As I think I mentioned in a previous post, you can pick up a lot of bad habits playing online poker, especially sit n go’s where you can resign yourself to playing either brain dead or like a jackass and still make it into the money. As I’ve been trying to tighten up my game lately, I realized just how bad I had gotten. Every time I got dealt any Ace I felt the urge to make a bet which is definitely not how I used to play. So even though I’m not playing those hands now, the fact that I get that urge to bet with it kind of scares me because I know that if I happen to get fatigued after playing for hours in a tourney, all it will take is a little bit of steaming and I just might end up playing crap like that. So for now, I’ve made a bit of a compromise with myself, letting myself play Ace-wheel cards occasionally but tossing A6 thru A9 without reservation. The results have been great so far which really proves to me how much I had been giving away playing Ax. The advantage to playing Ace-wheel, besides the obvious straight possibilities, is that it’s so much easier to make the correct play post-flop. No more throwing away good chips after bad trying to represent a big Ace or two pair. I’m sure I must have been doing that a lot. Shame on me. This game is so much easier on the brain when I don’t complicate things with stupid play. Constantly putting myself in positions where I have to make tough decisions is definitely not the way to play poker.