Strategy Switch

30 SEP 05

Once again, poker confounds me. Playing NLHE ring game (.25/.50 – 9 handed), I get pocket AA twice in one loop. There are several limpers in front. I bump it to $5 – far too high for this game, but I figure to get at least one caller. I get two.

Flop is Q high. I push. Without hesitation, he calls. Q on the river.

Again, I get AA and this time only bump it to $2. Two callers. Flop is J high with 2 hearts. I bet $4 – more than half the pot. He reraises the minimum, and I push (which overbets the pot) to price him out of the flush draw. He flops over Kh 5h and sucks out the heart on the river.

I tell these two bad beats only to illustrate the following hand: KK UTG. I bump to $1.50. MP calls. The button bumps to $5. I bump to $8.50 to try and get MP to fold. No such luck. He calls and button puts us both all in. We both call. MP has QJ (!), and of course, the button has AA.

K on the river, and the suckout comes my way!! I tripled up and left the room.

Bottom line: AA sucks (right, Jarel?)

Some more good fortune in the two table $15 + 1:

Buy-In: $15.00/$1.00 - 18 playersTotal Prize Pool: $270.00
Tournament started - 2005/09/29 - 23:50:15 (ET)
You finished the tournament in 1st place.
A $108.00 award has been credited to your Real Money account.

Buy-In: $15.00/$1.00 - 18 playersTotal Prize Pool: $270.00
Tournament started - 2005/09/28 - 20:36:04 (ET)
You finished the tournament in 1st place.
A $108.00 award has been credited to your Real Money account.

Buy-In: $15.00/$1.00 - 18 playersTotal Prize Pool: $270.00
Tournament started - 2005/09/26 - 19:48:47 (ET)
You finished the tournament in 2nd place.
A $81.00 award has been credited to your Real Money account.

And I even tried a LIMIT tournament. It was nice to cash since my wife is such a better limit player than I am:

PokerStars Tournament #12956623, Limit Hold'emBuy-In: $10.00/$1.00
243 playersTotal Prize Pool: $6160.00
Tournament started - 2005/09/26 - 00:30:00 (ET)
You finished the tournament in 20th place.
A $43.12 award has been credited to your Real Money account.
You earned 70.09 tournament leader points in this tournament.

I also pulled the laptop in front of the tube to play one of the big games ($11 + 1 with re-buys. There were about 1400 players with a top prize of about $14,000). Bottom line, don’t play while watching final table madness. I finished 250th.

New site to plug: Clarified. She’s not sure if it’s spelled Clareified or Clarified, but it’s always great writing. Laugh out loud stuff.

Final thought: It is a terrible thing to see and have no vision. - Helen Keller