Set on a Flush Board

Last night, I decided to make the 45 minute drive over to Tunica and play for a few hours. (I really need to remember to take some photos for the blog, it makes it much more interesting than just a wall of text. My friend Mojo does this very well for his blog posts! You'd think I would remember since I am a freelance photographer and all..sheesh!)

Anyway, I arrive at Harrah's and am sent to a new 1/3 table they are opening. One of the guys who bought in for the max, $500, is antsy to play, so we start 4 handed with 1 blind. Since I hadn't played in over a month, I was planning to 'acclimate' a minute; sit back, watch and fold for awhile first. Nope, since it was 4 handed, I had to jump right in. Fine.

I played badly in the beginning, it was awful. I called bets when I knew I was behind, barreled bluffs in bad spots when I knew they wouldn't fold etc. What are you doing?! Snap out of it!, I thought to myself. Play well or just leave! 

After the talking to I gave myself, things turned around and I won back my losses and ended with a nice profit for the night. Plus my image was not completely ruined, because the table had filled and it was like a new table after that. As you know, image is really important at the tables! Mine sucked at first lol.

I had one interesting hand I'll share. We were 9 handed and I had just got back to a little over my starting stack due to my my Aces holding up against 2 players. My image was back to good/winning by this time. I opened 10h-10d UTG to $11 and got 2 callers, the blinds folded. Effective stack $220 (mine), they cover.

The flop was: 8c 4s 6c

I c-bet for about half pot; $16. First guy folds, other guy calls. This guy will call anything preflop (he's the one who bought in for the max so he could play lots of hands), he likes to see flops, but he doesn't continue without a piece. So now I'm thinking he's probably on the flush draw and I should've bet more...

The turn is the 10c

Yay and boo at the same time! It's never easy is it??

So if he was on the flush draw, thar she blows. Fantastic. I can't check, because it has been my experience as a female player (this does not seem to apply for men at all), that when I check for pot control, they will bomb it every time. This comes in handy when I'm slow playing the nuts, but it never works when I'm trying to keep the pot small. So, I've had to get used to the bet/fold approach to avoid getting bluffed off of my hands. Since he's got about $600 behind, I know he will fire a big bet if I check, so I barrel again for $25. It's a decent sized bet, but small enough that I can fold if I get raised and not be too sad.

He just calls...

Really? Just call? Ok. I am fairly confident he would've raised with a flush there. Now, I have a glimmer of hope he doesn't have the flush, so what does he have? Big pairs would've 3 bet pre to take the lead. 2 pair hands don't make sense. 5-7 is unlikely and would've raised the flop with the flush draw out there. 9-7 doubtful. Hmmm...

River: Jd

At this point, I'm thinking I may have the best hand, but I'm still pretty concerned about the flush, likely a small flush, but again I can't check or I'll have to face a large river bet when my hand is basically a bluff catcher. I bet really small; $35 and hated it inside, fully expecting a raise.

He snap just called and said, "I gotta set. " and flipped 6-6.

"Me too." :)

Thank you, Mr. Passive Man! Thank you for not raising the flop, turn or river with your flopped set! Because, I could've been raised off of that hand soooo easily. He realized it, too, after he saw my hand. I heard him comment to his neighbor about it while shaking his head.

So even though I didn't get max value from a set over set hand, it was a decent pot. One that I was not expecting to win..and that makes it even better. :)

Can't Fold This - Remix

Srsly Sirius did a remix of the Mimi Luu hand from yesterday. It's so good haha! Had to share. :)


 

Nitroll at SHRPO

Saw this vid on twitter today. Bluff magazine caught this hand between Mimi Luu and Tony Sinishtaj in the Seminole Hard Rock Poker Open main event last night. I don't really know what to say except "wow". It's embarrassing for female players IMO. Mimi has KK vs Tony's QQ. He moves in preflop and as she states (repeatedly) in the video, she doesn't know what to do. Yikes. The guy handled it well, though. On a side note, he's still in it with about 75 players left. Mimi is out.

