Ups and Downs.. a few days of poker

Posted by poker kat

April 1, 2008

I’ve been playing live poker a lot lately- which is great. Of course, this is coming with some ups and downs. I played a NLHE 1/2 game on Wednesday and posted about my success. I went back to Commerce again on Friday and had another winning session. Friday night was filled with a lot of calling stations and players there “just for fun!”. I hit a lot of flops early on and was up $100 after the first hour. It was easy extracting the most amount from the weak players at the table (ah, I’m missing that hour of play)… Here’s an example of a hand from that night where I felt I dodged a huge bullet…

I’m in MP and look down at AK off. I make it $8. The lady next to me, who was fun and not very experienced but hey, it’s Friday.. let’s play some cards… she calls. It folds around to the BB who makes it $20. The BB is an experienced regular who had a bad session downstairs at the 2/5 game so he came up to play aggressive in our game to win back his money. The lady says “Hey, why so much?” He says, “I have to protect my hand”. I actually put him on KK here, believe it or not, and decide to fold. That may seem weird and against my read on him but something tells me stay out of this pot. The lady calls. She’s down about $120 so far for the night and I can tell she wants to get lucky and win a big pot. The flop brings A-9-3 rainbow. I’m sort-of kicking myself for not being part of this pot…. but the BB bets out $20. I look at the lady and her legs are bouncing all around- she’s super excited. She goes all-in for a total of $50. The BB stands up frustrated and over-it-all… He says “I gotta call ya here”. The lady shows A-9 and the BB shows A-K. He never catches up and she rakes in a huge pot. He says, “This is why I don’t play Friday/Saturday”. He’s extremely on tilt and frustrated and decides to go all-in blind every hand thereafter until his last $28 or so is gone.. it takes about 3 hands. I don’t know which is more annoying.. the A-9 call or the tilt that was the result. Either way, I left that night with my $120 profit for the night.

Unfortunately, on Saturday I was planning to meet up with Bellatrix at the Commerce but I couldn’t make it that night..

Sunday, though, I decided to take some of my bankroll to the Bike to play in their daily 7pm $50+10 tournament. Now, I like tournaments.. but this.. hmm.. So the total entrants were 145. It seemed like the field would never wear down. Our table wasn’t losing people so the chips weren’t coming to our table which worked against us… Let me just say this though.. Now, I’ve played tournaments like this in a lot of different places around the country.. well, AC, Vegas, Foxwoods, FL.. These people at my table were so incredibly annoying. I think Bella experienced some of this at her table too on Saturday from her post.. Bad players talking strategy.. so painful.. plus, the annoying lady next to me smelled like vasaline and had a really loud and annoying voice in my ear. I’ve always found playing weirdly relaxing.. but I was actually getting angry at these people. It was strange. Anyway, so the guy to my right thought he was amazing.. so amazing that he tried to put me on a hand every time (which he was wrong.. he’d pick the obvious stereotype for a woman player).. either way it worked to my advantage. I read the table well.. The problem came when the antes started to increase and I was moved to a table where the big stack literally went all-in every hand to get the short stacks shorter or all-in.. I hung on for as long as I could but after 4 hours I was out in 20th … 2 before the money. If I made it to 18th I would have cashed for $75.. a whopping $15 profit.. after 4 hours… So yes, it would have been great to run well and make it to the final table and cash for a couple hundred.. or the whole $2900 for 1st.. but the risk/reward wasn’t worth it. I could have made more in the cash game. I was averaging $28/hr in my last 2 sessions and building a bankroll- for a change.

So that brings me to today.. oh, btw, I quit my job on Friday. I hated it and decided to freelance rather than work full time. This will also give me better hours to play poker. So I headed back to Commerce to play this afternoon.. When I arrived I walked up to put my name on the short list of players for the 1/2 game. A seat opened up at a table where players had HUGE stacks.. One guy had $1900 in play and another about $1200. I decided to pass on this table and wait.. I sat shortly after at a table with decent and fun players.. the players were fairly straight forward but I couldn’t catch a break. I kept getting shut out with the second best hand. I was hungry and over the bad run so I left down $80. Unfortunately, I could have timed it a little better.. I got stuck in rush hour traffic and a 20 min ride home took me 90 minutes.

Tomorrow I’ll need to stay home and work and… umm.. watch american idol (shh don’t tell anyone). However, I’ll be back out on Wednesday to play again.

If you made it through the whole post.. thanks for reading.. if us skimmed and only saw american idol.. damn you. haha

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