Sharpening The Saw

The title of this post is from the classic book, "7 Habits of Highly Successful People". I purchased a subscription to Card Runners last week in order to improve my cash game play. It's a little pricey, but hopefully it will pay off and get me to a higher level of play.

I have watched two of their videos now and here are some of the things I picked up:

1. I need to raise more often. Raptor will raise almost any two cards on the button. He also raises almost any suited connector from anywhere. He also 3 bets quite often.

2. Position is even more important than I thought ( I already gave it a lot of credit, but I think I need to double it).

3. It's better to play a small pocket pair against a tight player out of position than a loose aggressive one. If I hit the set against a tight player, the chances are greater that the tight player has a big hand since he raised preflop. If my opponent has the big hand then I will make more money on my set.

If it's a loose aggressive player, then many times I may be folding the best hand to a continuation bet on the flop because the LAG will bet almost any flop and it will be really tough to play the pot out of position. Even when I hit the set, I may not make as much because it's likely the LAG doesn't have any type of hand that can stand up to a raise.

4. When you start to move up and play against some of the same players more than once, it can be very profitable to try and make their lives miserable if you have position on them. Every time they limp, raise them. Every time they raise, try reraising them. Eventually they blow up and lose their stack by calling you down with bottom pair.

My theory is getting better, but my practice still needs work. I dusted off two $50 buy ins last night by running my pair of Aces with King kicker into a set and Aces up into a flopped straight.

I should have gotten away from the AK hand after his 3rd raise on the flop. There was not much I could do about the two pair hand.

On a positve note, the Wednesday game seems to be back on. We played at Greg's the first week back, and Scott's last Wednesday. I bubbled in third place the first week and won last week.

The third place finish was about all I could squeeze out of my terrible cards. I don't think I had a pocket pair higher than 8's and flopped nothing better than one pair the whole night. I was just happy to still be in the game with 3 left.

Last week I accomplished a first for me. We had 6 players and I eliminated everyone one of my opponents at the table. It came down to heads up versus Mike. The heads up part lasted a long time for our game. I had him all in a couple of times with the best hand and he sucked out. Another time I had pocket Kings and he got me to lay it down when an Ace hit the flop. He had ten high on that hand and admitted that I had been so aggressive that he felt he needed to make a stand. Finally I won with bottom pair, Ace kicker when he called with bottom pair, terrible kicker.

I also have won my way into Step 3 on the Poker Stars WSOP Step challenge. I got really lucky when with 13x the blind and 5 players left, I pushed all in with Ace-8 on the button and was snap called by pocket 10's. I spiked an Ace and that gave me a comfortable stack that allowed me to wait until the big stack donkey made a critical mistake. I eventually busted him when I flopped a pair of Aces and he decided to bet all of his chips with second pair.

One little wrinkle that I noticed about the steps tournament is that when you get to the final level 6, there is only 1 WSOP package available. You win $2,500 in addition to the seat. I think 2nd through 5th place win money as well. However, if you don't win the seat, you need to take the money and buy back into step. They don't let you back into level 6 or level 5.