Fun Friday in Vegas

Friday. The official midpoint of my four-day sojourn to the desert, and as yet I had basically lost money on everything I had touched over two days in Las Vegas. The WSOP on Wednesday was a total downer as I mentioned earlier, and that buyin barely bought me enough fun to feel like I had even taken a real shot at a bracelet. On Thursday it was the Venetian Deep Stack Extravaganza, and although I played really, really well in that, in the end my lack of playable cards eventually caught up to me as it always does when you've never got anything every single time you ever make a move, and although I got really close to the cash in the end that buyin also did me nothing. I also managed to drop a little bit in those first couple of days at the cash tables in the MGM poker room, and even a touch here and there in the sports book. In all the entire trip had been nothing but a drain on my bankroll for the first couple of days, which had definitely not been in the plans when I drew up how I was hoping the week would go down.

And then came Friday. The Day When the Dam Finally Burst. We had stayed out wayyyy late on Thursday night, and when I woke up on Friday morning I had a big decision to make, as I wrote about here in my last post. Another WSOP $1500 donkament at noon, or another $340 Venetian DSE tournament at the same time? Without exactly realizing it at the time, I ended up choosing option (c) -- head to the Bellagio to do some shopping I had been looking to take care of while in the desert. I took my brother and friends to the Bellagio breakfast buffet -- the MGM's just does not compare, although it's much better than Mandalay Bay's which I ate at on my first morning in town -- and then after some shopping, when they went off to gamble I found myself strangely drawn towards the poker room at Bellagio, the site of my best winning cash session from two years ago the last time I visited this particular casino. It was a little after 10:30am at the time, and I remember thinking I would just sit down and see if I could make something happen in an hour or so, and then I could jump in a quick cab to either Rio or Venetian and play the tournament of my choosing. I got on the 2-5 list and since it was so early, I was able to avoid the one big problem with the Bellagio poker room -- the crowds. I was seated at a new 2-5 cash nl table almost immediately.

Fast forward just 45 minutes, and I was up over $550 just like that. I had the great fortune of being sat at a new cash table that was full of five Scandi friends all of whom bought in for full stacks, and all of whom never saw a preflop raise or a cbet or any kind of a draw whatsoever that they did not love. It was one of the best, most fun, and most importantly, most profitable tables I have ever sat at. No one was taking the game too seriously, and like I said their playing styles were all very overt and thus easy to adjust for. Unlike my earlier two forays into tournament poker at Rio and Venetian this week, it felt like I was dealt a premium hand every 20 or 25 hands or so, and I was able to make pretty much all of them pay off. Within 15 minutes of taking my seat, I was dealt pocket Kings in early position. I raised strongly (4x), knowing I was getting a bunch of callers regardless (three guys and the big blind stayed in), and when the flop came a semi-scary QT4 with two diamonds, I bet out for $75 into the $82 pot based on already having determined that these guys weren't folding any reasonable pair or draw. I got not one but two callers, something as I mentioned that would scare me a little on this board at a normal table. But not at this one. The turn was an offsuit 5, and I led out again, more or less sure that I was ahead, this time for $160 into what was around a $300 pot. I bet a little less than I could have, but again here these guys had already shown themselves to be major chasers and I did not want to lose them with just one card to come and very little chance of surpassing my overpair. Just the late position player called again, swelling the pot to over $600. The river filled with flush with an 8 of diamonds, a card I most decidedly did not love given my view of the player in the hand with me. I hollywooded for a while to try to act strong and discourage a river bluff that I knew I would not want to fold to before I finally lightly tapped the table, and he checked behind. I showed my Kings and he folded. I put him on second pair or a straight draw, and I was up more than $300 just like that.

Maybe 15 minutes later I had my second big hand of the day when I called a preflop raise to $20 from late position into a 5-way pot with 86 of clubs, and the flop came down A75 (again with two diamonds). The original limper bet out $40 into a pot that looked to have more than $100 in it, and when two players called that bet ahead of me, my only decision was whether to raise it up or just to call and hope for the straight. In the end, the flush draw out there is what stopped me from raising, knowing that I only had 6 reliable outs to my straight here instead of the usual 8, so I went for the limp as well. With $260 in the pot, my straight miraculously filled on the turn with an offsuit 9, a hand I knew none of these guys would ever put me on given the action in the hand. The EP guy checked it this time, but then one of the other players in front of me led out for a small $125. Again, normally, in particular in online play, a bet of less than half the pot would be a sign of a strong hand, but in live play when it's very difficult to count exactly how much is in the pot, I see this more regularly and in general against most non-tricky opponents a small bet is more indicative of weakness than strength. In any event I had the nuts, but I thought his bet indicated weakness so I just called behind and prayed for no diamond on the river. We saw the river heads-up with $510 in the pot, and when it brought an offsuit Jack -- making a higher straight possible but not something I viewed as a possibility given the play of this hand -- and when my opponent led out again for a paltry $125 at the river, that was my cue that he in fact had nothing he really liked. I bumped him up to $385 in the hopes he might have made two pairs with a JackAce or something, but after not all that long he laid his hand down, and I was up over a full buyin in my first half an hour at this new 2-5 no-limit table. And, I was having a great time doing it, with all the players at this table kind of laughing it up and just generally not taking things too seriously. And chasing. Oh, the chasedonkery of it all.

Shortly after this hand, I grabbed the cell phone and noticed that it was 11:45am. Time to shit or get off the pot as far as the WSOP and Venetian DSE go. I mulled it over for a few minutes, and eventually I decided I had to do what felt the most right at the time -- I stayed at the Bellagio cash table, in fact right in that very same seat. For over five hours. I won another $380 or so over that time, busting a couple of shorties when I called allins with pocket 9s (was up against 77) and with AQo (was up against 77 again). I lost a few chips when I bet aggressively with some draws, but I also managed to get paid a bit when I bet (once) and even raised the flop (once) on just a draw and got my opponent to fold into a decent pot. I only made one mistake in the session, when shortly before I left in time for Game 4 of the Stanley Cup Finals (more on that later), I called a preflop raise from the blinds with pocket 6s, and then I opted to donk-bet into a guy I had observed to be a fonkey and led out for $45 into a $60 pot on a raggy flop of J54 that I figured he was unlikely to have hit. He smooth called my bet, and I went and talked myself into leading out again on the turn, even though I did not see him calling me on the flop with only overcards. I thought I could get him off whatever hand he was holding, but instead he raised me on the turn and I ended up having to fold in the biggest pot I lost on the session.

Around 4pm local time I cashed in for $1380 or so at the cage and hopped in a cab back to the MGM, where my brother and his wife were staying. Now, I should take some time to describe the levels to which my brother's degeneracy has risen, in terms of what the MGM is willing to offer him. This time around, our sort-of home base for the trip would be my brother's "room" in the very exclusive Skylofts on the top floor of the MGM Grand. And I use the term "room" very loosely, because, when you opened up the door to Skyloft #58 where he and my sister in law were staying, you realized what you were really looking at was not a room in a hotel at all but rather a luxury, ultra-modern 8-room condo-feeling apartment spread over two floors and featuring 30-foot ceilings with floor-to-ceiling windows. There was a full kitchen, a separate dining room area, and a super-modern living room featuring a custom 66-inch flat screen HD tv with an integrated surround sound system, all fully configurable in 500 different ways by the huge master remote on the coffee table that also controls all the lighting in the entire apartment, the automatic blinds on the big windows, and various other amazing features this place had to offer. Upstairs was a separate dressing room, a large bedroom with a low king-sized bed, and an incredible master bathroom with a stand-up steam shower, a tub, and a separate room for the commode. The unit also includes an office, which comes fit with a printer and a laptop with free wifi internet access for your use during your stay.

Oh, and did I mention the butlers? Each Skyloft comes with its own set of personal butlers, who are their to wait on your every beck and call on a moment's notice for the duration of your stay. So, for example, when my brother's allergies were acting up due to something he had come into contact with earlier in the day, he simply picked up the phone and asked for the medicine he wanted, and it was brought right to his door within maybe 10 minutes or so. When one of the many phones in the unit was not working properly, one phone call and within 30 minutes they had an engineer in there to look things over and fix the problem. When my sister in law wanted a strawberry milkshake at 4 in the morning, all we had to do was ask, and within minutes it appeared. Staying in the MGM Skylofts was literally like nothing I have ever experienced before, and it came with a ton of perks that are just hard to beat if you're looking to travel and stay in Las Vegas in style. For example, I know I have mentioned that during past Vegas trips with my brother, we have simply taken limos everywhere, bypassing the main resorts' taxi lines over and over again which can get pretty long during the busy times and on weekend nights, etc. Well, this trip we took that a step further. For the Skyloft residents, not even the regular limousines are enough, so we ended up taking 5 or 6 different trips over the week in a Mercedes Maybach 62, a car I had never even heard of before touching down at McCarron last week. Think of it like a limousine on steroids. It is not as useful as a limo in big groups, but for two or three travelers there is basically no greater luxury on the roads than sitting in your own seat, configurable by you to recline, foot up a footrest, any one of like 35 different options to control your seating arrangement in the vehicle. And there is more room in the back seat than any car you've ever been in in your life, and more features and creature comforts than you could probably imagine. The sunroof opens and closes, and it also can, at the push of a button, convert to either a clear window for the moon roof, or cover over dark entirely, or it can turn itself instantly opaque, staying a shade of white while blocking out the brightest of the sun's rays. There were coolers and heaters for the cup holders, heaters and personal fans for the seats, and satellite tv and radio for each passenger in the car. Oh and by the way, this was not just for rides from the MGM. As a Skyloft resident, we had a card with the Skyloft travel department's phone number on it, and anytime we wanted a ride -- to anywhere, and from anywhere in Las Vegas within a 20-mile or so radius of the Strip -- we just had to call, and there they would show up within 5 or 10 minutes later to take us to our next destination, be it the MGM or otherwise. Tooling around town all weekend in the Maybach was just one of those things that made this week in Las Vegas so special this time around.

