The Night of .60 Cents

Played about 2000 hands last night and was down almost 5 buy ins at one point, but I brought it back to even plus another .60.  However, when I was playing last night and noticed that I was seeing 20% of the flops. I am not sure when I began playing a LAG style, but I have a feeling that I need to stop.  I need to get back down to the 15% range where I like to be.  I have really been losing some key hands though, which may be influencing me to change styles.  I have a KK hand where the flop was K 10 10 and I trapped, but 4th and 5th brought A A thus making me lose, along with my sets getting flushed away.  I realized last night that I am not pushing people off their draws hard enough and I am in dire need of doing so.  The problem is when there is in fact a flush draw out there at this level people tend to just push and pray, which in turn makes me have to call.  Overtime this is a profitable play, but I feel like I like to see all the cards when people are drawing the flushes so I can get away from the hand and save money.  At the micro levels I feel this is essential, not at the upper levels however.  If the flush card doesn't hit on 4th though, I need to push, and push it hard.  I want people to chase that 17% there. 

***HAND***

I was dealt 99 last night, UTG, so I made a normal size raise.  Hands fold around to the Big Blind, whom was a somewhat short stacker, and generally a bit tight.  (nitty titty)  He reraises me to around .32.  Which is a monster three bet.  I think to myself he wouldn't have played AA or KK that way, and there are two hands at this point that are in his range, which are QQ and AK.  I decide to reraise the pot to .64 and he immediately calls.

The Flop goes Q junk junk and he pushes.  If he had QQ he would check the nuts to me most likely and since I reraised him preflop and he just called AK is the only hand he could possibly have here.  I call and sure enough he turns over AK and I scoop in the winner, but before calling him I made sure to tell him what his hand was so I could steal some pots from him later ;) 

Was a very fun hand and this is something I never would have been able to do last year.  It is a good feeling knowing that your game has grown somewhat and you are able to make good sound decisions at the tables.