Daily Recap 11-19-09

Went to the Thursday game at the American legion tonight and made a couple nice reads and picked up some good pots. Then I got involved in a hand where I used faulty logic to make a decision on the turn. Now that I think about it, the reason why I made this particular turn decision was because I let the lingering effects of a previous hand affect me...but not how you think.

I had made a good read and good river blocking bet a few hands earlier and I guess I got a little cocky. Without going to deep into the hand, I raised a pot after two limpers with AQs. I flopped a flush draw on a ten high board and bet when they checked to me. In my mind, I completely shut off any thought of what they had and said to myself "I'm going with this hand no matter what." Mathematically that is probably the right decision, but I didn't even try to put anyone on a hand. So one of the players called me and this guy is a HUGE calling station. He likely had a ten and he was likely not going to fold no matter what his kicker was. He checked a blank turn and there was 14K in the pot, with both of us having about 8k in our stacks. I decided to shove, mainly because I was still feeling cocky and convinced myself that I was going to hit anyway so it didn't matter. There was like a 5% chance he was folding. Of course he snap called me with KT and I didn't hit. My decision to shove wasn't necessarily the worst in the world, but my logic for shoving was. It was based on being cocky and assuming I was going to hit. My decision to shove should have been because I had a read that the player was capable of folding. In this case against this player, checking was superior. He would have paid me off regardless and I still had plenty of chips if I missed the river. Now if he had shoved the turn, I was getting the right odds to call but that isn't how the action went.

It just goes to show that emotion effecting your decisions swings both ways. It can be because of tilt and it can also be because of ego & pride in the positive sense of things.