Bad Beats and Shorthanded play.

This post is not about bad beats. It’s about the unbelievably bad play at short-handed limit HE games online. This weekend my wife decides to jump into the $5-10 6 handed LHE on Poker Stars. Her bankroll is way to small for this game but with just 20BB she takes a shot. She crushes the games and ends the weekend with around 70BB. I decide to give it a try also, play $3-6 shorthanded on Stars. I didn’t have any success at all. I am quickly down around $250 in 2 hours. By the end of the weekend I win half of it back. The play at these games is just so bad! Like I wrote earlier this isn’t about bad beats. This hand is just an example of how bad the play is. I raise with pocket tens and the button calls me heads up. Flop comes 9-3-2 rainbow, I bet he calls. Turn comes with the Jack of spades, which completes 4 different suites on the board. I bet he calls. River brings a ten, a set for me should be good right? I bet he raises, me not believing he really caught a case ten for a straight re-raise. He raises again and I make the crying call. Yup runner-runner for a straight.(Q-8 off) He called the flop with 1 over. Then the turn with 1 over and a gutshot heads up. This hand illustrates just how loose and crazy these games are. It seams there is still a ton of money to be made at the shorthanded donkfests online. I need to learn how to make this money. I noticed some very good aggressive players making a ton of money at my tables but overall a ton of really bad players. I couldn’t fade the bad beats, top pair was never good enough, even heads up. It was bizarre I could never figure out the hand that would beat me. I would have A-K and flop K-2-4 and bet it like it was the nuts. The river would be an eight and I would loss to 4-8 sooted! So then I tried to play slow and keep losing to over cards on the river. By the end of Sunday night I seamed to have figured it out somewhat. So it wasn’t a total waste of time and money. I think this week I will make a ton playing shorthanded. We will see, will post about it this week. Good luck at the tables. Tony