I dream of becoming "fat"....
I call them "belly stacks". If moving quickly across the poker room floor, if a player is wearing a red or green t-shirt and leaning over, it can sometimes give the cartoon like illusion of a player being abnormally fat. So my own poker slang for a big score is called a "belly stack".
I have been playing poker for a number of years. Exclusively live 1-2 NL cash Texas Holdem. When I first started playing years ago, I quickly acquired my first and only belly stack. I won $1500, a bulk of which was just extreme luck as I flopped a straight flush against both a King high and Ace high flush. Since then, not even close. Some winning sessions, 1-300 hundred net profits are not uncommon. But never any more belly stacks. In search of another - I have read lots of books, watched lots of online videos and read many forums. I have greatly increased the number of hours at the poker table.
So here's my dilemma.
I am finding that when I sit down at a poker table, the following occurs. I start off winning. No belly stack but an around 1-300 dollars. Sometimes I get an early beat which is normal for variance. But I usually re-buy, stick around and then usually I have recovered and I am at a small profit. This situation has happened in 9 of my last 10 poker sessions, representing about 40-50 hours of play.
But then something happens, I am up and for one reason or another I almost always lose back some or all of the winnings. I see people with huge stacks of 5X the buy in or more. I am jealous. I am envious. I think I should be one of those players. I want another belly stack! But I just can not seem to acquire any more than 1 or 2x the initial buy in.
Last night I told myself that If I played and if I won at least $200 I would walk away from the table. SO there I have it, I have 250 dollars in front of me and I get dealt pocket jacks. I raise to $17 and I get 2 callers. Flop comes Jack-Queen-4, with 2 hearts. Sensing danger I make it $50 to go and then the villain re-raises me to 100. I push all in and get called and he has an ace high flush draw. He misses and I more than double up, I have about $550 in front of me, a $350 profit.
"GO HOME STUPID" I say to myself in this situation. But I can't leave. I am crazy glued to my chair. I look behind me and see a guy with a mountain of chips, at least $1500 and I figure tonight I am going to be on the good side of vairance. I strike up a conversation with a college student who seems in absolute awe of me for whatever reason and feeling the hero, I decide to stay.
An hour later, I have 6-5 off suit in the BB. A couple of callers. Flop comes 6-6-5, a miracle flop for a nut full house. The table is super loose so I decide to just bet out for 25.00. I get 3 callers. Turn card is a Jack. River is a 3. Villain goes all in. I call, hoping he had a straight. Insted he had J-6 for a higher full house. If he had pocket 5's or pocket 3's (he would have raised with pocket Jacks), I would have taken all his money and the other money on the table for about another 400. But instead I lose 300 of my winnings and I am nearly back to square one again.
This isn't atypical of my experience. But just bad luck.
My confidence is now shot. I don't think I can ever get that big mountain stack in front of me. Should I be content to hit and run? Or is this just normal variance?