OK, so back to Friday afternoon at the Skyloft. I think I mentioned the massive flat-screen HD television in the living room of my brother's apartment. Well, Game 4 of the Stanley Cup Finals was on, and once I decided to bag on playing another tournament at noon on Friday, the plan was hatched instead to cheer on our hometown Flyers to victory in a game that everyone from our group felt very confident the Flyers would win to tie up the series at 2 games apiece. Although obviously the sports book is another solid option to watch a big game at, ultimately we decided that we preferred the privacy of our own room -- in particular when I mention our dinner plans below in a minute -- but there was one big hitch: my brother's tv did not get Versus HD, who was showing the game nationally. As most of you know if you have ever stayed at one of the big resorts in Las Vegas, these places don't get you to come all the way out there and then put lots of great stuff on tv to keep you holed up in your room all day. No, they want you out in their casino, dropping your hard-earned dollars on all the myriad games they offer that are mathematically designed to beat you over time. That's the whole game plan with these resorts, so they don't offer a huge package of satellite tv stations to their people like many of us have in our own personal homes. And the Skyloft residents are no exception -- frankly, it's probably most important with the higher rollers to get them out on the floor and playing their craps or their blackjack or Baccarat, whatever their game of choice is.

So that is where the butlers come in. My brother had called over to them early on Friday morning and asked if there was any way we could get Versus HD on our room's tv. I laughed at him when he asked that, as obviously the feed would not be available on his one individual tv if it was not already included in the package, but he insisted we should ask and try to see what we can find. At first they just reviewed the list of channels available on the standard room package and told us no, unfortunately we would have to visit the sports book to see the game live. But my brother persisted, and eventually got his butler to agree to kick the request up to the head person who administers the Skyloft program for its residents. We went out for breakfast to the Bellagio, where I stayed playing poker for the next several hours, and wouldn't you know it they they called my brother a couple of hours later to inform him that the MGM was able to change the feed his tv receives from the satellite so that we would be able to view Versus HD way up on channel 738. This, mind you, from a tv that wouldn't even allow access to any channels above 36 that very same morning when we had left. So the plan was for us to meet up at 5pm local time in the Skyloft to watch the game in 66 inches of high-def glory, and that meant I had to leave the Bellagio at 4pm in time to place some bets on the Flyers in the MGM sports book downstairs. After a quick review of the options, I wasn't fool enough to take the Flyers to win by two or more goals in a series that had seen every game decided by just one goal to that point. But otherwise I ended up placing $220 to win $200 on the Flyers to score the first goal -- something I figured went part and parcel with them winning the game at home -- and I did not love the 1.5-goal line so instead I bet $360 to win $300 on the Flyers to win the game outright on the money line.

All this timing around the Flyers game worked out very well with our dinner plans for the evening, which was honestly one of the craziest, most luxurious experiences of my life. One of the things that my brother's host had offered early on when discussing him staying in the Skyloft on this trip is that they can offer us any of the food for in-room delivery from any of the restaurants located on the MGM's grounds. Of course this is not part of the hotel's standard room-service fare, but it's a service they apparently offer to those in the Skylofts as one of the many amenities for their high rollers. And I don't just mean, they'll get us the porterhouse from Craft Steak House because it's my brother's favorite dish. No, I mean instead, that morning, the butlers left for us in the Skyloft every menu from every single restaurant in the MGM. Every last one. It was Pearl and Shibuya for Asian food, Diego for Spanish food, Wolfgang Puck and Fiamma for Italian, Nob Hill Tavern for new modern fare, Sea Blue for seafood, Craft Steak for steakhouse fare and Joel Roubuchon if your like fine, French cuisine.

And so the six of us picked what we wanted to eat out of all those menus, left a message from the Bellagio with the Skyloft concierge with exactly what each one of us wanted to eat and drink, and then they brought it to our Skyloft for us to eat during the second intermission of the Flyers game. And I don't just mean that we each got to pick one place to order our whole meal from, or that there were minimums for individual restaurants, or anything of the sort. Nope, instead our total order ended up including food from eight different restaurants, and we each just ordered a la carte whatever wanted to eat from each place. So, for example, my Friday night dinner ended up being some oysters from Sea Blue, a duck fried rice dish as an appetizer from Shibuya, and the crispy chicken milanese from Wolfgang Puck. My brother, for another example, had onion soup from Nob Hill Tavern, lobster fried rice from Pearl, and a rack of lamb that wasn't even on Craft Steak's menu but which we asked the butler to please request if they could make for one of the hotel's Skyloft guests. Throw in some wine from Nob Hill, and a couple pieces of Tiramisu from Wolfgang Puck and something called "monkey bread" from Craft for dessert, and that rounded out what was without a doubt one of the strangest experiences of my life. So, we sat in the lap of luxury watching the Flyers crush the Blackhawks in Game 4 of the Stanley Cup Finals, on a 66-inch badboy flat screen tv that wasn't even supposed to get the channel that was showing the game. During the second period, the butlers came in and set the dining room table in an incredibly fancy spread, and then brought in all of our entrees right on time as the second period was ending, and we sat down to eat a meal that was not even normally available for room service, brought from eight different restaurants on a few hours notice. As I mentioned earlier with riding the Maybach all around town for a few days, it's little touches like this that make staying in Las Vegas with my brother such a special treat that you just really can't expect to find anywhere else.

We loved our dinner, and shortly after we were done, the butlers returned to clear the dining room while we watched the Flyers complete a total ass-whomping of the favored Hawks to tie up the Stanley Cup at two games to two. After the game we headed downstairs and cashed in our checks at the sports book, me with another fresh $880 in my pocket on top of the almost exact same amount I had won earlier in the day at the Bellagio poker room. My brother and our friends had been asking me quite a bit about the World Series of poker, so I offered to take them over to the Rio that night, where they could either gamble in the casino for a while or come with me to the convention area and I could show them the real center of the poker universe for the next six weeks. We headed over to the Rio, and after showing my crowd all around, I saw down to play some more 2-5 cash in the Pavillion while one of our friends joined me a different table, and the rest of our group went to go play some blackjack and roulette in the main casino near the lobby of the Rio.

I played 2-5 cash for probably 2, 2 1/2 hours at the Rio on Friday night, and in that period of time I managed to flop a set and a straight, getting paid nicely on both of them as I let my opponent catch up just a little bit but not enough to put my chances of winning the hands in any serious jeopardy. The flopped set came with a King on the board against a guy who paid me off with KQ on my bets on both the flop and the river, although he did not take the bait and bet out on the turn after I bet and got called on the flop and then I checked the action to him on the turn. Likewise, my flopped straight came with Q8s on a very scary 9TJ board in a 4-way pot that I had to play somewhat slowly for fear of KQ being out there to have me dominated. Still, I bet out and got called for smallish bets on both the flop and the turn, and when the river put an Ace out there I opted to check, fearing the KQ slow-play after four players saw this pot for a raise preflop, and figuring I would call mostly any bet in the hopes that the Ace on the river made somebody two pairs. After about 2 1/2 hours of 2-5 nl cash at the Rio, the clock had already struck midnight and I left along with my friends to head back to the MGM, up another full buyin for more than a $500 profit on the session.

In all, Friday was really the turning point for me on this trip, as mostly everything I touched on Wednesday and Thursday I could not win with, but then on Friday it seemed like I simply could not lose. I had won nearly $1400 at 2-5 no-limit cash -- easily my most profitable day of live casino cash poker ever -- over the span of around 9 hours of play spread across two different casinos, and plus I had won another $560 on the Flyers' thrashing of the Blackhawks in Game 4. So I was up nearly 2 grand overall on the day, more than making up for the $1500 I had so cavalierly plunked down to play the World Series of Poker on my first day in town on Wednesday, as well as the buyin to the Venetian DSE tournament I had played on Thursday. That felt good in and of itself, as did the fact that I had crushed it on the cash tables in a way that I can honestly say I've never done before. I know a lot of it was picking up good cards in good situations, and running just well enough when drawing to straights and flushes, etc., but to tell the truth, it was like I was in the zone or something. When I was drawing, I knew my card was going to come on the turn, and I bet these big hands and draws I was dealt exactly the same as each other so people were constantly pushing in hands where they thought they knew more or less exactly what I had, but then we would get it all in and they were constantly being surprised by what I was holding. It's fun as hell running good and playing great in cash poker, and in this case like I said in a day of fun times playing the game for cash money, to walk away up nearly $1500 or basically three buyins at a level I have not had tremendous success at in the past, it just felt great, and, I felt like it was setting me up nicely to get back into the proper frame of mind for lots more poker action to come on Saturday.

My next post will cover Saturday, my last day in Vegas this time around. Although there would be more sports bets, more travelling to different casinos, and even a visit to a popular Las Vegas store made famous by recent exposure on television, the highlight of the day would once again be poker, where I would not only return to the cash tables to try to keep the winning streak and the confidence alive, but also where I would make another appearance on the poker tournament front.

And little did I know, the winning for this trip was not even halfway done yet.

Dilemma at the River

Well, so much for my plan to evoke historical memories of Las Vegas every week here leading up to my trip back to the desert in early June. Today instead I have a hand post that I wrote most of last week after playing in a home game I have frequented several times before downtown in Manhattan midway through last week. For a change we opted to play straight 1-2 no-limit cash, and there were maybe 7 or 8 of us around the table for most of the night. These were mostly people I have played with before, although in some cases it has been a good long while for some of the individuals. Others I have a very strong read on and have played with enough, and enough recently, that I felt like I would know where I was at with them from the way they played their hands.

Around 90 minutes or so into our game, I was down to about three-quarters of my starting stack of 100 chips, having raised preflop a couple of times but then laid down to preflop reraises or to a raise on the flop. I looked down to find AQs in early position and put in my standard low-limit live poker raise of 4x the big blind to $8. Everyone folded except for the tight player across the table from me on the button, who called my raise. Although I am generally a tight player and had not shown a single poor hand down through this entire session, I know that to this crowd I am known as a hyper aggressive player, so I can't necessarily ever put anybody really on a monster when they call a preflop raise from me, especially in position, but at the same time as I mentioned this guy has been a tight player who likes to hold on to his money in the couple of times I have played with him in the past.

