I knew it was going to be my night within minutes of taking my seats at Party Poker. I hit the nut straight on the turn and was getting bet into. I of course raised back and the pot was capped. In addition to myself and the other raiser in the pot, 3 other people called down! It was the type of hand we all dream about. The river paired the board, but I wasn’t worried and bet from last position, getting 3 callers. It ended up being a 29 BB pot. Everyone else had also made their straight on the turn, but none beat or tied mine so I took the whole pot.

I took down some other nice pots and even caught a couple of gut-shot straight draws. And, yes, I was getting the odds to call with my draw each time that I did call. Looking back, I never lost more than 4.5 BB on a single hand, which is an improvement over the past few sessions. It was a quick review looking at the biggest losing hands of the session.

I did take some beats by 2 and 3 outers, but at least I could smell them coming and didn’t go raise crazy like I have been lately. Another improvement was not chatting back at these players. I just kept telling myself these were the same players that were calling me down with hopeless hands. I’d win more from them on their dead draws than they’d win from me when they hit a miracle card.

In 600 hands I booked a 72 BB profit and have now cleared over half of the 1400 raked hands for the $200 reload bonus. I saw at a total of 9 tables on the night and walked away a winner from 8 of them. It’s hard to lose when the big hands hold up though. AA was 5/5, KK was 3/3, AK was 2/4, AQ was 5/12, and TT was 3/3. QQ and JJ were each only 1/3, but you can’t win them all I guess. I only cold called a raise once the entire session. It was with AQo and won the pot.

My standard buy-in at a table is 30 BB. Over the previous couple of months I was busting out frequently. Since moving back down to $0.50/1, I haven’t busted out from once.

It’s been quite some time since I recorded a good winning night like this. It feels good to be back on the right track.