Weekend variance finally going MY way

I started rebuilding confidence today. Had a nice little heater during a 4 hour session for 13 buyins at 25NL. Yeah, I know: Why can't every day be like today? I guess Stars wanted to give me a do-over after the dismal start to August that I had yesterday, so I'm back on the positive side of the graph for this month.

I keep a binder with the most influential posts I've found on 2p2 and printed them out as well as a group of my own theories and notes I've made to remember the little nuggets of gold I find reading strat books.

Reading through some of these today kick-started my brain again. I think I had been autopiloting off my HUD for a bit there, and re-reading Pokey's post on how to use my HUD was really helpful. I think I'm also starting to trust my instincts more and I'm starting to relegate my HUD to a guideline as to how I want to plan a hand.

One thing I've found particularly helpful is checking WtSD and W$SD stats as soon as someone cold calls my raise or if I'm considering calling a raise. This gives me a couple extra seconds to figure out what I'm going to do on the flop in terms of whether to cbet or float, and also my bet sizing.

I'm also starting to get that feel for when peoples' lines don't make sense and I can bluff raise them to steal a pot with air. This is quite rare - and I'm not making hero calls or retarded bluffs, but every once in a while you can pick off a nice pot. That and I can start to figure out if my set or better is good or not. I'm not laying them down often - so far I think I've folded about 3 sets in the past week in hands which were not obvious flush draws that made it, and I am almost positive I've saved myself 3 stacks in those cases. That being said: "never fold a set!" =)

In most cases you can't lay down a huge hand like this. The general advice is that if you can beat AA, you are committed. But there are a few very rare times where you have bottom set and alarm bells are going off because villain's line really looks like a set - then you check the stats and he's a TAGfish with something like WtSD 15% and W$SD 65% and he wants to get the money in and you get that intuition that you are no good.

I say trust your reads, and don't ever ask anyone if you should fold a set, because they don't have those reads and they can't help you. They will just say "never fold a set" and if you go with that, you will be +EV in the long run anyways, and there's no shame in that.