I played the local Reading £25 tournament with £20 add on. Played well but with 15BB I had a shove from a 6BB stack in and called with AQs only to be called by the button who had Kings.

Played cash, I had been watching from the sidelines, every pot seemed to involve everyone putting in £2 and playing 7-10 handed. I gave the big speech about how I  wasn’t going to be playing mum and pop poker and sat down with £200.  Limped 2 callers and cutt-off made it £10 to go. I looked down to find AQ and made it £20, fold, fold and button shoves for an extra £74. He’d just lost half his stack with 10s to a rivered 2pr that should never have got there and this was the next hand, that combined with my speech made me call. I was shown pocket queens and was down almost half my stack on first hand.

Just as I am about to go playing the last hand with a stack of £284 we have a limped pot with 7 players and I look down in the SB with J90 and make it £16 everyone folds to the button who completes. The flop comes KQ rag with no flush draw and I make it £25 and the button min-raises to £50 I call with a gut-shot why I don’t know. The turn is a blank and I shove with just a gutshot. Villain calls and I dump £16+£50+£164 = £230 into AK for an easy call.  Why I don’t know I’ll never be a poker player until I can rid myself of this major flaw. It is hard enough to win without donking yourself off for no good reason, had a bad night’s sleep and it was the first thing I thought of when I woke up.

My brother looked at me like I was stupid and he was right, just awful. Never drink and play poker for money, even though I had only had 4 pints it was enough to put me off my game.

I don’t hate poker, I hate the way I play poker…