I generally use a reference of starting hands so that I don’t get too loose on my opening bets. I misplaced it and found myself just playing “off the cuff.” The result has been some pretty poor poker by me. I got very undisciplined and lazy. I was playing hands I never should be playing like Q8 and I was betting aggressively with middle pair in poor position.
The good news is that I quickly realized this was an issue and got back on track. I did break one of my rules and immediately got burned for it. I generally will never go all-in with unpaired cards unless one is an ace. A very loose player went all-in, and I had KQ. His range of hands could have gone everywhere from AA to T9. I put him on a mediocre hand and went all-in. He had A9, but it was the A that killed me… he won with A high, and my rule proved to be there for a reason: Ace high on all ins is a fairly common winning hand when pairs aren’t in the pockets.
Tags: all-in, Overall strategy, poor play