Edmond and I met with the marketing folks at the Bike today and we were done around 5pm. I saw no reason to head out the door when the sweat sound of chips hitting the felt beckoned me to stay a while. Edmond agreed to play too, and we were both immediately seated at a $5/$5 table with $300-$500 stakes.

There were 1-3 empty seats during our 2 hour session and the play was fairly loose preflop with many limped pots. Standard 3x or 4x PF raises didn't usually accomplish much to thin the field, and often PF raises as much as $30-40 were made regularly. One guy even raised $100+ PF with one small raise in front of him and won the pot when he was called by two big cards. The $200 guy had 83o!

I bought in for the max $500 and in the first orbit I'm dealt K6 in late position. Four of us see a flop of:

QT6.

The SB makes it 40 and one other guys calls. I decide to make a loose call with botton pair, backdoor flush draw and position. I really did it more because of the position than anything else, but yes, it was a very iffy call.

The turn brings a club. The SB now makes it $100 and the other player folds. The SB was as deep as me so with a minimum of 9 outs and more likely up to 14 outs, it was an easy call for me. The river brought a club and didn't pair the board so I was fairly confident I had the nuts.

The SB made it $140 and had a few hundred left as did I. Now I don't like to hollywood, but to be honest, I hadn't checked my suits since the hand started and I was now not 100% sure I had the clubs -- only 99.8% sure. My problem was that if I looked back at the cards and then pushed it would be so obvious I had the flush. So I pretended to be ready to fold, looking at my cards and then purposely waited a good 30-40 seconds. Not for the hollywood effect, but to separate the looking at my cards from the pushing. Hey, I know it's hard for him to put me on the backdoor flush so it probably didn't matter. He called very quickly and the table clearly was not impressed with my suckout. Even Edmond gave me a look. Hey, it never sucks to win a $1,000 pot. Given the guy's quick call he likely had trips so my 5 outs might not have been good enough, but I guess two pair was possible too.

I stayed with a stack of $1,000 for the next hour or so. Didn’t catch many hands and when I did, I got no action. On two consecutive hands I hit two pair on the flop with QT, and got no action and then raised PF with QQ, got one caller, hit trips, made a standard continuation bet and got not action again. Soon thereafter, this hand came up. Edmond felt I played it like a donk. What do you think?

I’m dealt Q5 on the bottom. A bunch of limpers and I limp too. The flop comes down:

KJ2

An EP player makes it 15 and 2 callers so I call too with the the second nut flush draw. The turn brings the T so the board reads:

KJ2T

And now I have the open-ended straight draw and the second-nut flush draw. It’s checked to me and I make it $30. It’s folded to the guy to my right who raises it $60. He could have a made hand or also a Q. I don’t think he has a K given his call of a small bet on the flop, but I guess KT is possible or even TT.

I'm thinking that he might even have the A so perhaps I don't want to see a club at all. In fact, maybe a miss is my best bet because the club could mean a big loss and an A or 9 might simply be a split pot.

I decide to call and a junk card falls on the river. The guy checks to me. Hmmm… He’s a tight player, but he is not a bad player. The raise on the turn could have meant so many things: he didn’t believe my bet and wanted to take it away with a so/so hand or a draw, he had a draw too with the A, etc. Anyway, no way I’m winning this hand with a check and with both draws missing I felt it was EV to take the chance so I bet $100. He called me with the nut flush! It turns out that I was drawing dead.

Everyone was congratulating him for his check, but I don’t think it was a good move. He didn’t know that I had a missed draw and if I did I wasn’t always betting there. I think he needed to bet there to get value out of his hand the most often. Thoughts on my play and his check?

Going forward nothing very exciting happened. I raised quite a bit with hands like AQ, KQ, 88, etc., and every time got callers and then had to surrender my hand on the flop either to an EP raise or to a RR or call after I made a CB.

There was one hand where I screwed up just a bit (or should I say another hand). I had a flush draw on the turn with second pair and an A on the board. My opponent raised $50 and I’m getting almost 2-1 to call. I have at least 9 outs, but more likely he only had an A so I could have up to 14 outs. I looked at the guy’s stack and he only had $100 more. I just didn’t feel like calling with such a small stack behind him, but I guess it was close.

I decided to leave at 7pm and locked in a profit of $150. Not great, but better than a losing session. I didn’t play my best poker, I probably fell too much into the slow rhythm of the game instead of forcing my opponents to play my game a little more. Does that make any sense? I’m not sure even I understand what I mean!!!

** BTW, we both ate a delicious chicken kabob dinner which was on the house. The service and food at the Bike is always first rate. The players were friendly and management handled a little screw-up very professionally. Here's what happened to the best I can tell. A guy gets busted and buys in for another $130 or so and is waiting for his chips. Somehow he ended up with $230, but only $130 was his, he owed the dealer $100. He proceeds to get into a hand where he doubles up and the opponent gives him $230. Well, a few minutes later everyone realizes that he owes the dealer $100 and the other player $100. He doesn't want to give it back. He finally does, but it takes at least 5 minutes for it to happen. Ed, please correct me if I didn't get the details exactly right.

I had registered for the Pokerstars free-roll blog championship. The tournament started at 12pm CA time, but we had plans to at 12:15 and wouldn't be back for about 3 hours. That gave me 15 minutes to play like a complete maniac and see what I could do with my stack. I figured if I could double or triple my stack size, I might have something left when I returned.

