Shanghai Greetings

Hello from Shanghai. A bit of a long flight, departing from LAX at 2:00PM on Thursday Eastern US time and into my hotel room at 8:30AM on Friday. The best thing I did was to email the hotel to arrange for transportation from the airport. Very, very sweet to see someone welcoming me when I got out of customs, whisk me to the Mercedes. Even sweeter, no check-in--they just greeted me, took me up to my room, went over stuff, then delivered my luggage. Watched The Corpse Bride and In Her Shoes, which was significantly better than I expected (although I have a poker blog, which is a bit gay, not that there's anything wrong with that). Also saw the Skeleton Key, which is a bit creepy. I connected in Seoul, so flight there from LA was 12 1/2 hours. One weird thing is I can't reach my blog from here--they may not let folks to blogs, I don't know.

FTP NLHE $2/4 blinds, I have AKo in sb when UTG raises to $14, I call with two other callers (pot is $56). Flop comes K94, I bet $44 and everyone folds to the button who raises all-in. So two bad things: one, I don't even hesitate cold calling to see the 99 flipped over (I call with $160 more). Second is that of course it holds up. So is this a major leak in cash NLHE, just poker and you're going to lose that, or do you good players lay that down? I think it's an absolute leak for me not to even think, "What would this guy raise with?" Anyways, would be interested in you better NLHE cash players regarding TPTK and how you get away from it (% of the time you can get away vs. getting hurt). I was able to claw my way back from two re-buy's, doubling through with KT vs. AdTd with a K and two diamonds on flop. (Of course, I've just gotten back down $170 with a short-stacked set taking my 99 and a button slow playing KK to my flopped pair of queens with an ace on the turn).

I'm getting somewhat comfortable in cash NLHE, although I still seem to get my clock cleaned with good hand vs. set/straight. This can't be some sort of Eureka! moment for everyone else, (the hours of boredom and minutes of being terrified or whatever the saying is). There sometimes seems to be a fine line for between playing solid and fraidy-scared. Sometimes, I lay down the marginal hands pre-flop because I don't want to hit a flop and have to play it (I mean here when there is a raiser pre-flop). Hands include mainly paint (KJo, KTo, QJo). I think it fluctuates between playing solidly and being scared--mainly being scared if I've just taken a hit, I think. I still prefer limit to no-limit in cash games, but the challenge is how to play at FullTilt and still play limit when there are virtually no tables. I don't know how to get that figured out.