The flop came down AA9 with two hearts, and I figure I have got to be hopelessly ahead here. I figure if I bet this flop and confirm my preflop raise with an Ace, tighty across the way will just fold, so I check. I had not been c-betting hardly at all (hard to c-bet when you see very few flops and don't hit any of them), and the one time I had in the entire session I had folded to a raise, so I figured not c-betting here would not be giving away too much about the nature of my hand at all. My opponent checked behind, and we saw a turn of an offsuit 8. On this street, I figured I had begun the story of me not having an Ace in my hand with my failure to c-bet the flop, so I had already determined that I would check again on the turn, despite the drawish board, to try to stimulate some action from my opponent that I could either just call and risk a scary river, or that I could raise and take down the pot right then and there. Even as the dealer burned and turned the 8 on the turn, I was already loudly announcing my check, deliberately checking basically in the dark as I tried to send the message loud and clear that I was not holding an Ace and did not want to put any more money into this pot. This time my opponent seemed to get the message a little bit, as he bet out $12 into the $19 pot. I considered my options, decided that this guy has played fairly tight, and maybe he has a hand like a medium pocket pair that he assumes his ahead given the two Aces on the flop and my unwillingness to bet on either street so far since the community cards hit the board. I liked the thought of that, and I know I can fold when I think I am beat, so I decided to again tempt fate by just calling. I made sure to delay a bit, such that I am sure basically no one around the table believed I actually held an Ace in my hand.

There was $43 in the pot as the dealer burned and turned the river card, peeling over a black 5, making the final board AA985 with no flush possibility. As I looked up to get a read on my opponent, he was looking at the board and sneering -- literally, sneering, so hard core in fact, that it felt painfully obvious that the guy wanted to be seen doing it. He was acting like he hated that river card more than anything he'd ever seen in his life. Which made me, of course, think he somehow liked it. Still, though, with the way I played my flopped trips this hand so slow heading into this street on the river, I figured the odds were very good that my trips-and-second-kicker was ahead, and that my opponent would call a reasonable bet from me with a worse hand since I had tried so hard to act like I was not holding an Ace. Even though I wanted some value here, I hated the face he had made at the river card -- it was just too, too glaring and overt as I mentioned -- so I literally said out loud to the table as I motioned for some chips, "Well, despite the face you just made at that river, I will lead out for $20." I didn't like the face, but when you play your hand slow you need to "own" that decision for the rest of the hand, and in this case I felt like if I checked and my opponent just checked behind, then I was really not getting value out of the hand the way I had played it. So I led out for $20, right around half the pot.

My opponent took his time, and I became increasingly sure I was ahead since he obviously had to take his time deciding whether or not to call my roughly half-pot bet. After maybe a full minute, replete with more agonized-looking face-twisting, I was shocked to see the guy slide the rest of his chips into the middle and announce he was all in.

Whaaaaa? That face he'd made really did mean strength, didn't it?

My opponent had me covered, so the bet was basically another $40 to me to win $83.

Are you sure enough to call here?

Vegas, Day Two

Had an absolutely atrocious cash game session today, losing a little over $300 at 1-2 at the MGM but having a fun time sitting with Chad, CK and even Blinders for the last few hours. But my cards were so awful, words can barely describe it. Over about 8 hours of cash game play, I received no AA, no KK, one QQ (which lost to CK's K5s), one JJ (which lost to Chad's AQ), and one TT (which lost to KJo). One AK which I won with a reraise before the flop. And I literally did not hit a single flop on the night. I must have seen (or known they were out there) maybe 15 or 20 flopped sets at my table during that time, but I literally -- no exaggeration -- did not flop top pair even a single time over 8 hours of play, let alone a set. Actually, that's not entirely true -- earlier in the afternoon I flopped broadway with JTs on an AKQ board. I bet the flop and got called by a guy who obviously had top pair or two pairs. The turn was a Jack, I bet and got called again, and then the river brought a lovely Ten, putting broadway on the board and giving me the split for my efforts. And sadly, that right there was the literal highlight of my entire 8-hour session -- getting uberfucked and splitting a pot at the river. Fun times.

I don't recall ever having this tremendously bad luck after the flop in addition to perhaps the worst run of starting cards in my entire poker history. Getting so few playable hands over 8 hours, I ended up making some stoopid river calls of medium-sized bets because I simply couldn't bring myself to lay down the three good hands I was dealt all day long. It sucked so hard, right now I'm siting here thinking that I might not even feel like playing in the World Series tomorrow at noon. There's just nothing like 8 hours of horrible cards, horrible luck and horrible decisions to make you question who you even think you are fooling by dropping 15 hundy on a silly little luck-based card game.

Oh and by the way, putting my lesson from last night into practice on the three good hands I was dealt all day (if you can even call TT and JJ "good"), I raised it up to 20 each time after a couple of limpers -- this is ten times the big blind now, mind you -- and still got called by K5s to lose half a buyin with my Queens, and by AQ to lose half a buyin with my Jacks.

So let's review. A solid 8 hours of play, only one true premium hand in pocket Queens (if you can even call that "premium"), which I raised to 10x, got called by K5s and lost to turn and river Kings. Two "semi-premium" hands in JJ and TT, each of which I also lost after raising it up to 10x the big blind, getting called by KJo and AQo and getting outflopped or out-turned in each. I flopped broadway, bet all three streets and ended up playing broadway on the board for the split. Oh, and I also lost half a buyin against a shorty when I called allin with A2 on an A23 board and learned I was up against A3. And I did not flop top pair even one time the entire night long. Fun times, did I mention that already?

Poker can suck it.

Right now, it feels like my odds of actually playing in the WSOP on Saturday are about 30%. I guess we'll have to see if that changes with a few hours of sleep to help erase the memory of today's pokering from my data banks.

First Stacking

Just seven hands in to my first live cash poker in Las Vegas, and I've already been part of a full-buyin stacking.

I bought in for $200 tonight with one pair in a 1-2 game at the MGM, when I picked up pocket Kings just seven hands in to my session. UTG limped for $2, UTG+1 also limped for $2, and I popped it up to $10 from third position with KK. Pissingly, two other idiots called the $10 bet behind me, even with the first two under the gun players still to act, and they of course also called the bet. I knew of course this was a bad situation for my pocket Kings, with four other players calling 5x the big blind to see the flop despite my very reasonable efforts to push them out by bumping it to $10. Obviously it wasn't enough, and I knew I would have to get a very favorable flop or fold to any action.

And that's when the flop came down 332 with two diamonds. I had the King of diamonds, but that has nothing to do with the story and I never considered the backdoor flush draw a factor in the hand. All I knew was, after I had kicked it up to $10 preflop, I'm surely not putting anyone on a 3, but there could easily be one (or more) flush draws out there, a bunch of overcards, and quite likely some middle pairs which are now overpairs to the board. The only hand I was legitimately worried about was pocket Aces, maybe at least partially because I have managed to run Kings into Aces three times in the past few nights already, but really by just limping and calling preflop, no one played their hand like AA since anyone with a brain would do whatever they could to limit the number of players in the pot with a raise in that situation.

Anyways, further complicating matters, the UTG player then led out into me, donk betting me after I had been the preflop raiser, which is almost never a monster since it is so much more obvious to go for the check-raise against the preflop raiser who is pretty sure to c-bet a flop like this. His bet was for just $10 into what was I guess around a $50 pot. UTG+1 just called, and I raised it to $50 with my pocket Kings. The two late position guys folded, and then UTG minraised me to $90. It felt like a punch in the stomach. Now that move realy felt like pocket Aces, a vibe I had already kind of been on even before his action on the flop. My first reaction was to grip my cards almost immediately to chuck them into the muck. But then that little voice started talking.

"You really think that guy limped preflop UTG with Aces? And then you think that, seeing another limper, a 5x raiser, and two callers of that raise, he then decided to just call along with his pocket rockets and knowingly take a 5-way flop for $10 rather than try to thin the field and/or build the pot with the best possible starting hand and a lot of action coming on this flop? You really believe that? Come on....you know he didn't play that hand like pocket Aces before the flop at all. The story he's trying to sell you just doesn't add up."

On and on the voice went, and before I knew it I had convinced myself that just calling the flop and seeing if the turn card changed anything was the right move, he probably didn't have pocket Aces given his preflop action, and I was just seeing things that weren't there because of my recent experiences with running Kings into Aces. So off went another $40 of my now just $100 stack remaining into the middle on my call. The turn card was an offsuit 4, making the board 2334 with still the two diamonds. As I was just processing the hand, the UTG player instantly announced all-in. He had me covered by about $60 or so.

I guess I'm just a sucker for the insta-allin move on the turn. actyper used is successfully against me an the BBT4 Tournament of Champions final table a couple of weeks back, and then tonight when this guy pushed so quick and with so much bravado, I very quickly let that voice again convince me that my one pair was sufficiently ahead of his overall range that I clearly had the roughly 33% equity I needed to call of my last $100 to win $300. I mean, the board is 2334, and he called a 5x raise preflop and donk-bet and minraised me on the flop. No way in hike he has A5 there, right? Donk-betting and minraising that flop with A5? Not a chance. 65, same story. I don't really see him donk-betting and then min-raising me if he has 44 on that flop either, as he would probably want to put in a significant raise to find out where he's at and try to get a higher middle pair to fold. So basically, either this guy has AA, or he has 22 and flopped a set, or I am ahead of every other reasonable hand since no hand with a 3 is worth calling a 5x preflop raise with, other than perhaps 33 which would mean he flopped quads and I'm just not going to spend time considering that.

So I struggled with it, but eventually I don't think I made a good move on the flop because I left myself no choice but to call off my last hundy on the turn when getting 3-to-1 on that pot. I mean, if the flush had completed, or if the only open ender on that flop would have filled with a 6 on the turn, then I would surely get away. But how do I really put my Kings behind his range here, I kept asking myself. And when I couldn't answer it anymore, I just shrugged, slid my chips into the middle and asked him to show me his pocket Aces.

