“God grant us the serenity to accept
the things we cannot change,
courage to change the things we can,
and wisdom to know the difference.”

This is the serenity prayer and it is recognized and used throughout the world. It is probably most often linked to Alcoholics Anonymous but I think every online poker player should have it memorized or printed and hung by their computer as well.

Maybe if more players took the time to read and understand these words, they would become better players and we would not have to listen to as many bad beats stories. And if you are like me, you probably wouldn’t mind if you never heard another bad beat story for the rest of your life.
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Let’s look at some poker hands and compare them to the serenity prayer.

1. You have 15BBs and look down at KK. The big stack at the table opens for 3BBs and two players call. You move all in and the big stack calls and the other players fold. He shows ATs and flops an ace to eliminate you from the tournament. If you spend the next ten minutes berating this guy for calling with ATs when he knows he is coinflipping at best and likely dominated then you need to focus on finding “the serenity to accept
the things we cannot change.” You should know that you played the hand correctly by moving all in and you should live with the outcome confidently.

2. You have 30BBs and look down at 88. The big stack at the table who has opened 70-80% of the pots opens for 3BBs and everyone folds to you on the button. You are not worried about the SB or the BB becasue they have played very tight and you have them covered. So you re-raise to 10BBs and the LAG big stack pushes all in. You snap call and he shows ATs and flops an ace to eliminate you from the tournament. Again, if you find yourself complaing about this ‘donkey’ and how he over values ATs then I think you probably need to examine your own play a bit. I think hear you need wisdom to know the difference.” There are so many different ways you could have played this hand and you should be thinking about other lines you could have taken that would have been less risky or you need to be happy to get your money in as a slight favorite vs the table maniac. You can’t have it both ways in my opinion. I’m not saying it’s right or wrong to get all in hear vs the maniac with a pair of eights even if he exposes his ATs and tells you what he will do if you re-raise him. I’m just saying that if you can’t live with the result (losing a coinflip) then you need to consider a different way to pay the hand or you need to find another hobby.

3. You have 22BBs, a loose table image and look down at KQs. There are 25 people left in the tournament and you are in 15th place. Everyone folds around to the button who raises 2.25BBs. Both the button and the BB have you covered and you decide this is a good spot to use a squeeze play so you move all in. The BB also moves all in, the button folds and the BB reveals AQ and busts you with ace high. This is a hand where I think multiple parts of the serenity prayer can apply depending on how you feel about busting out in this spot with this hand. If you are angry that you got unlucky then I think “the serenity to accept the things we cannot change” will serve you best here. If you are kicking yourself for throwing away a healthy chip stack with just K high when you had a loose table image then you need courage to change the things we can and play your hand different next time.
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No matter what you decide to do in any situation, you must be able to live with the outcome. I didn’t say you had to be happy about it and I didn’t say that you would always get it right or that anyone else would have done it differently or better in your spot. It’s just that if you keep focusing on things that you cannot change and failing to change those things that you can then you really have no one else to blame but yourself.

So those of you that have been following this blog since the beginning know that I have a love/hate relationshsip with poker on Sundays. In theory, it should be the best day of the week with the casual players out in full force to try their hand in the biggest tournaments of the week. But historically, I have always dreaded Sunday poker. I hated how expensive it could be when you don’t have any cashes. I hated watching all my premium hands get swallowed up by the guy who couldn’t fold J9o to a re-raise. But most of all I hated that my normally solid reliable game seemed poorly constructed to succeed on Sunday.

Well that changed yesterday, sort of…I wasn’t feeling too good so I decided not to go to my buddy’s house to watch football for the day. I figured I could watch football at home and if I felt up to it, maybe play some poker too. I started off with the Sunday Warm Up and the $15k on Stars. My plan was to take every coinflip early on to try and build a stack. This strategy didn’t work out too well as I managed to “race” vs AA on two seperate occassions – once with AK and once with 44. Out of the Warm Up, I now focused on the $15k.

I managed to run up my stack to over 4k pretty quickly thanks to AA and KQ both picking up nice pots. Then this hand came up:

*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to mscell [Td 9c]
moneyinbag: folds
spenson: folds
ShiP ThA $$$: folds
posidonas: folds
freshfruits: raises 50 to 100
fabsoul: calls 100
manofcoins: folds
GrinderMJ: folds
mscell: calls 50
*** FLOP *** [9s 9d 3h]
mscell: checks
freshfruits: bets 100
fabsoul: folds
mscell: calls 100
*** TURN *** [9s 9d 3h] [Ad]
mscell: checks
freshfruits: bets 200
mscell: raises 460 to 660
freshfruits: raises 5945 to 6605 and is all-in
mscell: calls 3300 and is all-in
*** RIVER *** [9s 9d 3h Ad] [Jc]
*** SHOW DOWN ***
mscell: shows [Td 9c] (three of a kind, Nines)
freshfruits: shows [3c 3d] (a full house, Threes full of Nines)
freshfruits collected 8445 from pot

Nothing I can do there…..

