I learned a few new lessons, and re-learned some old ones. That's the problem with playing so infrequently, and the lessons are always expensive. The main thing I learned on this trip (twice unfortunately), is that when a player shoves, especially when you have him/her covered, they have the nuts. That seems pretty obvious, but I lost a big hand when I had a set on the flop and the only thing that could beat me was a straight (which I saw, but was such a weird one that I refused to believe it was out there). My mistake was that I didn't raise pre with my pair and I allowed the blind in with anything.
The other thing I did wrong was play tired and I made a donkey call with JJ. I do know that a pair isn't much in a good game, and once again, I failed to raise enough pre, min-raising when I always would raise at least 3x in this spot. I generally view cash like the early stages of a tournament when the stacks are deep, and I would have insta-folded my JJ in a tournament at the first level against a shove. Just tired, and stupid.
Other than that, held my own in some pretty tough games. As always, the poker room is the best place in a casino. Relatively chaos-free, smokeless, coffee always on, friendly....I could live in a poker room if only I had the bankroll. Can't wait to go back while I remember the main lesson of not calling big shoves.
