Swine Flu Poker

Ah, the swine flu. Like West Nile, bird flu and SARS before it, it is likely to be the end of us all. And no better place to meet up with it than a dirty poker room. Fever, headache, nausea, general discomfort. It all sounds familiar in the poker world.

What does the flu have to do with the felt? Mutation of course. Like any strain of the flu, a poker game mutates as it meets resistance. Plays that work for a few orbits become less successful as the game extends with the same cast of players. Check-raise early and watch your victim absorb the blow and then unleash it on you an hour or two later. Similarly, when a game goes from full to short-handed or vice versa, everything changes. I have been having some difficulty adapting to this back and forth dynamic and keeping my game in order, particularly from short-handed to full. I feel pretty good in six and seven handed tables these days but when it fills back up to ten, I have been making some boneheaded plays. In analyzing where exactly my problems begin, I think that I need more work on the dynamic of pots with more than three people in them. These pots are more likely to be raised, bluffed at, shoved, sometimes all in the same hand. Recognizing this fact, I realize I need to really focus on preflop reads so that I am better prepared when I find myself in such situations. One perfect example was when I came into a pot with a raise with 8,8 and we went to the flop with 5 players, me in middle position of the five. Two overs came and after checked to me, I followed suit when I should have fired out. The check held and from there the pot went downhill for me when an ace turned, while simultaneously turning my stomach. By freezing on the flop without good reads to fall back upon, I ultimately cost myself any chance of winning it.This example is a primary sticking point in where I'm at right now in my cash game, which is to say, improving but not fully there. I think I have a solid feel for how I play and with that understanding I think that it's time to mutate it a bit.

Excuse me now as I go wash the stench of that ill-played non-attempt off of my hands.