A good day

I finally got to play again today even if it was only for a short while. I was playing 2 tables, 2/4 on PokerStars and .5/1 on TGC for the OIC. Speaking of which, what is with the enormous waits for 3/6 on Stars lately? There are easily 20 people waiting yet no one will start a new table. Very annoying. Anyway, the line for 2/4 was much smaller so I jumped on one of those tables. I think I only played like 100 hands on each site. Both went well though. At the Stars table, I was +20 BB. Both great cards and good play. I was making great reads on weak plays and punishing it. We had a couple No-fold-em-until-the-river-fold-em players. Needless to say these were very profitable. At one point I get dealt the hammer in the CO and it folds around to me. I popped it up and continued to bet it through the river when the BB finally folded. I had been getting a lot of respect for my raises before this (mostly due to the great cards I was getting early on) so I showed him the 72. He was not pleased and went on a tirade about how I could bet so much with absolutely nothing. Fun to watch. On the TGC table, I had more modest gains of 10 BB. Nothing interesting there though. Since its .5/1, I really have to play my best. We had like 5 players to the SD at one point. Anyway, being patient helped that out a lot. I think the 2 tabling prevent bad play due to boredom. This has been a real issue for me in the past. Maybe I should do this more. The OIC is a good opportunity to do it since its so little money right now.

After Day 2:
$57.25 (+10.25)
Level: .5/1
107th after Day 1

This weekend I will be off for an early Thanksgiving dinner and some early season skiing so probably no poker until the home game Sunday. Finally, ski season has arrived! Hopefully, there is some decent snow. Thanks for stopping by.

Home Games and OIC

The past two weeks have not been very good in terms of time for me. Work has been brutal and a few other complications have left me too tired for anything but collapsing into bed. Such is the nature of my job. It gets very cyclical.

Last week my home game switched it up a bit and we played a couple of NL tourneys. To be honest I don't remember much of what happened since I didn't write anything down. We played with slowly increasing blinds but there was still a good bit of action. Both tournaments were winner take all. I took down the first tournament and took a second place in the second tournament. The tournaments further exemplified how little I know about NL. It's not when to bet, raise, call, or fold but rather how much to do it. I am conditioned to a limit frame of mind. Throughout the night I was betting in certain standard raise amounts based on the blinds but not so much on pot size. All in all it seemed to work since all of us were in that frame of reference.

This week we also played a couple of tournaments. The first was a 6-person NLHE with the same blind structure as the previous week. This one lasted much longer though it had some interesting hands. Early in the tournament I had JJ in EP. I raised the flop moderately. I think there was 1 caller. Flop came J high and I decide to slow play the set. I call his raise only to see a beautiful J on the turn. I check again and this time he pops a larger bet trying to steal it. I again call. On the river, I checked again (I was pretty sure he would try another steal or maybe he had something) and then raised. After a lot of thought, he called and that was that. Late in the tournament (down to three) I tried to steal the blinds putting the shorter stack all in. After much thought, he made a great call with A2 against my suited rags. I didn't hit the flush and so I doubled him up. Stupid move. This extended his life for quite a bit though he eventually busted out in third. I went on through a very short heads up to win the tournament with an all in call with Q7 and a flop of 766. I didn't think he had a 6 as he had raised preflop so I figured it a pot steal. Turned out he had JJ but the turn brought a Q to save the day. Later we played a speed tourney with blinds doubling every 10 minutes. I remember a lot less from that as it was late and things were going fast. I did battle back from near extinction and ended up second against a huge chip lead. Overall a good night for me.

In online news, I signed up for the OIC. Thanks to Chris for mentioning it. I think it will be a fun time though hardly profitable. I started tonight. Got some pretty horrible cards from the first hour and then a bad suckout when my nut flush lost to a miracle boat. Oh well, that's .50/1 for you. So after 2.5 hours, I down 3 BB.

After Day 1:
$47 (-$3)
Level: .5/1

Thanks for stopping by. I hope to post some more stuff in the coming weeks as work will be a lot quieter.