Taos

I'm in Taos, New Mexico so no poker for me this weekend.

I played twice before I left town and one thing I've noticed lately is it's becoming more and more common for me to only win one hand per hour.

The challenge becomes making a profit during these dry spells.

It's that fine line between showing patience and yet getting involved enough to give myself a chance to make money.

And for all I know maybe it's not a dry spell.

Maybe this is completely normal.

Maybe all those times I've won multiple hands in an hour I'm just getting real lucky.

I assume I should win around 3 hands an hour. (When I speak of winning multiple hands I'm talking of actually showing down and winning. Obviously I can win alot more hands if I bet and others fold.)

Playing live I probably average 30 hands an hour. If there are 10 players at the table then the math says I should be winning 3 of those hands. But of course there is no should in poker.

In my last session I played for 4 hours and only won 4 total hands at showdown.

My starting hands?

4,7 suited. 6,9 off. Queen, 9 off. And 6,4 off.

When I showed down the 4,7 suited I got a nice lecture from a tight player who explained to me how poorly I played.

It was really quite entertaining. I had flopped trips and then rivered a flush.

I'm sure he was never ahead at any point once the flop came. In fact I think the flush coming on the river hurt my action. I would have bet more with my trips. I was scared he would fold to my flush bet. Yet he still called a pot sized bet on the end.

I was so tempted to ask him what hand he could have beat. But I was well behaved and kept my mouth shut.

Meanwhile the more he criticized me, the more he showed his ignorance.

And the rest of the table saw it too. From then on out, anytime he entered a pot everyone was excited to jump in and play with him.