Poker is Hard

Coming off that rough session Thursday night, I returned Friday to the Wynn.

You know. To get back up on the horse.

Things looked good early on. I called a preflop raise with pocket 5's and stared with disguised joy at a 5,7,7 flop. My opponent bet his ace jack. The whole thing was a dream. I'm 98.02% to win.

Wait a minute. Did I say a dream? I'm sorry! I meant a nightmare. Incredibly the dealer turned over back to back aces to give my opponent a bigger full house and destroy my hand.

This my friends is what you call "not running well."

When I'm a 98% favorite to win a hand, I need to win that hand.

I lost as a 98% favorite yesterday too.

So in theory I should win my next 98 hands in that spot. Not lose 2 in a row.

I'm not a good enough poker player to make a living doing this without my 98% hands holding up.

In fact as long as you brought it up, 99% or 100% would be ideal.

Thanks.

Come on universe! Give me a few wins in a row as the big favorite before sucking out on me again!

You can't do that to a guy like me two days in a row! You'll make him crazy and he'll start talking to himself in the third person.

Later in the same session 4 of us are all in preflop. One guy has kings. One has queens. Me and the 4th guy have aces are 60% to chop the pot. Or at least we were 60% until a king and a queen came out.

Fascinating how numb I feel playing poker. This second hand didn't even faze me after some of the runner runner stuff. I just got up and calmly walked out of the casino. Yep, yep, yep.

Part of me gets a little scared when this sort of bad luck happens. Not so much of my opponents. But of the math. Like until a big pot gets shoved my way it starts to feel like it's impossible to win at poker.

The biggest problem is I can't will myself to win. I just have to keep doing what I'm doing. At some point my stack will grow (again) instead of disappear.

I'm curious to see what happens next time at the table. Either I'll finally make some money or I'll have more math defying stories to share.

I think we call that Wynn/Wynn.