Thanks for all the support and words of encouragement.
February is now in the books. The good news is that I am back to basically even, recouping the January loses. The not so good news is that most of the profits made were not from the pure playing of poker, but from the High Hand promotions. After not having any high hands in January and about half of February, I found myself hitting 3 of them in about a two-week period! I am definitely not complaining, but obviously I want much more of any profitability to be the result of playing well vs. the "luck" of getting a High Hand.
Speaking of High Hands, one of the recently mentioned ones came at what was basically my first day of play ever at the MGM National Harbor Casino in Oxon Hill, MD. I had just dropped off some Church friends at the Regan Airport, and realized that MGM was less than 20 minutes away, so naturally I had to make a visit there! I had ATo and flopped top two pair, then rivered and Ace to get on the board. I had to sweat about 15 minutes (currently about 15 other tables going), and fortunately held. Yay!! High hands would be $200 from 12:15 p.m. and later. My hand hit in the morning so it was worth $500. Double Yay!!!
My initial buy-in was $200, and I had pocket Aces against a very loose player. (MGM has the reputation of a lot of loose, crazy, and wild players.). The villain called my preflop raise of $25 from the Cutoff position with K2o. The flop was x x 2. I bet $45 and he called. The turn was a K, and I led out for $65, to which he re-raised. I had less than $50 left so I called, and was not not able to counterfeit him on the river. I bought back in for another $200, and later had AKo. I was surprised to get back some of it by value-betting a weak player when the flop had an Ace, and he called three streets of bets with A3o. I ended up losing only $95, which allowed me to keep most of my HH winnings. MGM is a nice and appealing playing environment, but the huge negative for me is that driving each way is 91 miles (About 1hr-40min under normal traffic) and about $25 roundtrip in gas.
Back at Charles Town two days later I had AQs where I flopped top two pair, but did not get called on a river bet when another Queen appeared. I did not show my opponent my hand, because High Hands need to be a full house with a minimum of Aces over 2's. About 15 minutes later I hear a HH announced: JJJKK. Then I suddenly realized that Wednesdays/Thursdays are Super High Hands meaning the minimum qualifying hand is a full house of Jacks over 2's. Crap!!!! I spent the next 20 minutes hoping my QQQAA would get beat, but the intercom was unfortunately quiet. Making matters worse, there was no HH the previous hour so the $300 from that period rolled over into the current hour making the payout $600.
File this under the "We all do dumb things". I have been so blessed, so perhaps this is just a bump along the way of my poker participations.
Now on to March activity which will hopefully have me playing well/smart and generating some profits the way we a supposed to, which is from the mistakes of our opponents.
