> ## Content Index
> Fetch the complete content index at: https://jimmakos.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further.

# Tilt Issues and Bluff-raising River Card, -9BI Day
- URL: https://jimmakos.com/tilt-issues-bluff-raising-river-card-9bi-day/
- Published: 2012-04-13T15:12:16.000Z
- Updated: 2023-12-16T19:12:08.000Z
- Author: Jim Makos
- Tags: Poker, Journal

Wednesday may have been a breakeven poker day but yesterday I managed to lose 9 buy-ins at $50NL tables. Yes, that’s right, a $450 EV adjusted loss. Am I a great poker player or what? Obviously I experienced some tilt issues during the two sessions that I completed at the **online poker** tables of **Pokerstars**. My steal percentage increased by 10%, folding to continuation bets frequency dropped by 15% (!!) and defending blinds or calling 3bets stats were significantly higher. The orange EV line was going straight downwards and I quit playing before I completed 3 hours of play. As a friendly advice, don’t continue playing when you don’t enjoy playing poker. Aggressiveness also led to some interesting bluff-raising actions.

![12-apr-poker-graph](https://storage.ghost.io/c/44/8d/448d9c80-c34d-4d74-8a89-3db10bee06f2/content/images/2020/12/12-apr-poker-graph-1.png)

I am not considering myself as a poker player that is seriously affected by tilt. I rarely let emotions overcome my strategy, no matter the game being poker, sports betting or trading. However Thursday has been one of those days when I feel everything is going wrong. With such bad psychology, it was inevitable that I wasn’t going to play optimally. I played more Hold’em Texas poker than… Fold’em Texas poker. I was going to showdown 30% of the time with noticeably bad cards. There was really no hope for me to cut back my losses, as the more I tried, the more I wanted to win pots, not willing to give up any hand. And that is a very bad poker strategy.

Still, there are two poker hands that I’d like to discuss. The first hand was QTs which I opened from UTG 5-handed. A 31/22/5.7 player calls from the Big Blind and the 345 rainbow flop goes check-check. Villain checks the 8s which also gives me a flush draw and still holding two overcards. Of course you almost must bet the turn card when it’s checked for a second time. Villain calls and they actually bet half pot on Kd river! Having no showdown value I regarded that bet as a blocking bet with a holding like A3/A4/A5/56/57/46 which wants to go to showdown cheaply. Villain defended a lot from the blinds and they were pretty aggressive, so I decided a bluff-raise would show a profit in the long run under these circumstances. Additionally the King was a great card to bluff and villain was firing river cards very often (45%) as well! Villain folded and I took down the $10 pot with complete air.

![poker-river-bluff-raising](https://storage.ghost.io/c/44/8d/448d9c80-c34d-4d74-8a89-3db10bee06f2/content/images/2020/12/poker-river-bluff-raising.png)

During the second hand, I reraise preflop from the Big Blind with Queens against 2 villains at early position. UTG folds but the fish (83/17) at MP quickly calls, no surprise there. Fish was also short-stacked with just $10 left when the flop came King-high and the pot was already $15.75\. Betting that flop would surely lead them to fold their 75s, so instead of being aggressive, I let him try to bluff me. Of course, I wasn’t going to go anywhere against his bluff, as more often than not they won’t show a King there. Another example of [**bluff-catching at poker**](https://jimmakos.com/catching-river-bluffs-thin-value-bets-3bi-day/).

![catching-bluff-fish-poker](https://storage.ghost.io/c/44/8d/448d9c80-c34d-4d74-8a89-3db10bee06f2/content/images/2020/12/catching-bluff-fish-poker.png)

I’m going travelling to Greek islands tomorrow and I don’t expect playing [**online poker**](https://jimmakos.com/poker/) that much over the next week. I will still try posting a couple of updates though, in case I do play from my laptop or hear of interesting **investing news**.