He did in fact not have pocket Aces.

He did, however, show me the J3 of spades. Soooooooted donk FTW!

Although I forked over $200 with just one pair during my first orbit of my first cash session in the process, this hand just reinforced what I already knew in coming to Las Vegas after my last couple of live sessions at the casino -- I am going to make so much money playing poker here this weekend.

Full Tilt Update

As happens regularly from time to time, when I went to fire up my full tilt to play some stud hi-lo with bloggers on Tuesday night, I got the message that a new version of the poker client was available on the full tilt servers. I dutifully clicked over and got the update over with, expecting as usual to not even notice the changes but to be able to play. But for the first time in a long time, two changes jumped out at me, both of which I think are very positive overall, one of which, frankly, things I can't believe I never thought about myself, and the other which everyone has thought of but it looks like a major online poker site has finally executed on.

The first cool change in the new ftp update is that all mtt's now have their break at the same time, at 5 minutes before the hour, every hour. This is starkly different from how full tilt has been for years, which is that every mtt has a break every hour, 60 minutes from the end of the last break. The old system made sense, in that you sat down to a tournament, played 60 minutes, and then got a break every 60 minutes to be able to go to the bathroom, grab a snack, hit some Wii baseball home runs, whatever it is you like to do during your online mtt breaks.

But that was also exactly the problem with the old break system -- for anyone who plays more than one mtt at a time, ever, then you don't typically get that 5-minute break period to do all those breaky things. If I sit down and play the Skillz game at 9:30pm ET, the $14 token frenzy or whatever it's called at 9:45pm ET and the 28k at 10pm ET (which Chad won again the other night btw, for only the sixth time though), then that means I get a 5-minute break in the Skillz at 10:30, but I'm still playing through my other two tournaments at that point. At 10:35 the Skillz resumes, and then at 10:45 comes the break for the token frenzy, which ends at 10:50, and then ten minutes later comes the break for the 28k. So that is three 5-minute breaks in the span of 30 minutes, butfor all practical purposes, I have gotten no real break at all, because there was never even one second where I could actually get up and pee like I've had to for a good 30, 40 minutes now.

Well now, with the new change, this will no longer be an issue. Now all mtts will take their break at 5 minutes before the hour. So on Tuesday, for the first time ever, I was able to take a true break while multi-tabling a turbo FTOPS satellite and the Skills event at the same time, at 10:55pm ET. Good stuff, and a good change. Like I said above, I can't believe nobody has thought of that before now.

The other change I noticed as part of the new full tilt update is that they now offer cash no-limit games with antes for the first time. This one is not particularly relevant to my own online poker experience, in that I haven't focused much on cash games for the past year or two, but still it is surely an improvement to have such games available. For the Real Men out there who recognize full ring cash poker as the slow, boring time-passer that is is, the real action junkies who play shorthanded or even heads-up cash just to avoid the incessant folding that can basically guarantee you a very small but fairly easy-to-scratch-out profit, adding antes to the structure is a very welcome turn of events for sho.

I am so into the idea of online nlh cash play with antes that I've been toying with the notion of starting some formal or informal challenge to get myself back into no-limit cash game play after a long time away. As I think I've mentioned previously, somehow, some way, a switch was flipped a couple of months back, and I just stopped being interested in playing the large multi-table tournaments like I had focused on for the previous year and more. It was definitely nothing specific that happened, not some kind of bad mtt run or something, but if anything I think it was probably health-related in that I contracted a cold or flu virus, and for a few weeks solid I was really unable to maintain my focus anywhere near late enough to make even a mediocre run in an mtt. Honestly I bet if I search my stats I won't see a single true mtt played by me in at least two months. No 50-50, no 32k, no 28k, no 35k, no stars 70k, no UB and no bodog multi table tournaments. It's just something I have gotten away from as I do from time to time, and I'm sure I'll be back in mtt land soon enough. But for right now, playing some nlh cash with antes sounds like it could be right up my alley.

Maybe I can convince some of you diggheads to join me and donate to the cause?

Cash Game Question -- Conclusion and Analysis

Wow! What a set of responses to my actual real life poker question yesterday. Guess maybe I should post a little more about poker, huh? I will see what I can do about that. I am definitely still very interested in the game, and I'm still reading and thinking and playing quite a bit, although the new job combined with the slowing economy definitely has me playing a bit less than I once was. Hopefully both of those factors will start evening out over time, but who knows. In the meantime, I do not think it's a bad thing for me to be writing about topics other than poker, as I do have a lot to say on many other topics, and my readership has surprised me by growing significantly over the past two months since the fall of Lehman Brothers and the historic global stock market crash. And most of all, I find that I have really enjoyed writing about these non-poker topics, which is the best part of all since, as I like to remind everyone from time to time, this is my blog after all. So you can expect more of both in the coming days and weeks as the beat rolls on here at hammerplayer.

OK so back to the hand analysis question I posed yesterday. Now let me begin my saying that like a good little lawyer I chose my words in yesterday's post very deliberately, in that the hand I described did not actually happen to me. But it is a real situation that I read about, and was somewhat shocked at the result. I know last week I had written about the frustrations I was having reading Dan Harrington's Cash Games books, and specifically that I was starting Volume II despite being disappointed in Volume I. Well, the hand from yesterday comes directly out of Harringon Cash Games, Volume II, pages 84-87. I basically reproduced everything more or less directly as described in the book, and posed the question to you all as to how you would handle rivering a set in that hand with a ton of preflop action.

To review, here is a recap of the hand I asked about in yesterday's post:

You're playing in a $5-$10 no-limit holdem ring cash game, with all the stacks fairly large. The game can be classified as a fairly tough game with mostly good players, mostly fairly tight and aggressive types generally typical of a 5-10 game in my experience. UTG+1 limps for $10. UTG+2 also limps for $10. You are UTG+3 with 88, and you opt to raise 5x to $50. The button reraises to $150. The small blind calls the $150 cold. The first two limpers fold to the $150 double-raise. There is $380 in the pot and it is $100 to you to call with your pocket 8s. As the other two players both have larger stacks than yours (all more than 100 big blinds), you opt to call the reraise and do a little set mining.

The flop comes AQ5 rainbow. The big blind checks, you check given the Ace on board, and the button checks as well.

The turn is an offsuit King. Again the big blind checks. You check as well, knowing you must be behind with all that action before the flop. The button checks as well.

On the river falls an 8, giving you the rivered set. Now the big blind bets out for $200 into the $480 pot.

What do you do here?

So that's the question. The many comments to yesterday's post basically went right on along with my own thoughts on the hand. I figured the rivered 8s was probably ahead, but not definitely since the possibility of a set of Queens, Kings or Aces had to be out there given all the action before the flop in this hand. One thing I thought was that there was a significant possibility that one of these players was sitting on AK, and given all the checking-around on both the flop and the turn in this hand, the raggy 8 on the river would have to make that guy with AK believe he was in the lead. Thus, as I read this hand in Harrington's book, I was torn between flat calling the bet, or possibly putting in a small raise which was designed to elicit a call from the likely player with AK. As I mentioned, this is exactly the range of responses I received to yesterday's post. Almost everyone said to call or perhaps minraise, and I think both of those answers have merit. A number of the commenters hit on the fact that the set of 8s could surely be behind a higher set here, since with all that action preflop anyone holding AA, KK or QQ has you beat, so a raise, or at least a significant raise, is not really in order in a cash game context here, in particular with all players involved holding more than 100 big blinds.

You will notice not a single player suggested that the set of 8s fold his hand at the river. A number of people thought the situation does not bode well for the 8s, but the bottom line is that, with both the flop and the turn checking around, you are a donk if you fold your set of 8s in this spot. To say that such a move is exploitable, weak poker is understating things. Again, I'm not saying that you're definitely ahead with the pocket 8s and you should clearly jam here, but for $200 into the $680 pot at this point, it is very difficult to imagine folding given the absolute dearth of action on both the flop and the turn heading into this river bet. If just the flop had been checked but then the turn was bet and called, that changes things significantly as a big flopped set might quite often bet the hand in just this way. But there is a good reason that not a single commenter, nor myself, thinks that folding the hand to this one nearly half-pot river bet is the right move here.

You want to know why I dislike Harrington's books? Remember I was saying last week how annoying it is that he uses examples where he clearly knows the outcome and uses that knowledge in designing the advice he gives on the hands, thereby making his entire array of advice basically useless and worthless for someone trying to pick his brain about cash games? Well, here's Harrington's response on the hand, directly from page 86:

"On the river, you hit your set and the big blind bets. You're getting 3.4-to-1, but it's actually a very tough call. (Give yourself many demerits if you actually thought about raising.) The big blind probably has a set of kings, and there's a decent chance the button has a set of queens. Your set of eights, in this situation is just a hand with some value. The 3.4-to-1 odds look good, but you can't be sure that another raise isn't coming from behind you. At a loose table I would most likely call here, but at this tight, tough table I'd regrettably let this go.

You fold. The button calls. The big blind shows a set of kings and the button mucks his hand."

What a fucking genius!! How oh how did Harrington know that the button had that set of kings? Is he the best hand reader of all time? Oh no, wait. He knew the answer before he wrote his analysis of this hand! This is a perfect example of what I'm talking about with why Harrington's cash books suck so horribly. In a situation where the call -- albeit a crying call -- is more or less mandatory in reality, in a book that is supposed to be helping the readers with their cash play, Harrington uses his foreknowledge of the other players' holdings to make himself look like a fucking genius and therefore give out the clearly wrong advice under the guise of advocating good, tight play. What an ass.

Do not buy Dan Harrington's cash game books!

Thanks to everyone for your thoughtful comments though, that was really fun. I will get some more hands up here shortly for people to chip in with their thoughts.

Cash Game Question

And out of nowhere we're back to a poker question about a cash game hand I recently ran into. I am interested in any of your thoughts on this because there was some disagreement around the table as to the right play to make in this hand. And I will not disclose for now which if any of the players involved was me, because the answer should not be in any way dependent on my level of involvement in the hand but rather purely the poker elements of the situation. I am hopeful that some of our cash game friends can weigh in with what they would do in this spot as I think it an interesting situation that we all have found ourselves in from time to time in some form or another.

