Lucky or Good????

The debate rages on whether it is better to be lucky or good. In my humble opinion, it is better to be good, since luck seems to come and go, and we all tend to get our share at times. A case in point is Ramone, the man with the lucky horseshoe placed strategically where "the sun don't shine". For many months, he seemingly could not lose. Every time he played, he cashed out for hundreds of dollars. Then inexplicably, he began to lose. I saw him lose many sessions, and then he sort of quit playing (I think he was visiting his son in Texas at least part of the time). Anyway, yesterday at Spirit Mountain I was in the luck mode, and I like to think playing skillfully as well. The morning began pretty well on the 3/6 table (only table going at 9:00), with pocket pair after pocket pair. They were running an "aces cracked/win a rack" promotion so I was particularly happy to see my pocket aces contested with re-raises. Unfortunately, I spiked an ace on the river to take the pot over his two pair and lost the $100 bonus. Anyway, when the 4/8 game began, I moved tables (away from my lucky seat) to take advantage of the higher stakes. Wednesday's the promotion they run is $25 for any full house, $100 for quads, $200 for straight flushes.

The table was pretty tough, with a lot of high limit players killing time until the no limit game started, and I quickly found myself down about $200. Then, the better players left and the deck really started to hit me. I collected 5- $25. full house bonuses, and won some nice pots with them. Where the skill part came in was maximizing my winning hands, and getting away from losing hands early for the most part. The table was just so weak, with players making dumb bluffs into crowds, failing to raise with the nuts, or just failing to value bet at the end. A prime example of the weak play I saw was a board with a flop of K/10/7, I had pocket 2's, so decided to "take one off", despite a bet and call. The turn brought another 7, so decided to call again ( I am not thinking this is a smart play at this time), and the river brought another 7, so when it was checked to me, I bet $8, figuring that at least I would get my $25 bonus, and when I got a caller, figured I lost, but no, he had nothing and I took down the pot. I ended up with a $240 profit (which was a huge comeback from -$200). It was a good day and a lucky one too. I don't think that I have ever had as many full houses in one session before.