More Thoughts On Marginal Situations (in poker)

It's a blog explosion. Three in like 12 hours.

Anyway, I watched a poker video by the oft-maligned, pee-bottle-using, and massively successful Leatherass. I enjoyed it. He talks in an everyman sort of style, definitely gives you the feeling that if he can do it, so can you (which of course is probably an illusion, but whatever). He talks about how he gives up a little easier on hands than some other successful pros, cause he prefers the lower variance style that comes from avoiding those spots. I'd really like to adopt at least some of that approach, but I just find it somehow difficult.

Here's an example.

http://www.pokerhandreplays.com/view.php/id/775255

I call the 3-bet cause I'm in position, we have full stacks, and I still get hung up on set-mining odds (forgetting other factors, like times I pay him off, and times I hit but don't get paid). I call the flop bet cause this particular villain is firing almost all the time and he could have very easily missed with his overcard type hand. I call the turn because I now have a double gutter (and could of course still be good). I call the river cause I'm getting a billion to one + he bet really fast + wouldn't he at least some of the time slow down with his overpairs. The thing of it is, sometimes he does show up here with AsKs (or worse) and I'm King Of The World. But if you had asked me, preflop, do I want to get it all in with 66 unimproved? Well, not really, no . By making a marginal (some might say just bad) preflop call, I set myself up to ship a whole stack with a fairly crappy hand. I'd like to stop doing that please.