Well, this past week has at the same time been the best and worst poker week in the history of my short poker “career”.

How is this possible you ask? Well it’s a case of two games, ring limit hold’em and no-limit sit and go’s. In the former I am up over 100 BB and I have been killing my current limit, in the latter I haven’t cashed in the past 8 that I’ve played.

All this puts me slightly down for the week money wise and significantly down in SNG confidence.

For now I’m going to put the SNG losses down to variance, for the most part I’ve had my money in the middle when I’ve been ahead. I’ve also had my fair share of “second best big hands”, sets vs sets, straights vs straights etc. I’m not by any means saying I haven’t made any mistakes because I have, in fact it all comes down to the old:

Fold when you are beat

Which my limit study (mainly Small Stakes Hold’em by Miller et. al.) has to some extent contradicted with the argument that in loose games you can’t really tell what your opponent actually has and folding can often cost you more than paying off a better hand. This is fine for limit when it costs you one BB, but it doesn’t translate well to no-limit where it can cost you a buy-in or a tournament. There’s a happy medium somewhere that the truly great players are able to find, I think I’m a way off finding it myself.

It’s not all bad though, it’s Christmas eve and I’ve got three weeks off work to relax and enjoy the summer! With any luck I’ll be able to get stuck into improving my poker game a little over this period too.

Happy Holidays!