OK so you're playing in a $5-$10 no-limit holdem ring cash game, with all the stacks fairly large. The game can be classified as a fairly tough game with mostly good players, mostly fairly tight and aggressive types generally typical of a 5-10 game in my experience. UTG+1 limps for $10. UTG+2 also limps for $10. You are UTG+3 with 88, and you opt to raise 5x to $50. The button reraises to $150. The small blind calls the $150 cold. The first two limpers fold to the $150 double-raise. There is $380 in the pot and it is $100 to you to call with your pocket 8s. As the other two players both have larger stacks than yours (all more than 100 big blinds), you opt to call the reraise and do a little set mining.

The flop comes AQ5 rainbow. The big blind checks, you check given the Ace on board, and the button checks as well.

The turn is an offsuit King. Again the big blind checks. You check as well, knowing you must be behind with all that action before the flop. The button checks as well.

On the river falls an 8, giving you the rivered set. Now the big blind bets out for $200 into the $480 pot.

What do you do here? Personally I believe decent arguments can be made for all kinds of different moves here, but I am interested in what move you support, and at least as importantly, why, and if you think a raise is in order, how much do you think is the right amount to raise, and again why.

Tomorrow I will be back with some analysis and what actually happened in this spot.

Harrington on Cash Games

So I just started reading Harrington on Cash Games, Volume II, after completing the first volume a couple of weeks back by the well-respected author of the tournament book series bearing his name. To be sure, Harrington's tournament books -- in particular the first two volumes and really Volume II, changed tournament poker forever. Harrington was the first to define M in a public setting like his books, and the first to break down tournament decisions into different categories based on your M level. Harrington espoused a new and original approach to playing poker tournaments in his first two tournament books, one which millions of tournament players the world around read and incorporated into their own games. It might not be an exaggeration to credit Dan Harrington as influencing tournament poker from a strategic perspective more than just about any other individual alive over the past several years or so.

However, Harrington's cash game books -- so far, anyways -- suffer from I think some of the same flaws that Volume III in his tournament books series did: lack of originality, lack of strategic consistency, and exceedingly poor choice of examples. In a nutshell, Harrington wrote two incredible books on poker tournament strategy, and then, realizing how much more money he could make (and how much more easily) writing and selling poker books than actually playing poker, Harrington succumbed to the money-grab tendency that is so prevalent in today's society and decided to write a third volume in his tournament series, even though -- trust me on this one -- there wasn't a single shred of original thought in the book. Instead, he just called Volume III "the Workbook" and presented only a number of hand examples to illustrate the points made in his first two seminal tournament books. And now in 2008 he has moved on to books about cash games, which are nowhere near Harrington's bread and butter.

Harrington does not play in the "Big Game" or any of those larger cash games that we all hear of and read about. He's not features on High Stakes Poker or any of the other cash game programs that have been aired over the past few years on tv. And even though Harrington clearly espouses a tighter approach to the game than most people we know -- something which should generally work better in cash games than in tournaments, truth be told -- when has anyone ever mentioned Dan Harrington among the great cash game players out there? It's never happened. Because he's just not that good at cash poker. And Volume II on Cash Games so far belies that fact IMO.

The biggest issue I have with the first volume of Harrington's cash game treatise is that it simply does not get into any level of detail about any single aspect of cash game play. Even though I get a good laugh reading the criticism on the online poker forums about Sklansky and Miller's book on cash no-limit holdem, that book had quite a detailed and involved treatment of many aspects of the game, and was a very enjoyable read as a result. Harrington Volume II, on the other hand, did not. I mean, the best little tidbits you get out of his entire 300-some page text are that the credibility and believability of a player's bet is directly proportional to the number of players in the pot, or that one pair is not the kind of hand generally worth getting all-in with on the flop in anything resembling deep-stack nlh play. Now, while these two points are obviously true, there's just not a whole lot of depth or substance to them. Anybody's who's played even a modicum of nlh cash will surely have figured these two concepts out for him or herself, and since Harrington doesn't go any deeper than just these generalizations, it is difficult to ascribe too much value to Harrington making these points in his books.

The other big problem I have with Volume I on Cash Games is the examples Harrington chooses to illustrate the points he is making. First, he is inconsistent without explanation in some points, a very annoying flaw for the serious reader who is takig pains to absorb all of the author's points from cover to cover in an instructive poker text like this. For example in the hand examples near the end, after taking an entire book explaining the very correct point that one pair, no matter how high, is not worth risking one's entire stack on in deepstack play, Harrington details a hand where he advocates raising allin for a fairly deep stack with KQ in the blinds with just top pair King kicker. He gives some lame excuse for why this is a good move in this spot, but he can't get around one clear fact in this particular hand: it's not a good move. It's a terrible move. And, it goes patently against the advice he himself gives all throughout the rest of the material he chooses to present. That is very annoying to a reader like me, and in fact tends to undermine the entirety of the advice he gives elsewhere in his book.

The other significant problem with Harrington's hand examples in Volume I on Cash Games is a repeat of a huge problem from Volume III on tournament play -- he picks examples and then gives his advice on how to play them, but he does so clearly with foreknowledge of how the hand turns out and what his opponent actually has. I mean, it is painful to sit and read this stuff and to be completely clueless how he could really say he is getting a certain read just from someone's preflop play, and then lo and behold at the end of the hand, the guy flips up his cards and Wow wouldya look at that, Harrington was right all along. Quite ghey, really. So, for example, in one of the hands Harrington presents, a player he describes as "aggressive" will reraise on a KQ4 flop with two spades after three players saw the flop for a single raise. Harrington will then advocate calling with you AQ, because it is clear that the aggressive player is on a drawing hand. Huh?! And while you're sitting there trying to figure out why the hike Harrington would ever draw such a conclusion, on the river you check it down and lookie there, the guy shows JT for the missed straight draw and you take down a nice pot, all thanks to Harrington's great analysis. All when in reality, you clearly should have folded on the flop in real life, with a bettor and a raiser ahead of your action in a raised pot, and with you holding just second pair top kicker. I mean, some of the stuff Harrington says in these examples in unthinkable, and when he miraculously turns out to be right again and again and again you start to wonder why the hell you're even readin all this stuff to begin with.

All that being said, I am starting Volume II on Cash Games this week, and I'm doing so mostly out of respect for the man who changed tournament poker forever. And more than that, even though Volume I on Cash Games frustrated me almost as much as Volume III on tournaments did, I do enjoy more than anything else Harrington's down-to-earth writing style, and I love his format of hand examples where the reader immediately gets to apply what Harrington is writing about. For me those example are pure fun, and it's a big part of why I continue to read his books. So I will report here once I have finished Volume II with my thoughts. I am desperately hoping that my view of these books will improve as I read Volume II, but I would suggest that there has got to be a reason why everyone and their mother has read, talks about and in fact swears by Harrington on Hold'em Tournaments, but nobody -- and I mean nobody at all -- ever even mentions Harrington's cash game books.

Has anybody else out there read Harrington's cash games books?

Another Fun Night, and the Bracelet Races are Back!

Thursday was an interesting day for me poker-wise. As you know if you read here with any regularity, my Thursday nights basically consist of anticipating Lost, watching Lost and then thinking about Lost. I am completely mesmerized by that show and although it is once again seemingly changing the entire direction of the show this year, they are once again pulling it off well. Anyways, so the plan as on most Lost Thursdays, is that I simply do not log on to the pc until 10pm ET or so after we catch up on the DVR at the end by starting it at 9:20 and then skipping through all the commercials.

This week I opted to do something just slightly different from that. Figuring that the buyin is a mere $11 in the face of a nice heater I am on here, and given that it is the BBT and all with the Tournament of Champions seat up for grabs, and since after all the Riverchasers is the tournament that I dominate above all others, I decided to play in the RC but adopt an unusual strategy. Since as I mentioned Hammer Wife and I don't usually start Lost up until around 20 past the hour on the DVR, I figured I would play a few hands of the RC when it starts, and just make sure that I either double up or bust out when it's time to watch Lost. If I doubled, then I could sit out the rest of the hour for Lost and then jump back in for Hour 2 in not too bad of shape. It's not the first time I've done this, and it has actually worked for me a few times over the past couple of years. This week, it did not. I ended up eating a late dinner with Hammer Wife and didn't even sit down to the Riverchasers until about 9:15pm ET. I maybe played 3 or 4 hands, just waiting for any two high cards to push with in the 5 minutes I knew I had to play, and ended up reraising allin preflop with A4o. Big Slick made the easy call and IGH. Them's the breaks, I knew what I was doing, and I noticed that the guy I donked my stack to did not end up winning the tournament despite briefly having the chip lead when down to two tables remaining.

And before I forget, congratulations so swimmom95 who took down this week's Riverchasers and the latest BBT3 Tournament of Champions seat. When I shut it down with around two tables remaining, Lucko was getting into position with a top-5 stack and I thought for sure he would be a force at the end, but of course no one is a match for swimmom in these things. So far the ToC is shaping up to have all kinds of different playing styles. Good times.

So I started my Thursday poker later than usual due to Lost, and, not feeling up to another late-night marathon mtt session, I ended up running a bunch of sitngos. Those $55 and $110 turbos that I've been loving for a while. My recent mtt success has made it very easy for me to focus primarily on the $110 level turbo sngs without fear of significantly depleting my roll, and I have to say so far I am definitely winning at this level. Most of the players simply do not understand strong turbo sng play, period. So I ran a bunch of sitngos, starting with a 6-max $55 turbo sng where the top two players win roughly $250 and $150 respectively. So we're down to three-handed and it was a pretty tight race between the three of us, making for some fun bubble play. I must have allin raised with ATC four times in a row from my small blind against the big bling, and after the fourth or fifth time he types in this:



"Next time you do that I am calling and taking you out."

