How to lose a lot of money in little time

I played my first cash game at Hawks Prairie tonight, and it's a $4/$8 full kill, a little higher than the $3/$6 I'm used to, but I was there, so figured I'd play anyway. The only other table playing was a $4-$40 spread game, way beyond my comfort range.

I bought in for $100 played for about two hours, getting up to $140, then dropping down to about $50 where I sat for a long time. Pocket jacks won, pocket queens lost, and when, on a whim, I played 5♦ 3♦ under the gun, I split a pot against A5 when the board came A24/3/7.

A bit later, I get dealt T♥ T♠ in mid-late position. Three other players are in, I call, the button calls, the small blind folds, and the big blind checks. Six of us to the flop, $26 in the pot.

T♣ 9♦ 8♣

The big blind checks, the next player bets, the next player calls, and the player to my right raises. I've gotta get the betting big enough to make flush draws and straight draws a mistake, so I re-raise to $12. Button folds, big blind folds, and the last three players call. $62 in the pot.

I'm hoping for the board to pair to give me a boat (or quads, if it's the ten). Instead, the turn is J♣.

Clearly, someone's hit their flush draw, and someone's hit their straight draw. The first player bets $8, the next player calls, and the guy to my right calls. There's $86 in the pot, so I'm getting better than 10:1 to call. I assume I've got 10 outs (eights, nines, tens, jacks), so it's an easy call. Even reducing it a bit, I only need to have 5 outs to make this a profitable call, and if I hit one of them, I'm gonna be making a lot with my boat.

The river is a beautiful J♥

The first two players check, and the guy to my right bets $8. I raise to $16. The other players call. The guy to my right raises another $8. I put my last $8 in the pot. The other players call. The pot is $182. I show my full house, tens full of jacks.

The first player hit the flush, losing. The second player had a queen, for the straight. The guy to my right held J♦ 9♣, for a full house, jacks full of nines. I go home now.

Still, I feel good about my play. I may be playing a little too tight, which is costing me some hands, but I'm still convinced that tight play is the best play.

Beating the long timers

I went to Happy Days on Friday night to play the midnight tournament... except it turns out that there's no midnight tournaments on Friday nights. I sat down at a $3/$6 table instead, and was dealt QQ to start, netting $26 on my first hand. The guy to my left was a non-stop talker (the way I like it; it keeps the table happy and spending money).

Happy Days has a monthly freeroll where the players who have put in the most hours at the tables get to play. The chatterbox let me know that the guy two seats to my right was the current time leader, that the woman to his right was high on the list, and that chatterbox himself was also in the top 40.

In other words, he told me I was outmatched. In spite of that I played for 45 minutes, then got out when I was ahead $46. The most amusing hand was when I was dealt 87o, and the board came 4T9/7/9. I mistakenly thought the 7 was a 6, and played as if I had a straight on the turn. Oops. I continued the agressive play on the river, and the other players folded.

My final hand was TT, in middle position, and I raised pre-flop, of course. Chatterbox re-raised to $9, the two blinds called, I capped it at $12, and the other three players called me. The flop came 6QJ. It was checked to me, and I went in for $3. If they had a Q or J, I think they would have bet. Chatterbox called, making me think he might have a J. The turn was a 9, it was checked to me, I bet, chatterbox called, and the blinds folded. The river was nothing, and I bet. Chatterbox inexplicably called and showed a 7♠8♠. My tens won, I bailed out.

Vacation Mondays are over

On March 19, I finished in fifth place in the Palace tourney.

On April 9, I finished in fifth place in the Palace tourney.

Guess how I did on April 16? If you guessed fifth, you'd be right.

Last Monday was my last vacation Monday; my vacation calendar's been reset, and I've got another 15 days to use within the next 12 months. It was a good finale, too. I ended up net +$25 in the Palace tournament, and played the $3/$6 ring game for three hours, with my $100 buy in varying from $45 to $215, ending at $105 (+$5).

In the tournament, solid, tight play (I folded AJo UTG with less than three orbits in chips left) and a good bit of luck (I rivered two poor souls twice) got me that far, but I'm thinking that I need to stay tight once I'm in the top five. My pocket fives were a racing hand, and I could have sat around a few more rounds before the blinds would have knocked me out.

In the cash game, a co-worker of mine was to my right. His style of play was a lot looser than mine, but he was also better at getting away from hands. I got burned a few times when I couldn't let go of overcards soon enough, but made a huge stack of chips with pocket tens and a board of JJT-x-x, when the button held another J.

