A long lost friend, returned

I was soooo happy tonight when I sat down at my first table to see someone with whom I had played before. Mr. Play Every Hand. That is almost not an exaggeration, as you can see from the screenshot. As you can see by my HUD, he has played 96% of the 112 hands in which we have sat together. The bottom row shows that he wins at showdown roughly one quarter of the time, meaning that three quarters of the time, he loses.

When people tell you that poker is all about table selection, believe them. Search for players like this, seek them out, and sit with them.

My session with my friend went so-so. I got tangled up with him 46 times, winning 16 and losing 30. That sounds bad, but my wins were greater than my losses, and my net against him was -3.75. He stacked me twice - once by limp/calling with ace-king and me having ace-queen, and us both hitting our ace. The other was me in the blind with Q9 on a 55945 board. Yup, he had the case 5. Evil. Other than those 2, he never won more that 1.50 against me. I on the other hand, won more than 1.50 10 different times from him.

Other than messing with this guy, my session was an exercise in redemption. I got stacked again and again in the beginning, sometimes by playing like a donkey, other times with "can't get away" hands like the boat vs. quads hand above. The last time was definitely helped by tilt-assist. I raised KQ from the button and got called from a blind. The board was QJJ and I just couldn't, wouldn't believe these suckers outflopped me again my hitting a jack. He did. When he shoved the turn, one quick look at his stats would have screamed FOLD IDIOT to me (his aggression was 0.5) - but I wasn't looking at his stats. I just turned into a non-believer for this one hand, and moved all in despite all the evidence in front of me that I was crushed. Whoopsie.

Fortunately, I knew I was tilting, and calmed myself down. I went into lockdown mode - tightened way up, and waited for some hands. Thanks be the poker gods, the hands came. I went on a heater, and won back the loot I had lost, plus just a tiny bit of profit. After popping above the water line, I had to go attend to a matter on the daughter's PC, so I shut down the Full Tilt client and left the night with an unspectacular, but satisfying profit. My last session rollercoaster can be seen in the image below.