Why? Why would you ever say this? I mean, does anything show total and complete tilt and just throwing up your hands and giving up than telling someone you will autocall them the next time they push on you? It's highlarious, and to a guy like me it makes my entire night better to even see him feeling and speaking this way. I love it. So I fugged with the guy back n forth for another minute or two in the chatbox, and on the very next small blind to me, I pick up this hand:



So of course I instapush again and type him some chat designed to belittle him further. And the pussy folds, even after proclaiming he would call and eliminate me the very next time I did this. I let him have it good. And then to make matters worse, on my very next small blind I pick up this hand:



I taunted him appropriately again in the chat before I pushed in here, and he instacalled me with?



Booom! Taunting and then getting the cards to back it up is one of the best feelings in poker. Especially when you're sitting at a table full of puds. Four hands later, I won the sng and the $217 or whatever it is. Later I would win a $110 9-person turbo sng outright for $495, I would fail to cash in two other sngs at the $55 and $110 level, and then I ended the night by defeating a guy in a $110 hu plo turbo sng. Good times, and total profit on the night from sngs: $478. I'll take it.

At some point near the end of the night, I even sat down at my old stomping grounds, the 2-4 6max nlh tables on full tilt for a little cash nlh action. First time I've played online cash nlh other than with bloggers since I rediscovered sitngos maybe 4 or 5 months ago. It was fun to crack back out the cash skillz for the first time in a long time, and I played one hand in particular that I would love your thoughts on.

So middle position at our 6-person 2-4 table limps in for $4. It folds back to me in the small blind, where I have KQo. I limp for the half-bet, and the big blind checks his option to bring us a 3-way flop. I checked, figuring someone else would be out and I could raise and take it down here or figure out if I am somehow beat. The big blind bets out $12, the size of the pot, and then the middle postion limper minraises him up to $24:



What do you do here?

I opted to smooth call. I reasoned I'm only beat by one or two specific hands, neither one of which is indicated by the 3-way limped pot preflop, but I was a little spooked by the bet, the raise and then the overcall behind my call on the flop.

Then the turn card came a harmless-looking 7:



Now how do you play it?

As you can see, I checked again. I just think given that I had already checked the first time around, it only made sense to check again here to not one but two players who had made aggressive moves on the flop. And here is what the big blind did:



Now what? Am I assuming I am ahead and just pushing here? Or do I know I will empty out on the river so maybe add a little deception by just check-calling here? Should I be worrying about being beaten? What's the best move, cash gamers?

I will post the results of this cash game hand later after some people have provided their comments.

Anyways, overall it was another good day on the poker front. I ended up a few hundy after all was said and done, and I had a really fun time doing it as well. I just keep trying to appreciate this good streak while it lasts. I mean even cash was fun for me, which is not something I would have said by the end of last year.

Oh one other thing, something that I consider to be Big News: the Bracelet Races are back on full tilt! That's right, the first Bracelet Races ran on Thursday afternoon, with already three winners of the 2k WSOP preliminary event prize packages. Although as I have mentioned previously the suspense is gone this year in that I easily have the roll to fund a trip to play a preliminary event or two in this year's WSOP, I still do plan to try to win as many of the Bracelet Races as I can. The first accessible tournament for me is a $216 buyin Bracelet Race that takes place Friday night at 9pm ET, same time as le donkament. I have won a $216 Bracelet Race satellite in each of the past two years, and generally speaking the larger-buyin BR sats are a great tournament structure for me, personally. So I'm looking forward to that, and I encourage each and every one of you to try to get yourself into as many of the Bracelet Race tournaments as you can play. If you love poker like I do, then once you've played at the actual World Series of Poker in the Rio you will never want to miss it again.

Have a great weekend everybody. Lost kicked ass again, did it not?

I Guess We Know Somebody Reads My Blog....

and that somebody is pushmonkey72. That is basically the only explanation I can come up with for my most untimely elimination on the first hand back from the break in this week's Mookie tournament. I was somewhere around 2300 chips to start the second hour, and the action folded around to pushmonkey in the small blind, who raised it up from the 120-chip big blind to 360 chips in what I perceived to be a pretty sure steal attempt. I looked down to find A6o. So, rather than beat around the bush given my read on push's play, I figured maybe he'll call me with less than my A6o and I just moved allin for my last 2300 or so in chips. Push's response?

Insta-call.

I mean this was probably the quickest of all the instacalls I have seen coming my way over the past several blonkaments. It was as close to beating me into the pot as can happen on full tilt. I knew I had to have been duped as he made the insta-call. It happens sometimes, I know it does, because people have me pegged as an aggressive move-maker with shitty cards, so every now and then when the perfect scenario arises like a blind vs. blind battle where the other guy actually has a big hand, I will often get slow-played or check-raised because people think they can catch me trying to make a move. And this had to be what had happened here. How else do you instacall an allin reraise from me for about 7 times the original bet, representing just about all of pushmonkey's stack of chips. Right? I mean, if he had sat there and thought about it for a bit, and eventually decided to begrudgingly call, then I'm thinking my A6o could be good. He could have K9s. He could have A3s. Any hand like that might agonize but then eventually make the donkey-call. But when push instacalled, I knew I was beat and probably dominated. Oh well.

Let me ask you this: what's the worst possible hand pushmonkey could be instacalling me with here? Keep in mind, my allin reraise 7 times larger than his open raise had been, and would require push to get basically all of his own chips into the pot in order to call me. And again keep in mind that he absolutely insta-called. So what's the worst possible hand he could instacall there with? Think about your answer, then look below.












T9. Offsooot. That's right guys, it's a ten-high, unsooooted hand. Good old T9o, that preflop allin showdown powerhouse. 6 on the flop helps me a tiny bit, but then Ten on the turn does me in and IGH in 70-something place out of 107 runners in the Mook. "Nice call" is all I had time to type into the chat as soon as I saw what pushmonkey was holding. Because no matter how that hand had turned out, I wanted to make sure that push knew what a wonderful, strategic and +EV call that was for him to make. T9o is what you always want to call an allin with preflop with plenty of chips and against a very large allin reraise before the flop, even against an ATC guy. Riiiiiiiiight.

Let's assume pushmonkey thought I was completely full of shit. Of course, that is itself a foolish thought to have in this spot with me moving allin like that in such a large overbet, but let's just say for the sake of argument that pushmonkey thinks I am literally pushing with any two cards (ATC) here. So then he calls me instantly with T9o? I have news for ya: T9o is still clearly below an average hand in holdem. T9o doesn't beat any hand with a Jack, Queen, King or Ace in it, or any pocket pair when run at them heads-up over all five cards like calling my preflop allin reraise would guarantee him. I mean, this hand wasn't even sooooted so I can't even dismiss push as just a sooooted donk. So instead I got to sit and watch him bust maybe 20 minutes later in like 60-somethingth place. Quelle surprise.

But you do know one thing: Pushmonkey72 reads my blog. He must. That is the only even semi-plausible explanation for making that specific call at that particular time. Insta call, that is. Push must know how any tard insta-calling me with shit -- the more garbagey the instacalling hand, the better in fact -- over the past few weeks of blonkaments is sucking out against me. He must have literally taken comfort in knowing that, with such a horrible hand to even consider calling an allin preflop reraise with still enough chips to do plenty of damage, his chances of sucking out were exceedingly high. Why this has been happening to me so consistently during the BBTwo tournaments is beyond me, but if you phucking idiots don't stop picking me as your "horseys" and your "Pick 5" or whatever you want to call it, then you are just not living in the real world. And you're throwing your money away. Picking me to win a Mookie tournament makes you especially assy btw. How ridiculous. I'm to the point now where I'm a fucking circus freak show. I'm purposely getting insta-called allin by any fucking shit that any donkey can throw at me, because people know their garbage is going to suck out on me and they want to see me write about it.

Mission accomplished. Again.

Unfortunately, the tournament suckout streak that started for me on Tuesday and bled right into the Mookie on Wednesday also extended to FTOPS #1 on Wednesday, which was the $216 buyin nlh 6-max tournament to start off FTOPS VI. It was an auspicious beginning for me, as I sat down to a starting table with five other players at it, two of which were well-known professional poker players. To my immediate right was Matt Matros, with full tilt handle "jacksup", whose book I recently completed and who played a fairly solid game throughout the time I was at his table, which was every hand I played in the event. Also with me for just about every hand I played was full tilt pro GregFBTMueller, who I have to say played atrociously and donked his way up and down every window on the computer again and again and again in this thing, eventually donking his way to an over 10k stack by the time my run ended. But the best part about having these two pros at my table was that I completely smushed both of them. Again and again and again. Of course there was the one hand where Matros called my preflop raise with his short stack, we saw a heads-up flop of 864 when I held A8s, and he overbet allin on the flop. Naturally I called with my top pair against his short stack, and he flipped up the very pokerstarsian 75o for the flopped nuts. Unreal. But otherwise, I think I won 12 pots from Mueller and something like 17 from Matros. As I told KOD in the chat, those two clowns should be having nightmares about me after what I did to the two of them basically from start to finish. 6-max is without a doubt my favorite game, and one of my best, and I took it to these players and everyone else who sat at my table all throughout the tournament.

Unfortunately, the big recockuflop with the nut straight to Matros and one other big suckout just as the Mookie started at 10pm ET kept me from getting my 3000-chip starting stack above I think 4500 or so through most of the first two hours of the tournament. I probably lost about 5000 chips on just those two suckouts, and that right there is the profit that should have been in my stack heading into the second break, by which time I had already outlasted all the other bloggers I know were in this event.

