No More Rush

Talking to Goodeh and others in #smallstakes recently has convinced me that playing Rush is probably a bad idea for me right now. The difficulty of building strong and thorough reads, and impossibility of finding and exploiting particular fish is probably a bad thing overall for me and cuts into my winrate, amplifying the impact of variance. I still think that I have an edge on the Rush field but I acknowledge that the edge is thin and playing regular tables is probably better for me at this point in my poker career.

So I sat down just now and 3-tabled some regular NL50 and it turns out that I can lose even faster there than I can on Rush! I lost $134 in 387 hands.

Hand #1

This is pretty awful by me and basically happened because this villain had been hammering me constantly with 3bets, which is a situation that I find pretty hard to handle. I call preflop basically to setmine but on the flop I totally lose sight of this plan and decide to float and steal on the turn because I suspect that he has air a lot. The 3flushing A is probably a bad card for this because now his Ax are all ahead of me and he's probably never folding any of them getting 3:1 and some of his flush draws are probably also calling. Unfortunately, I don't really see a clearly better way to play this. Folding to his 3bet pre and just letting him continue to run me over four hands in a row seems bad, open-folding 55 pre seems bad, calling pre and folding to his cbet on the flop seems worse than just folding to his 3bet pre, and calling on the flop and checking behind on the turn seems like it's just begging him to shove any river. Thoughts?

Hand #2

Villain here is 39/24 and I'm willing to play ATs out of position against him so I call pre from the big blind. With one overcard, a gutshot, and a backdoor nut flush draw, I think I have enough equity to float him on the flop, even out of position, since I think he's basically auto-cbetting and I can also bluff any diamond turn or river. I make the nuts on the turn and checkraise for value. Should I perhaps raise more, or even shove on this turn? I didn't want to scare off his one pair hands that he might be willing to take all the way but I had stupidly neglected the need to deny odds to his flush draws. And how should I play this river? I don't know if I get value out of anything by shoving here, since the flushing A scares away a lot of the hands that I was trying to get value out of on the turn. Should I check and call a shove? That seems to allow him to play perfectly against me, checking behind with anything worse and getting maximum value out of his flushes. Should I check and fold to a shove getting almost 3:1? Help...

Hand #3

Stealing pre; never folding to his stupid min3bet getting better than 3:1. Flop seems perfect for me - little do I know that I'm drawing dead. I happily take the free turn card and happily pay what seems like a good price for the river, where I make my flush. He bets out a little less than halfpot. I think his range is pretty wide here but I don't know if raising is good here. I'm hoping to get value out of some worse flushes, possibly some weirdly played trips, but mostly things like AJ and AK/AQ that he can't lay down. I just don't know if he's the kind of player who will pay me off with those hands. When he reraises I think his range is flushes and boats, and the fact that he min3bet me preflop makes me strongly suspect he may be bad enough to reraise me with worse flushes. I call getting better than 3:1 but should I fold?

NL50 Progress

-$187.15 / $500.00 after 906 hands