I also made the same mistake two hands in a row. I was dealt pocket eights (yes, two hands in a row), and the quads jackpot for eights was an unusually high $800. After missing the flop, I figured I had the right odds to call a raise to see the turn. That's wrong. With a 2/47 chance of hitting another 8, there would have to be $141 in the pot to justify a $6 call (based on thinking a set of 8s would win), but the odds of hitting the jackpot -- getting runner/runner eights -- is 1/1081, meaning the jackpot would need to be $13K to justify $9 in bets. Of course, when I didn't hit an 8 on the turn, I got out, but that was money I didn't need to throw away.

Weekend of tournaments, Event 5: Little Creek 5 PM $35 bounty

With an hour to spare before the tournament started, I had lunch at the buffet. Outstanding food. All the clams you can eat. Definitely somewhere to stop for lunch again next time I'm in the area.

I hop into the tournament at 5:00, and play for 1:45. The top five spots pay, and I'm eliminated in seventh place. With 3000 in chips left, and blinds at 1000 and 2000, I'm dealt TT in middle position. I push my three chips all in, get a caller, he shows Q7, and hits a Q on the flop. Bah. And after playing for 1:45, I'm not going to make it to Happy Days' 7:00 tourney tonight.

I'm sensing a pattern tonight. Medium pair, all in, getting beat by a higher pair. Time to stop doing that.

I did knock one player out, which gave me a $5 bounty.

Net: -$30

Pocket tens: how would you play them?

Pocket tens: how would you play them? I had a prety bad night at the 50¢/$1 tables at PartyPoker on Friday, losing $25. This morning, I reviewed the hands where I won or lost $1 or more (yay, PokerTracker), and found hands where bad play cost me a total of $3.50. Surprisingly, another bad play won me $6 (with 99, I re-raised in middle position pre-flop, then called the capped bet, then got agressive on a flop of T5A). So mostly, I was card dead or got sucked out on.

One hand, though, I'm not sure how to evaluate. What do you think?

I'm in the small blind, and get dealt T♠ T♦. UTG calls, UTG+1 raises to $1, middle position calls, I call, big blind folds, UTG calls. Four players to the flop, $4.50 in the pot.

4♣ 6♣ K♦.

I bet 50¢ to get information -- does someone have a strong king? UTG folds, UTG+1 calls, middle position folds. If UTG+1 has a strong king, he'd have raised. I put him on a nut flush draw, or maybe a weak king.

The turn is 6♦.

I'm not going to let him get a flush draw card for free, so I'm in for $1. If he's on a weak king (KT?), maybe this will push him off. No way he's got a six; if he had K6, that's not a pre-flop raising hand. He calls, making the pot $7.

The river's the Q♣.

I can bet here to represent the club flush, but the story I've represented in this hand is that I've got the king with a good kicker. If I check, I'm letting him showdown for free if he had a weak hand. If he hit his flush draw, though, and I check, he'll come back at me with a bet, and I'll have to decide if he's bluffing or if he hit it.

I bet $1. He raises me to $2. I'm pretty sure I'm behind, but there's $10 in the pot, and with a 10% chance that he's bluffing, it makes sense to toss one more dollar in to see.

He wasn't bluffing, and shows J♣ A♣. I'm down another $4.50.

When should I have gotten out of this hand? It looks like I was playing his hand, and not mine, which probably wasn't a bad thing to do here, but I still ended up down.

When I bet $1 on the turn, raising the pot from $5 to $6, that gave him sufficient pot odds to call the flush draw. Should I have checked there?

Boing, boing

You know how in my last post I said it'd been a slow week? I didn't clarify that statement, but it was really because of the very steady non-movement of my bankroll at the $0.50/$1.00 tables. In consecutive sessions since last Thursday (Sept. 7), I'd left the table -$1.15, -$1.85, +$8.05, -$1.01. (Okay, so the $8.05 was better than I remember).

Well, I need to be more careful when I wish for more action. I was gleeful at my $12.75 win on Wednesday, September 13. Then I was down in the dumps on Thursday, after losing, -$16.10. Then last night, I won $20.45.

Tournament play, on the other hand, has been dry all September. Thirteen tournaments, thirteen times out of the money. I'm getting too agressive when the blinds start going up, and I play as if I'm in worse shape than I am.

Last night at a $4.00 + $0.40 NLHE tournament's a good example. 180 players, top 18 positions pay, and I've got about 2500 in chips left; the blinds are 200/400 + 25 ante, so I've got at least three or four orbits to go before I'm blinded out. While I'm a bit below the average chip stack (around 5500), I'm not in trouble yet. I sure played like I was, though.

I'm two off the button, and get dealt TT. The UTG player (with twice the chip stack as me) raises to 625, the next player (with 7500) calls, and I ... push all in. WTF? After 90 minutes of play, I make a donkey move like this?

Both of the other players call, then they push all in on the flop of 839. The turn's a 5, the rivers a J, and the big stack takes it down with 95s. By all rights, the UTG should have taken it with his KK, and I had no business splashing around like that.