Fighting Through the Haze

The back's still a recurring problem. I have enough pills to make the pain tolerable but they have dulled me. I played a home game a week ago and was having a difficult time computing simple math. Just adding my chips proved to be a chore (I required assistance on two occasions).

My decision making abilities have been affected almost as much as my ability to add. Case-in-point would be a little tourney w/ some friends over the weekend. We played for quite some time without anyone busting and I had somehow managed to build a modest stack having won only one real pot and a couple of little ones. A situation came up with T600 in the pot already another player pushed for his remaining stack of T800 (I'm sitting on approx. T2400). With T1400 in the pot and T800 to call my A-10 offsuit would normally be an auto-call as most players would push w/ virtually any 2 cards and I should be getting more than the right price against his "potential" range of hands. However, I was having a very difficult time calculating this. In addition, two things were taking place here that was clouding my decision even further.

The player making this move doesn't truly understand how to play a short stack, but is a rather solid player, and therefore w/ the blinds at T100/T200 would open up his range of "push" hands but not as much as he should. Therefore I needed to give him MORE credit than a "random" hand or a desperate play. ALSO, I had been VERY card dead going into this hand and had to lay-down some hands that I REALLY, REALLY wanted to play early on (correctly too I might add). So, I was going to have a real hard time laying down the hand if for that reason alone.

I call and he turns over QQ. He doubles up and I am left w/ T1600 (approx.) and lose the very next hand when another player pushes his last T300 w/ KJ vs. my 22 and wins. Then a few hands later I push AK vs. 88 and get crippled (as if I wasn't already close to being crippled anyway) then lose a 40/60 to bust.

The call that steams me is the call w/ the A10. The problem was that at the TIME I knew my opponent well enough to know that he won't push until it's too late, so w/ that bit of info I may still have been getting the right price on his range of hands but it was MUCH closer than I had first thought. Therefore, the correct move there would have been to fold and let the hand go. Without doing the calculations or getting the info off of Pokerstove.com to see my equity, I guess I need to do that just to check; but I put my opponent on a range of hands 77+, AK-A8 (altho' he seemed pretty confident and usually only has confidence in pocket-pairs and fears AX, the AK-A8 range is probably incorrect) KQ, KJ is unlikely but possible. SOOOOO, if he makes that play w/ 1010-AA (which he would) then I am in trouble.

Complicating matters was a "maniac" that really disrupts the table. He makes some crazy plays and will re-pop you w/ ANY two cards. He truly does NOT understand what he's doing, BUT he knows that. It's funny really, he KNOWS that he doesn't "understand" the game and actually utilizes this to dirupt the "others" games. This causes the rest of the table to play super cautiously and then over play hands when he's not involved in the pot. So because of this dynamic alone, folding A-10 was the right play.

To make matters worse, I wasn't really "in the mood" to play cards. A big "no-no". This continued throughout the weekend as I had no patience and was easily iritable. Bad combination at the tables, very bad. Fortunately, I only played on Party on Saturday night and didn't lose so much that I can't make it back. I opted NOT to play on Sunday as I had been and took the "free time" to head to bed early. Maybe I'll be fresh tonight. But if i'm not, I won't play.