WPBT 10th Anniversary Winter Classic Dates Set

The 10th annual installment of the WPBT winter gathering will take place Dec 6-8. The Aria Poker Room staff are excited to have us back! The Tournament will be $125 and will follow the regular Aria daily tournament structure. -CK

Wow! 10 years of poker blogger get togethers in Vegas. While I have yet to make it to one of these, for the last 7 years (yes, 7!), I've eagerly looked forward to reading the trip reports and seeing the pics after. It always looked like such a great time! Will I get to attend this year? I'm going to throw out a very slim 'maybe'. When you have 5 children, December is a pretty expensive month! Trips with just the husband and I are few and far between during the year and pretty much non-existent around Christmas. It would be cool though and who knows, maybe I can be a fish on a heater between now and then, haha!

So, are you going???

Interesting 2+2 PG&C Thread

If you read 2+2, you've probably seen the Poker Goals and Challenges section on the forums. There's a ton of threads by players trying to reach their goals, get better and move up in stakes or just beat their current stakes. Some titles are pretty funny, I remember seeing Moving Out of My Mom's Basement (part 2)..I guess part 1 was a failed attempt lol. But some are serious and actually very good. One that I've been following is from a guy who plays at Winstar in Oklahoma. He quit his job that he hated in February to take a 1 month shot at grinding live poker for a living. Well it's August and he is still going strong, crushing it actually, at about $70/hr over 850 hours in 2/5 NL.

He did get a backer within a few weeks to take some of the pressure off his bankroll and moved up from 1/2, which he really wasn't doing that well in, to 2/5 and it took off from there. He posts hand histories, lots of chip porn pics and some life pics, which makes for a pretty interesting blog. I've enjoyed reading about his progress so thought I'd share it here. Here's the link to the thread if you'd like to check it out, too. It's pretty inspiring if you've ever thought about doing the same.

Crush Live Poker?

Well, my injured hand is coming along. I'm able to use it again. It still looks awful, but I keep it bandaged, hoping it heals completely in a couple more weeks..it was a really bad cut! But I can type again, so here I am. :)

So, I'm thinking about a subscription to Bart Hanson's Crush Live Poker, which is video training for live cash games. I've listened to Bart's podcasts before and also enjoy his commentary on Live at the Bike, I know he seems to be respected in the poker community, but I can't find any reviews of his Seat Open Poker or CLP training anywhere. I'd like to read an unbiased review or 2 before I subscribe, but apparently I'll just have to do it and make my own review about it. 

I follow him on twitter and he does make me think from time to time. This is one I saved on my phone that I re-read often as a reminder. 

This one was so true for me, because as you may remember from my ridiculous cash game fold with KK, I can make big folds! That is not always a good thing. lol And when an observant opponent sees that you can make big folds, they then know that you will fold pretty much anything and they will try to exploit that, so sometimes you just have to call to counter it and bluff catch more often if you think they are trying to test you. That situation came up in my last cash game. He knew I could fold, so he tried to bet me out with air. I thought it over and called with a very weak hand, because his line just didn't make much sense. My hand was good and he (as well as the rest of the table) then realized he/they couldn't bluff me as easily as they thought. Thanks to the above tweet.

I hope the CLP videos will get me thinking more at the table and hopefully improve my results. If you subscribe to CLP or the Seat Open podcasts, please leave a comment and share your thoughts, good or bad! 

Player Down

Had a dog walking accident on Friday. The neighbors dog was in our backyard and my dog, who was on a leash, didn't want her in our yard barking at us..long story short because it's hard to type with one hand..I was trying to hold my dog back so she wouldn't attack the neighbor's dog and ended up being pulled thru the gravel by my dog. Cuts, scrapes, swollen knees and having my hand glued together was the result. Painful. I can finally walk a little bit today. I'll be back to blogging again when my hand is more useful. We've asked them numerous times to keep their dog out of our backyard..If that should happen again, I will let go of the leash for sure. If their dog gets eaten by ours, oh well. We warned them. Back soon.