So it was on to the Sunday Brawl which ended way too quickly when I tried to bluff the river with my missed draw and then had my AQ lose to TT when I was looking to double up. So it looked like this Sunday would be no different than the previous ones but I still had a few events left to play: Stars Sunday Million and $25k and the Full Tilt Million and the Mulligan.

I won’t bore you with the details but let’s just say at one point I was still going strong in the Stars Million, the Tilt Million and the Mulligan. We were in the money in all three events and I was playing very solid poker with the hope of getting deep. That feeling didn’t last long on Stars as I lost a race with JJ losing to AK and then outsmarted myself with QQ by not re-raising preflop and letting one of the blinds into the pot with 6h9h and he flopped trip 6’s.

But that still left me with the Million and the Mulligan on Full Tilt. I came crashing down to earth in the Mulligan when I came over the top with 77 on a 89T flop only to find I was up against trip 8’s. I didn’t hit the open ender and my stack was now under 10BBs. I was bounced out a short time later when my short stack shove ran into AK.

So that left me with the Tilt Million where 1st place was a nice $200k. With 11 players left, the following hand was played:

FullTiltPoker Game #4938796902: $1 Million Guarantee (34088976), Table 133 – 17000/34000 Ante 4000 – No Limit Hold’em – 3:15:20 ET – 2008/01/21
Seat 1: GulahPapyrus (2,041,915)
Seat 3: aaalvin (1,945,232)
Seat 4: Tadadonk (553,548)
Seat 5: mscell (1,037,053)
Seat 7: Catenaccio (821,071)
GulahPapyrus antes 4,000
aaalvin antes 4,000
Tadadonk antes 4,000
mscell antes 4,000
Catenaccio antes 4,000
Tadadonk posts the small blind of 17,000
mscell posts the big blind of 34,000
The button is in seat #3
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to mscell [8d 8c]
Catenaccio folds
GulahPapyrus folds
aaalvin raises to 102,000
Tadadonk folds
Tadadonk: yep
mscell calls 68,000
*** FLOP *** [4d Qc 8s]
Tadadonk: 10 bucks
mscell checks
aaalvin bets 170,000
mscell has 15 seconds left to act
Tadadonk: really
mscell raises to 450,000
aaalvin has 15 seconds left to act
aaalvin calls 280,000
*** TURN *** [4d Qc 8s] [9s]
mscell bets 481,053, and is all in
aaalvin calls 481,053
mscell shows [8d 8c]
aaalvin shows [Js Th]
*** RIVER *** [4d Qc 8s 9s] [5c]
mscell shows three of a kind, Eights
aaalvin shows a straight, Queen high
aaalvin wins the pot (2,103,106) with a straight, Queen high
mscell stands up

And my Sunday had finally ended…..a bittersweet ending indeed. I’ll be honest and tell you I felt a little sick after this hand and I’m sure this one will hurt for a while. To get that close and to bust out like that is not easy. But that which does not kill me, only makes me stronger!

So I have been playing more cash games againg this month at both 1/2NL and some 2/4NL. I am really feeling good about my game at the 1/2 level right now and feel that I have been able to beat the fish and the regulars alike. As always I am willing to invest insome shots at the 2/4 level when this happens because that is the level I have yet to break through successfully. So I will continue playign 1/2 but when I can find some weaker 2/4 tables, I’ll be throwing my hat in the ring for sure.
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Last week I did my first official Instructor Chat on Pokerfox. The topic was “Beating the 180man SNGs” and we had a great turnout. People really liked the format and the material so that was a good start. A few days after the instructor chat, two of the attendees made final tables in the 180man SNGs and we had a big group railing them in the Pokerfox chat and at the tables. Congrats to Spydr_man1 who went on to win his 180man!! I’ll be doing part 2 of my instructor chat tomorrow at 22:00 EST. We will cover how to play the second hour and the dynamics of stack sizes.
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I put up the final three parts of my $100 MTT win on Pokerstars. I think this series turned out really good and the feedback I have received so far tells me the members are enjoying it as well. I’m not sure what my next project will be yet so stay tuned.