impeding with my thinking but something made me think badly at the table last night and made me make a bad decision - and that's not right.
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