Monday, April 14, 2008

Frustration

So, I won my way into the $750K on Friday and decided to pass on that and run the Bracelet Race. 91 runners, 9 seats, 10th got $400. I finished 14th. My last hand had me with a straight flush draw on a10 high board and my opponent had K10. I missed my many outs which would have put me with a manageable stack. Had 6k with 400/800 blinds. Also took a beating at the .25/.50 tables last night. I had won over 5 buyins the night before and dropped 4 last night.

Notable hands included 77 on a 764 flop losing to turned quad sixes. 22 losing to 99 on a 942 flop. AK losing to K10 on a AK10 flop. Thank you river ten. I know one of my problems has been too much limping with pairs and suited connectors when I get into these passive tables where everyone is limping in. It all starts when the table limps around with 3-5 callers and I have a hand like pocket 3's or 910s. How often should pressure be applied in this situation, how often should I be limping along with these type of hands? Suppose I limp and one of the blinds pots it and everyone calls, at this point I'm stuck with pot odds knowing if I hit I'm going to take someones stack. But, do you hit often enough to make this profitable? This situation happened more than normal last night when I ended up on the right side of some very smart and agressive players while having the loose donkey's on my right. I'll see if I can get some hands up soon. I've actually been winning a lot, and beyond the coolers and suckouts I'm still up a decent amount for the month. The wsop package would have been nice, but I'll just have to wait til next time. Take care everyone.

Tuesday, April 1, 2008

It's been a while...

For good reasons. There's been a crackdown at work on non-work related sites. This has put a damper on many of my daily musings, but has been put on the back burner now. Some of you may have noticed me playing blogger events for two weeks. I got lucky enough to win the Dookie and cash twice in the Mookie. I was able to do this because of my two weeks on Active Duty for the reserves. I was in a hotel 2 minutes from work for two weeks, so I was able to sleep in until 7ish which allowed me to play at the gawd-awful times of these BBT3 events. I'm going to try to sneak in a couple here and there, but its hard when they end after mid-night and I'm up by 4. Very rough.

I really hate April Fool's day because I end up being a gullible bastard at least once a year. Thank you to The Goat for making me a fool once again. My wife and I read the Goat's LOST post's religiously and I was in panic mode this morning to get my wife to check the DVR for the "bonus episode". Well played, sir.

I'm hoping to start this crappy part of the blogosphere again, but I know you won't be surprised if another month goes by without a post.

It helps that I've actually been playing poker. As evidenced by qualifying for Bronze Iron man this month. Going to work on getting the next level for this month and see how it goes. I've been abusing the .25/.50 PL/NL tables to the tune of $700 last month. Hope everyone is well and have a great week.

Wednesday, January 9, 2008

Yesterday Hand

This one turned out a lot different than I thought and none of the players had close to what I was thinking at the time.

UTG+1 ended up limping with 8's, not feeling like he could just call the reraise decided to put the pressure back on the BB who didn't seem overly powerful.

Short Stack had 10h7s and although he seemed like he was a decent player, this was a weird move when he had no fold equity and could have seen at least 3 more hands.

BB had pocket 9's with his insta call. I was shocked to not see at least Jacks, but I was expecting Q's, K's or Aces from his quick call.

BB was bereted for his move but it was a moot point really with the flop being 8, 9, A. The board bricked out and the BB became a monster stack while knocking out one player and crippling another. In the end, I told them both that even had the BB just called preflop, the money would have found a way into the middle with set over set. Let me know what you think and thanks for stopping by.

Tuesday, January 8, 2008

Interesting Hand

So this came up at a home game I was playing last weekend.

Blinds are 1000/2000

We are down to 11 players. At 10 we drop to one table with 4 getting paid. 1st is $400, 4th is 60 and it was $40 to enter. Not relevant to the hand, but a lot of these players love playing just to get their money back and not many play to win.

Solid player limps UTG+1. One fold and then another player goes all in for 4500. Folds to the BB who reraises 6000 more. BB knows the game but is not as experienced, has never read a book about poker and trys to win every hand. So, that makes a main pot of 12K and a side pot of 6K.

Solid player has about 20K left and goes all in. BB instacalls for his last 13K.

Anyone want to take a guess as to what they are holding?

I'll come back later today with results.

Thursday, January 3, 2008

Not a lot of time these days

Merry Christmas, Happy New Year to all!!!

I've been a busy guy these last couple of weeks but I did manage to make it up to Atlantic City last Friday. $50 +15 tournament and 6 of us ended up chopping the $5400 prize pot at the end.

Big stack guy had over a million in chips and took $1200 (first was originally $2200) and everyone else too $870.

The 5 of us left each had between 200K and 250K with 20/40K blinds with 10K ante. In other words, it was a crap shoot. I'm really shocked that big stack walked away with only $1200, but he seemed happy. I was happy to make just under 2nd place money without having to get lucky the rest of the way.

Best play of the night saw me limp UTG with KK with 10 people left. There was a raise on every hand so I wanted to reraise when it happened instead of pushing everyone out. Of course there were 4 limpers. With 5/10K blinds there was over 60K in the pot. Flop was the most beautiful thing I've ever seen, K 6 3 rainbow. Blinds check, I check and everyone else checks to the Cutoff who goes all in for 150K. Folds to me and I think about it for a little and call all in for my 75K. Everyone else unfortunately folds and he flips up A9o. I went from happy, to sad, to ecstatic all in a few moments. That gave me a lot of muscle as we dropped from 10-6 within about 25-30 minutes.

I was the last one holding out on the deal because one of the guys had about 80K and I wanted to see him gone before doing the deal. A couple of double ups put everyone at the same level with the ever increasing blinds and I got into the deal before things went sour.

Anyone have any thoughts on the deal? I wasn't entirely comfortable taking the deal because I was playing so well, but I think it would have been stupid to turn down the guaranteed big money with such huge blinds.

Sorry to Riggstad, since neglecting the blog for a couple weeks, I also neglected to read his comment that he would be in the area. Hopefully when I head back up in the end of January you can make it up.

Good luck in the New Year everyone!!!