We started with 10k in chips and just went at it from the first hand. For example, on the first hand a guy raises to 150 and there were 3 callers. I quickly made it 3k to go and took it down. This type of thing happened for the first orbit and I was sitting with 16k. So I had substantially increased my stack with no regard for what hand I had and without ever going past the flop. Of course someone could have woken up with a hand, but I tried to feel it out and determine to the best I could when people were hedging their bets.

I then called a raise with 66 and flopped trips. I made pot sized bets against one opponent, but the river brought both the flush and straight possibilities so when he checked to me on the river I checked too. Of course he got there so I was back down to 11k. No problem, within the next orbit I got back up to 19k. That's when my wife came in and told me we had to go. i didn't think a 19k stack was enough to last until I got back, so now I decided to push on every hand until I got called hoping to suck out.

I raised or re-raised all-in on 4 consecutive hands. On the 4th hand a guy called me with AT. I had only 97, but wasn't that far behind. He won the hand and I kept doing it again while my wife yelled from the car for me to join her! I got into two more 40/60 type all-ins and lost them both and I was put out of my misery for good!

Anyway, the moral of the story is that if I actually played like a maniac, BUT had a bit more control it would have really been interesting. I assume this is the way a lot of the better tournament players do it. They start off very, very aggressive to try and build a stack quickly. In this case if I didn't need to do the all-in trick and simply kept on pushing the edges when I knew that guys were not willing to take chances early on, I would have had no problem doubling or even tripling my stack fairly quickly.

I was just playing a 6-handed turbo on PS when this hand came up:

******************************************************************
Big Blind is t400 (3 handed)

Hero (t4855)
BB (t2220)
Button (t1925)

Preflop: Hero is SB with K, T.
1 fold, Hero completes, BB checks.

Flop: (t650) 9, 8, 7 (2 players)
Hero bets t800, BB raises to t1795, Hero calls t995.

Turn: (t4240) Q (2 players)

River: (t4240) J (2 players)

Final Pot: t4240

Hero has Ks Ts (straight, king high).
BB has 9s Qd (two pair, queens and nines).
Outcome: Hero wins t4240.

******************************************************************

Right after the hand the guy I beat starts saying things like 'what a joke', 'I can't believe you f*&&^^ called' and a bunch of things I'll leave to your imagination.

Let's look at the hand. PF I was a 65% favorite. The flop hit me very strong. I had two overs and an open-ended, so while I didn't know for sure, I likely had 14 outs when he pushed and I'm getting 3-1, so it was basically an autocall. As it turns out my outs were good so we were almost exactly 50/50.

My point is that he had no reason to go off... in fact, there's never a reason to go off. Usually the person who gets mad has no reason to be mad. This is poker. We all win when we're ahead, win when we're behind, lose when we're ahead and lose when we're behind. And you run the risk of looking stupid. Either because you're a bad sport, or in situations like this case, you are just plain wrong when you're complaining so you look really stupid.

So the next time you bust out, just shut the (*&%$% up and walk away.

Played in the October tournament series at the Bike last night. The buy-in was $350 with 200 or so runners. I got home around 3:30am and only slept for about 4.5 hours so I'm running on fumes. Here is a quick summary. I'll fill in the gaps in the next post:

- podiman was in from NY and invited me to join him at the Bike last night
- we both made it deep. Podiman was knocked out with about 4-5 tables left. I made it to 19th, just in the money.
- my $525 win amounts to about $25 per hour. Wow!
- I called a guy a pussy after he yelled at a guy for cracking his Aces. The problem was I did this without first even looking to see if i could take him! I was in the 9 seat, he was in the 1 seat, so I never got a good look at him. Luckily, he was not very big and didn't give me any trouble.
- Was short all night. Just grinded the best I could. Was all-in 5 times. Once we had the same hand. The other 4 times I was either about 50/50 or 40/60. Won all 4.
- Had a few big hands in the last few hours when the blinds were high. KK/KK/QQ/AK/AK/AQ. Not EVEN ONE time did anyone raise in front of me or call my raise. Not once. Could never pick up a big hand, or any hand for that matter when I needed one.
- Finally busted when I had to make my 100th move to keep a manageable stack when the 900/1800 blinds were about to hit me and my stack was only 6500 or so.
- This was a bounty tournament. They gave you $25 for every person you knocked out. I played for 7+ hours, made it to 19th and never busted another player. In fact, never was even in a position to bust another player.

I'll fill in some details after I get some sleep.

- S

I haven't played online in months since the old neteller days and wanted to try my hand at some of the wcoop events so Adam suggested I give ePassporte a try. Well I have and so far NO GOOD. I first tried using my Visa card and it was rejected. No biggie. I assumed it was one of those issues with the credit card company not wanting to fund a gambling site so I thought I would use the bank account option. I tried that but received a 'communication error.'

I next tried a second CC and it worked fine. Only funded $150 to start. I won my first $109 sng, but then bubbled a few times, and had a few interesting hands so I needed to reload. Today I tried to use the CC again and received a 'rejected by your bank' error. I called my bank and they told me that they not only didn't reject any transaction, but there wasn't any transaction. So I called epassporte and after waiting on hold for a while was told that they have been having a CC processing issue since Sunday. What? Is this a some type of Mickey Mouse operation? The guy told me to try a bank account. I mentioned that I did on Friday, but received an error. He knew about that but said it was a problem last week and they worked it out. This is not good!

Anyway, I decided to try the bank account option again and received the same error again. Oh, well. I guess I can ask some friends to transfer some money to my account, but maybe this is a sign. Who knows.