In Bismarck

We made it to Bismarck today and checked into the hotel.  We shoot the North Dakota State Sporting Clays tournament tomorrow morning.

We begin the tourney with the sub-gauge event in the morning and then shoot the 5-stand event in the afternoon. Both of the events are 100 targets.  Then we shoot the main event, which is 200 targets, on Sunday.

I played poker a bit on the way here and although I didn't lose that much I am pretty disappointed in my play.  I played a session of RUSH poker then a session of mass tabling full ring on Stars... while playing RUSH I made two calls of river check-raises that were basically horrible in my opinion.  In both instances, I had a hand that had a really good absolute hand strength but faced with these two players' river-check raises, my hand was essentially a bluff catcher.  I need to start playing more attention to absolute hand strengths and find a fold when I feel my absolute hand strength is second best.

Lately, I've just been calling in those spots but it's pretty terrible to do so.  I feel like I have really strong hand reading skills and am right on the money a lot more often than not, but sometimes I just don't follow through with the best play after I put them on their hand range.  It's really frustrating and disappointed that there is this disconnect between what I know is the correct play and what I actually do.  This is something that I'm going to work really hard to correct in the coming months.

I probably won't be playing any poker at all over the weekend,  but might play a bit on the ride back to Grand Forks on Sunday night.  I'm going to relax, have fun with my Dad, brother, and shooting friends and enjoy being outside.  Hopefully I shoot well this weekend too!