Still, I was right around that 4500 chip level just a few minutes before the second break -- at the time I was around 1100th place out of around 1600 players remaining from the 3600+ who started at 9pm ET -- when I open-raised from the button for the umpteenth time, this time holding KJs. Some donk in the blinds calls my raise, and you can just tell he has put me on another steal. This is one of the great things that happens from playing hyper aggressive poker like I love to do in 6-max play -- you get action with your stronger hands because people think you're always in there with garbage (see the pushmonkey hand above for another nice example of this). Anyways so the flop comes down King-rag-rag, giving me top pair good kicker for a blind vs blind confrontation. I know the guy thinks I'm stealing, so when he checks to me, I bet out around the size of the pot, simply knowing he was going to call me given the fairly raggy board and his deep conviction that I didn't have shiat. Then the turn comes down and it's another total rag, but one which also gives me two hearts on the board for a flush draw. This time I do my "go-and-stop" move, where I bet the flop in an apparent c-bet but where I actually have a strong hand, get called, and then I deliberately check the turn to pretend like I was just stealing all along. This "go and stop" works best when you're playing heads-up OOP against a guy who you know already does not trust you for whatever reason. When I check the turn against a guy like this, it's like giving a cat some catnip -- they just can't fucking stay away. Figuring out what is in my opponent's head and then devising just the strategy designed to exploit that particular player's weakness or mindset is what playing good instinctual poker is all about, and this move was one for the ages no doubt.

So my opponent took the bait of my turn check, and simply could not stay away. He bet out the size of the then large pot. I deliberately paused for a short time, maybe a few seconds, and then pushed allin with a reraise with my top pair Jack kicker (plus K-high flush draw) on this Kxxx board. His turn bet had been about 1k into a pot of about 1k, and my turn raise was allin for another 3000 or so I think. My opponent calls after maybe three seconds, and tables his KTo on the K high board. And there you have it -- my subterfuge once again successful, as was my overall large tournament strategy of waiting as far into the hand as possible to make my move, thereby decreasing the chances of some crazy suckout with 5 or even two cards still to come. In this case, I got KT to call my KJ on a K high board where I also had a flush draw, and I didn't get all the money into the middle until after the freaking turn card! I mean just think how much better that is that I got to keep most of my chips until after the turn card when there was just one card left to come, rather than getting him allin preflop with his KT vs. my KJ, giving him five chances to spike a Ten. Instead in this case, he had just one chance left to eliminate me, and just two outs to do it.

The 19-to-1 river card? Ten. Not of hearts, which would have made me a flush. Apparently even two outs once is not too small for me to dodge. Two frucking outs, which I had the discipline and the skill to wait until after the turn card to get the money in for. How much better can I play that hand? So instead of a huge double-up and a jump into the top few hundred chip stacks, IGH in 1600-somethingth place. That was as rough a beat as you're going to see in one of these things, and a bitter ending to start my FTOPS run after totally kicking ass and winning nearly 5 grand during FTOPS V back in August. Dam that one still stings the next morning, what can I say. And now I don't want to talk about it anymore.

So moving then back to yesterday's river-decision hands, for starters of course let me say thanks to all the commenters, who gave I thought very well-reasoned and sensible arguments for their positions. I will start off by saying that I purposely chose these three hands to profile about playing at the river because, to be honest, I was dubious with how I played each of them myself. At least one of the hands I thought I definitely screwed up, and I might have with the others as well as far as not making as much money, or not losing as little money, as I could with them. So these comments and thoughts are very valuable to me, and hopefully to you all as well.

So, starting with Hand #1 from Wednesday's post, this is the one where I called a preflop raise with presto, checked on the 992 flop and my preflop raising opponent checked behind. Then I bet $20 into the $32 pot when the turn card made the board 9922 and I held the pocket 5s, which my opponent smooth called. Then the river brought us this situation:



and I asked how you would play this here. Bet or check? If you bet, how much?

My favorite comment and the one that is most in-line with my own thinking on this point came from cmitch, an awesome cash player in his own right and someone who really understands the 2-4 6max games that I play, where he said: "If you check, you are basically telling him that you are giving up on the hand and have to fold to most bets and he could be betting with an Ace." That's the long and short of it right there. I felt I had to bet here. The bottom line is, this guy has played this hand like he has two good high cards (AQ, AJ maybe, etc.) right from the very beginning. Surely it could also be another middle pocket pair, probably higher than mine, but that's the chance you take when you play a game like this, especially 6max which tends to be significantly more active and move-makey than the full ring poker tables. If I check, he is likely to bet with an Ace, and I am likely to give serious thought to folding. Instead, I prefer to make fold equity work for me instead of against me, and I also want to give him the chance to call me with his Ace-high hand. Odds are much greater than he will call with an Ace than that he would ever bet out with an Ace. My best chance to profit here is to bet out -- not too big, because my hand could be beaten in a lot of different ways here by a preflop raiser -- but enough so that he will fold, and yet little enough that he will maybe call with an Ace high hand. And I'm basically going to fold to any normal-sized raise; that's just the way it is, and I definitely have the discipline to do that.

So I opted to go for this bet:



And he folded:



I'm still trying to figure out if this is a good outcome or not. I guess I'll go with yes, since I won a nice sized pot with a pretty shitty hand and without knowing exactly where I was at against a preflop raiser all along. But did I bet a little too much here? Should I have bet a little less in the hopes that he calls with an Ace high? It seems like mostly everyone who suggested betting out suggested half the pot or even a little less. I guess if my only objective were to get the Ace-high hand to call, then that is clearly the better move. But to be clear, in this case my roughly 2/3 of the pot bet is being done for a slightly different reason as well, which is the very significant purpose of camouflaging my river bets with strong hands as well. I don't want to be stuck betting 1/3 of the pot with the nuts at the river, so I don't want to be the guy who bets 1/3 the pot when I want a call but am not confident about my hand, and 2/3 the pot when I know I am good. That would make me very easy to read and very easy to play. Balancing the types of hands I will bet 2/3 of the pot with is of the utmost importance to me over any session or sessions in which I play, so I let that consideration push me towards my more normal 2/3 pot bet in this case even though I would have loved the Ace-high call here. To tell the truth, I'm still struggling with that question now.

On to Hand #2, this was the hand where I called in super-cheap to see a 4-way flop with my K3o, and the flop came down 6K3 rainbow. I bet out on the flop, got called by just one player in middle position, and then I once again did my "go and stop" move, checking the turn when an offsuit Queen hit the board, and my opponent followed my lead by betting out $20 into the $38 pot. In retrospect I probably should have raised him here, but this guy had been an active raiser and reraiser -- remember there are a lot of move-makers at this level and game -- and I did not want to face a large reraise with just top and bottom pair, which I knew was going to put me in jeopardy of losing a large pot because I definitely have to be tempted to call there. Having no clue what he might have held preflop due to the limpage, I just didn't feel comfortable with that possibility, and I guess the chance that he could have held KQ also entered into my mind. In the end, I made what was probably a mistake and just smooth called, opting to see what the river brought before I committed any more chips. I wish I had played this differently, but it is what it is and I eventually eventually saw a raggy, offsuit 4 hit the river for a final board of 6K3Q4, and me holding K3o. With $77 then in the pot, I asked whether you guys advocate trying to check this hand down, or rather betting out, and if so, how much.

In this spot, a lot of players I respect the games of commented that they would check-call here. My issue with that play is that, although I definitely have my doubts as to whether or not I'm beat here, I think I could easily be up against another King, and I want to get paid by that guy. Unless it's AK or something, I do not think one pair is likely to bet out against me on the river, although my turn check-call might help induce some action. But here for me it really comes down to something that Alan said in the comments: "I don't want to miss out on any money where he might call with one pair but also just check behind you." Exactly. One pair is not too likely to bet here, and I want to make sure I make something at the river here against one pair or a lower two pair. So I wanted to bet. With $77 already in the pot, though, something about this hand had my spidey senses tingling a little bit, and with just top and 5th pair on the board, I again did not want to face calling a larger raise than necessary, or risk being called by something like top and 3rd pair and losing a larger than necessary pot, so I don't quite agree with the 80% of the pot recommendations that a few of the commenters made. I opted to go with some of the later commenters' recommendations, reasoning that a bet of just more than half the pot is large enough to get some good value, and yet not so large that I will be really pissed if I get called and lose, or worst of all if I have to fold to a big reraise. So I ended up betting $41 into the $77 pot, just more than half the pot which is about as low as I will ever bet in this situation -- like Lucko said in the comments yesterday, I am fine with blocking bets in theory, but in practice more often than not when someone tries a blocking bet on me, I bluff raise them and they fold. I don't find blocking bets useful for my own style of play, so a little over half the pot is as low as you're ever going to see me go in a situation like this.

My opponent considered briefly and then called my $41 bet at the river, and I won a $159 pot. If you're interested, here is what he actually had:



Sucks. I'm sure I could have gotten more out of him than just $41. He wasn't going to call an allin overbet with his TPTK here (I don't think), but surely I could have probably even pushed this as high as the size of the pot and he would have called it. But given his range, and the incredibly pussified way he played his TPTK hand, I still am unsure whether the slightly smaller or slightly larger bet size is the best move here.

In Hand #3 yesterday, I called a preflop raise out of the big blind with 3 players and my JTs to see a flop of KQT, giving me bottom pair on a scary board and also an oesd. The flop was checked around. The turn brough an Ace, making two spades on the board and also giving me the nut straight. I bet out $35 into the $59 pot on the turn, thinking that the Ace clearly was a great card for me in that in must have hit someone else's hand, and with all those high cards I could easily be up against two pairs or a set or something in a hand with a preflop raiser and two callers of the preflop raise. Just one player called that $34 turn bet, and the river brought a raggy offsuit 5 for this situation:



Here is again where I asked what you would do here, with me holding the stone nuts. All but one of the commenters suggested betting out here, and not hoping for this guy to bet at me so I could checkraise him allin. I agree 100% with that approach, but once again I was not sure about the proper amount to bet. In the end I decided to go with the full pot bet:



my opponent folded, and I won a nice pot of $127. But I think I probably bet too much here, and it seems mostly all the commenters agree. In retrospect, I think the key point is that with 4 to the straight very overtly showing on the board, I should have known I would get a fold from anyone not holding a Jack when I bet $124 into the $127 pot at the river. If I could do it again, I would definitely bet less. Maybe around half the pot, or more likely, for the same balancing reasons I discussed above, I would probably have dropped in about 2/3 of the size of the pot, maybe in the $80 range. If he folds to that then so be it, but if I can get an additional $80 in there with the nuts, and at the same time protect all my other 2/3 pot bets at the river when I do not hold the nuts, I wish I had done it that way. Bad play by me, but lesson learned. Next time, I get paid at the river with the nuts. I just wish I knew what this guy had in his hand in the end.

