Embarrasing River Call

I butchered this hand.

Preflop is obviously fine. I think flop is ok too, I can't raise and fold to a 3-bet, and when he just calls a raise I am probably not doing that great against his range. Folding is not an option, so calling is fine.

On the turn though, I need to bet 100% when he checks this blank. I don't want to give a free card to draws, and I want to get value from worse Ax and 9x hands. I knew this was a mistake as I was checking behind.

When he overbets river, he polarizes his range to flushes/air. He's not doing this with 2pr because my range includes FD's as well, imo he'd most likely make a standard size bet with anything that a flush beats. I doubt anyone at NL10 is overbet bluffing nearly often enough to make a call correct here, he would need to be bluffing upwards of 37% of the time, which is just incredibly unlikely, especially on this board. I need to fold here always, and I knew that while the hand was unfolding. I make bad bad calls way too often. It really needs to stop if I want to be any good at this game.

Poker Stars $0.05/$0.10 No Limit Hold'em - 6 players - View hand 569152
The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter

CO: $9.45
BTN: $7.45
SB: $15.25
BB: $11.80
UTG: $14.70
Hero (MP): $10.15

Pre Flop: ($0.15) Hero is MP with A Q
1 fold, Hero raises to $0.30, 2 folds, SB calls $0.25, 1 fold

Flop: ($0.70) 9 A 2 (2 players)
SB bets $0.40, Hero calls $0.40

Turn: ($1.50) 4 (2 players)
SB checks, Hero checks

River: ($1.50) 8 (2 players)
SB bets $2, Hero calls $2

Final Pot: $5.50
SB shows 7 6 (a flush, Ace high)
Hero mucks A Q
SB wins $5.25
(Rake: $0.25)

February

February was a pretty bad month poker wise. Didn't play much, but played a larger than expected number of tournaments, with the following results:


And here are the cash results:


Basically the whole month I felt like I was running bad, and I got tilted way too easily and stopped playing. So the volume is absolutely terrible. Woops. March will be better.

As far as progress on my yearly goals:

Goal 1: Structure my daily routine
A) job-search 60 min per day
B) Play 16 table hours per day
or do tons of push ups/situps.

Result: LOL so far. None of the three have been accomplished. I'm way way way off track. Time to get some focus back. I'm averaging less than 4 table hours per day (in cash) and even less than that in tournaments. Unfortunately in HEM I don't really know how to find multi-tabling ratio, so I'm really just basing the table hours on the fact that I've played a total of 100 hours of poker so far this year.

Goal 2: 400k Hands of 6-max cash.

Result: About 45k behind pace right now as I've only played 19k and should be averaging ~33k per month to reach this goal. No real excuse, reason for my lack of hands is a direct result of being short on goal 1.

Goal 3: Play the SM >2x (or equiv.)

Result: Already played one, the 2.5M guaranteed special (which was 2 weeks before the 4 mil guaranteed special, blah). Played like scared money. Kinda disappointed that I didn't play like I know I can. Next time should be easier. Also planning on playing quite a large number of the low buyin SCOOP events that will be in early May, though these don't exactly count as equivalent tourneys.

Goal 4: Achieve and maintain Silverstar + status.

Result: Got it in Jan, but lost it back after Feb. I just didn't have any motivation in Feb due to my poor mental state. Already feel much more focused in March and am more than 10% of the way to silverstar again, so this should be back on track within a few weeks.