Excited About Poker, and Playing Against a Maniac

Well, it's another Monday, which means another week at the grind for most of us, as well as another day spent analyzing fixed NFL games, redonkulous fantasy football losses, and, of course, preparing to be donked at Mondays at the Hoy on full tilt:



See you there at 10pm ET Monday evening, under the "Private" tab under "Tournaments" on full tilt. Password as always is "hammer". We've been having some fun lately all trying to stop RaisingCayne's Reign of Terror over the Hoy, and tonight will be the latest opportunity for you all out there to stop by and take a chance at getting your name and blog mentioned right here by ousting Cayne from tonight's event before he makes it 7 final tables in 8 MATH appearances. That is a sick, sick run, so hopefully you'll be there tonight to experience it for yourself. There's four of us now all in the $1100 club for the MATH in 2007, and the next one of the top four to cash in the tournament should have a good hold on the moneyboard lead as the third quarter of the year comes to a close.

This weekend was my first productive one in some time in the world of online poker. I barely played if at all during the first part of the weekend, but on Saturday late night, after another marathon session of Wii Tennis with my brother in law, I ended up playing of all things cash games and really getting in some great poker. I played smart, tight but aggressive poker, didn't donk around for a change and really made some awesome reads. I saved up a ton of hands just from that session so over the coming weeks you may get to see some of those, including one I will post about later today. But I ended up making over 3 buyins at 2-4 over maybe a couple hours of play, and had a blast doing it. More than that, like I said I played really well, avoided any major mistakes, and barely put any money into pots that I didn't end up winning which is always a good thing. But most of all, I really feel like I got my poker playing back on the right track. It was so great, in fact, that I am actually really excited about playing again tonight, and that's the first time I can say that in some time. For whatever reason my Saturday late night session left me feeling like my game is sharp, refined and ready to take on all comers, and I even followed this up with this minor win on Sunday, which if nothing else is good for symbolic reasons in that this is what I was winning a couple of months back when I was running so well:



Booom. Back to five $75 tokens in the account, just waiting to be donked with. I keep meaning to play those $75 buyin mtt satellites to the Monday 1k guaranteed, but basically that means I have to be starting an mtt at 11:30pm ET on a Sunday night which is not normally what I'm looking to do with my weekday evenings. Maybe I'll start trolling for sng satellites at the Tier II token buyin to this tournament, which is something I haven't thought of before. But otherwise, I generally like to use these badboys on mtt satellites rather than the 24k or 18k or whatever, because those guaranteed tournaments seem to be at off-times for me as a rule. That 24k is at I think 8pm ET, which is generally before I tend to get online these days, and the 18k that I know Smokkee and Iak used to love so much goes off at mignight ET, which is again a bit outside of my wheelhouse, time-wise. Anyways, all this is a roundabout way of saying that I might, just might, be coming out of my recent funk thanks to a great session of solid play this Saturday plus a nice mtt satellite win to start off the new week on Sunday. And that's actually what gets me excited right now. Well, that, and this. I can't do the YouTube embedding thing thanks to my dorkwork, but if you want to see a thorough domination rolled into about 2 minutes of football highlights, then look no further.

Anyways, after having so much fun reviewing that 3-suited flop hand last week, today I wanted to post another hand I played recently and get some thoughts and reaction to that situation. Unlike last week's hand analysis, this week we're going to jump to the cash tables, specifically to the 6-max no-limit holdem tables with blinds of $2 and $4 that I love to play at. This week's hand is actually a specific situation where I had been playing well at this table for a while, and after recently busting a short stack and creating an empty seat, a new player sat down two seats to my right. This guy's name was "sobersucks", and it was late night, and I am convinced in this case that the name was a good indication of the actual mental state of the player behind the cute little green turtle icon in the corner of my screen.

He had played maybe 5 hands by the time this particular hand I want to discuss came up. On the very first hand when he sat down, he had bet allin on the flop in a tremendous overbet of probably ten times the current pot and took it down without resistance. Two hands later he was in again, this time with a large preflop raise of against more than ten times the current bet after three players had limped in ahead of him to try to see a flop for cheap. On the very next hand (mind you, just the 4th hand since he sat down, giving all this action), sobersucks check-raised me out of a pot I was trying to buy on the turn, and since I had nothing more than middle pair and his raise was again oversized compared to the action to that point, I had to lay it down. So, I had formulated a read on this guy already, which was basically that he was utterly full of shit -- no one could normally expect to have that many good cards and hit that many flops so hard so early on in any session -- and was probably either hammered or just bad (or both) and fully expected to lose his entire stack quickly and efficiently. And I wanted to do whatever I had to do to get in there with him, especially since he had shown such a penchant for bets and especially for over-raises both pre- and post-flop.

So that's where I was at when the following hand came up, again the very next hand in sequence after those described above, and in total the fifth hand since this crazy aggro player had sat down at the table with me. Again, remember the blinds here are 2-4, and the target is seated two seats to my right, which in this case is the small blind since I am acting UTG. I look down to find AQo utg.

How do you play this hand? AQ is normally a very strong hand at shorthanded nlh. Normal raise like always? Bigger or smaller than usual? What do you like to do in this spot, with at least one player in the blinds who is just itching to get all his chips in with what I have to assume is a wide range of hands?

For me, I opted to just limp. I figured, best case scenario, sobersucks in the small blind has a smaller Ace, and by limping here up front, that gives me the best chance of getting him to see this flop, or hopefully to raise again preflop with shit, and that my utg limp should give off an impression of weakness that I would hope to take advantage of from him later in the hand. Honestly, this was the first playable hand I'd seen since sobersucks sat down to the table, and I wanted to do whatever I could to try to get into a pot and see a flop with him, and then outplay him later or hopefully get this donk to move it all in on me with an inferior hand. I just can't stand it when a blatant donk sits down at the table and then is relieved of his chips without me getting a good piece. And to be clear, limping utg with AQ I think in general is -EV poker, but I did this particularly because I had identified a major leak at the table and wanted to do what I could to exploit it. If I raise here, the donk in the small blind will likely fold his shit hands. But if I just limp, and especially if a few other guys limp behind me, then the donk won't be able to stop himself from getting in there:



So, the action then gets around to the button, who bumps the preflop stakes up to $22 to see a flop. Donkeyboy then in the small blind smooth calls another $18, and the action is back to me:



What do you like to do here? Who's folding? Who's calling? And who's raising, and if so, how much do you raise? And why?

Phillies playoff chances meter: 5%

See you tonight for Mondays at the Hoy on full tilt!