OK that's all for this topic for today, though I have lots more hands saved up just like this for future discussion. Don't forget, tonight at 9pm ET is the latest Riverchasers tournament on full tilt hosted by Al (password is "riverchasers"), and it is also FTOPS #2 at 9pm ET, tonight being the $322 buyin razz tournament. I know at least myself, KOD and jeciimd have satellited into this thing, so you can look for us tonight during the Riverchasers to see how we're holding up. But I suggest you do it early, because I know I speak for at least myself when I point out how completely maddening playing razz tends to make me. I don't know that I have ever played it at the $300 buyin level before in a tournament, but I already know that the calldonkeys will still be out in force, chasing their stoopid two-brick hands on 5th street and similar moves, and invariably they will cocksuck out on me and take me down early and often. Ah well, it's nice to have something to look forward to tonight, isn't it?

Playing the Later Streets in NL Cash Games

I don't know if I'm supposed to be pissed off or happy about my Tuesday night poker action overall. I played a few FTOPS satellite tournaments -- one for the Main Event, one for FTOPS #8 the 1k buyin nlh tournament, and I think even an sng satellite for the PLO8 tournament coming up the middle of next week. I also played my first-ever knockout tournament on full tilt, in addition to the reguloar 9:45pm ET token frenzy, the 15.5k and the $10 rebuy tournament at 10:30pm ET. So there was a whole lot of tournament action going on in the Hammer household on Tuesday, and you know what? I think I got sucked out on and eliminated from every single one of them. There might have been one tournament where I actually got in behind on a setup instead of a suckout, but otherwise it was get the donk allin with his pocket Kings against my flopped two pair, and then he rivers a King. Or get him allin preflop and dominated, and he four-flushes me at the river. Shit like that. Again and again and again, all night long. I was in first place at the final table of two different FTOPS satellites on the night, and got sucked out repeatedly in both of them to fail to win my seat in each case, only moneying in one of those sats overall by the time the night was done. I got sucked out so hard in the $10 rebuy that I only rebought once and then said F this after my third or fourth beatdown with superior cards, and I think I was the very first person out of the token frenzy when some idiot called my allin on the flop with just middle pair and then proceeded to hit his kicker on the turn to knock me out quick. It sucked. Hard.

While all this was going on, however, I was also playing at the 2-4 6max cash tables, and over there I was on fire. I won a ton of pots, mostly all of them without seeing a showdown, and I controlled the pot sizes on the pots I was involved in such that I wasn't putting money in on longshots really at all over several hours of multi-table play. I won a buyin here, a buyin there, lost a buyin here, then won half a buyin a couple of places. In the end I was up nearly 3 buyins after probably 5 hours total of play, and my game is feeling confident after a bout of variance that had left me buying in short at some tables to help make my decisions a little easier and hopefully help my opponents to play a little less smart against me.

So should I be pissed off about 7 suckout eliminations in one night from poker tournament? Or should I be happy to have made several hundy overall on the night on what was one of my most consistently strong performances at the cash tables in a while? I guess in the end the money talks and I feel happy about the night overall. But I won't lie -- I did kill several pets before hitting the sack overall, one after the other after the other when these jidiots kept donkey calling and then getting rewarded in basically every tournament I played in. Not the way I wanted to head into FTOPS #1 which goes off tonight at 9pm ET on full tilt, at least not from an mtt perspective.

Anyways, today I wanted to talk a little bit about playing the turn and river in no-limit cash games. I've been focusing a lot on this thought as I've been playing more and more cash games over the past few weeks and really for the majority of this year after focusing primarily on large tournaments in the couple of previous years as an online poker player. Of course, turn and river play is really the big difference between typical mtt play and typical cash game play, in that in the tournaments there is simply not much opportunity or incentive for players to be faced with the deep thought required when weighing your options of whether to call half your stack, raise the rest allin or fold on the river at a cash table for what represents to the player a significant amount of cold, hard cash as opposed to just a maximum loss of the player's tournament buyin. Specifically, I tend to focus more on decisions (i.e., do I call, raise or fold) on the turn, and more on the amounts involved in those decisions when it comes to the river (i.e., how much do I bet to make this guy call or fold, etc.). So here are some examples from recent cash hands I have played, and I'd like to get the readers' input as to how you would play some specific cash hands at the river. Then we can discuss the results and what actually happened in the hands in question. As usual, the following hands all occurred at 6max 2-4 nlh tables over the past month or two on full tilt poker.

1. Hand #1: In the first hand today, I had called a pot-sized raise before the flop from the small blind with pocket 5s -- pretty much an automatic call for set-mining purposes alone -- and saw a heads-up flop with the middle position open-raiser of 299 rainbow. I checked, not knowing if my 5s were good or not, and my opponent, who had raised it up preflop and who I knew to be solid, checked behind as well. So already I'm thinking this guy might have been raising with just two high cards. He could easily have been popping it preflop with something like a JackAce or KQ or something -- moves that are fairly automatic in 6max play at this level -- and then checked the raggy flop on the thought I might have called from the blinds with a small pair of some kind. So when the turn card came out another 2 for a board of 2992, I did not want to check it to him again after he showed the weakness of raising preflop but then checking behind on the flop. So I bet out $22 into the $30 pot, hoping for two high cards to fold, and expecting that I would be laying down quick to any raise. Instead, my solid opponent just smooth called that bet, making $76 in the pot heading into a river card.

The river came a raggy offsuit 6, making the final board thus:



Question 1: What do you do here? Do you check with the intent of folding to any substantial bet? Or are you checking with the intent of calling any reasonably sized bet? Or do you bet out, and if so, how much? And why?

2. Hand #2: In this hand, I was again seated in the small blind, and this time the big blind and two other early position players had limped in, so I of auto-called for just $2 more into a $14 pot with K3o. The hand is shit of course, but for $2 into a 4-way pot, no way I'm going to miss out on potentially hitting the board big and getting paid off with something. And the flop comes down K63 rainbow, giving me top and bottom pair, and in the small blind I was first to act with $15.20 in the pot at the time. Now those of you who read here frequently know that I love to slow-play top two pairs in holdem, but otherwise I prefer generally speaking to push a bit with other two pairs because they are vulnerable to annoying beats on the later streets if you dish out the free cards like they're going out of style. So I followed my own advice with my top and bottom pairs here and bet out:



My bet got just one caller, from the player on the right side, the second limper into this pot preflop. So we saw the turn card, a Queen, heads up for a board of 6K3Q with no real flush draw to be concerned with. Here is where I did one of my favorite moves when I hold a hand I suspect to be best: the old bet-the-flop-then-check-the-turn, to try to induce action from a guy who I can hopefully make believe I was just trying to steal the pot on the flop with a contiuation-type of bet. So I checked, and my opponent took the bait by betting $20 into the $38 pot. Again I opted to just smooth call this bet -- often times I like to checkraise here, but this guy I had on having hit some part of the board decently hard, so I figured I could get more from him on the river if need be by continuing to play weak here:



With $77 now in the pot, the river then came a perfectly raggy 4 of diamonds, for a final board of 6K3Q4 with no flush possibility. I've got K3o for top and 5th pair on the board, and my opponent called my flop bet, and bet out after I checked on the turn.

Question #2: What do you guys do here now? Again, are you betting out here, intending to call a raise or fold to a raise? How much are you betting? Or, do you check here, with the intent of calling or folding to a reasonably-sized bet?

3. Hand #3: In this hand, which actually occured just minutes after Hand #2 above, this time I am seated in the big blind with JTs, one of my favorite hands to play. UTG raised the $4 big blind up to $20, and UTG+1 called the raise ahead of me. I also called, loving putting in $20 with this ultimate big pair-cracking hand and probably the best of the soooted connectors to play due to the numerous straight and flush possibilities, plus two possible high card winners if the right board hits. The flop came down TKQ rainbow, giving me bottom pair plus an open ended straight draw. Now, back in the day this was the kind of hand I would end up losing a lot of money with due to the oesd, but nowadays I tend to see these sorts of hands for what they are -- really just an oesd, that should be played accordingly. With a preflop raiser and another player calling that preflop raise, my pair of Tens is basically worth zippo on a scary, high-card and straightening board like this, and even the oesd is at risk to other high cards surely being played by others who are raising preflop. So I checked as first to act on the TKQ flop, and the action checked around through all three players.

The turn card brought the Ace of spades, making two spades on the board but otherwise giving me the nut broadway straight with my Jack. Here, with $59 in the pot, I opted to bet out $34, hopefully dragging someone in with two pairs who might be willing to call a less than full-pot-sized bet:



The player who first called the preflop raise was the only guy who called my $34 bet on that turn card, giving us a heads-up look at the totally raggy 5 of diamonds on the river. There was now $127 in the pot, and I had the stone nuts with my Jack:



Question 3: What do I do here? Do I bet out with the nuts, and if so, how much do you recommend betting? Or would you check here and hope for some action from the player to your left, so that you can pop him big and hopefully win a larger pot on the river?

Let me know your answers to these three questions in the comments, and then later in the week we can discuss the results and the thinking that goes in to these questions at the river in nl cash games.

Don't forget, tonight is a big night for a guy like me. Of course there is the Mookie tonight at 10pm ET on full tilt (password as always is "vegas1"), where the winner will receive the 9th of 27 seats to the BBTwo Aussie Millions Tournament of Champions, and where I will obviously be with bells on. Gotta be on time for my weekly analraping, right? But in addition to the Mook, tonight is also the start of FTOPS VI, with FTOPS #1 -- $216 buyin 6-max nlh -- going off at 9pm ET on full tilt. I know KOD is in this one along with me, and I'm sure a few other bloggers will be making a run as well. So come cheer us on if you're around, or at least once you're logged on for the Mookie tonight at 10, where hopefully I'll still be alive an hour in to the biggest tournament I've played in since the last FTOPS on full tilt.