Having a fun year of teh pokerz, and once again feel my game is growing leaps and bounds.
Last Sunday for my birthday weekend I treated myself to the nooner at the Bike, a $40 2K guarantee that typically doubles that number.
I love these "small" events at the Bike, a great turbo structure and a $40 price point - plus a lot of very soft players. I had a great first two hours, basically running over the table and getting paid when I hit. By the second break I had over 20K up from my 5K starting stack.
Then the blinds escalated and two tough players sat down to my left. I started to bleed a bit as I went completely card dead. Not a big deal, but I found it hard to accumulate with two seasoned, sticky and tricky players to my immediate left. Then this hand happened.
I've got about 40 bigs. I'm in the big blind with Q9o. UTG (clearly someone who fancies himself a poker wizard) min raises. The button calls and so does the small so I come along hoping to flop 2 pair or better.
The board is 479 rainbow - a big reason why hands like Q9 suck ass. I check and it is checked around. A Jack peels off on the turn. I check and the wizard bets incredibly small, maybe a quarter of the pot. The button and SB fold, I flat. The river is an 8, which is a terrible card for me if wizard barrels. I check and indeed he does fire, only this time a big, nearly pot sized bet.
I take a moment to reflect and cut out my calling chips. The rest of my stack is still viable - so there's that. Then I think, if I were he - what would I be doing with a ten in my hand. Betting for value no doubt - but perhaps not so large against a decent player, which is how I would have pegged myself by now. If I had wanted to get him off a hand like middle pair however, I very well might bet a painful amount. Other, shittier players, typically over value bet the river if they have a monster - I've learned the hard way that these fish are never bluffing.
Better players, like this wizard and myself will occasionally over bet the river against good players - to make it seem bluffy, but more often than not the trend is to give the right price for a call and get good value. Better players also though, will absolutely bomb the river big time against a fish - I often use a massive over bet on the river with a big hand against weaker players who see me as a lunatic and are dying to snap me off with top pair or worse.
Nope, my mind was made up. If I were in this guys shoes, I would have put me on top or middle pair and the 8 was a perfect card to bluff at with a big painful bet.
I shrugged and threw the chips in. And waited.
"I just have a 7" he said sheepishly showing A7s. I flipped up my cards and dragged the pot.
Felt pretty good about that one - I had for once taken my time and really dissected the play. That I was able to do it by getting into another players head and imagine it from his perspective, is a new development in my game that I think has been a long time coming. This game is all about the player - and very much less so about the cards.
About an hour later I was still bleeding slowly. The UTG wizard had been deflated by my pwnage and had been inactive, and eventually he was moved to another table. The second sticky tricky who was now directly to my left had been more difficult to handle.
Three times already he had floated my cutoff raises and taken the pots away from me by three betting the flop or jamming the turn. I was primed to stack off to him - and that's exactly what happened.
KJ suited was what I chose to take a stand with, raising 2.5x from the hijack - he again floated and the flop came out QJ8. I c-bet, with a pre-planned intention of calling off to any of his nonsense. He eyeballed my stack. A three bet for him didn't make any sense, so he of course jammed on me. I pondered briefly - I did have a back door flush draw and of course could also catch running cards for a straight. I called off, he had me well covered.
Yep, he had flopped the nuts with 910o. It would have been easy to put him on a draw as there were two hearts on the board, but honestly I didn't even think that much about that. I simply had had enough of his aggression and chose to make my stand with second pair and very little equity.
A big mistake, no doubt. I had about 25 bigs at the time, and if I was going to play KJs from the hijack (7 handed) I needed to min raise and then c-bet fold the flop if I only got a piece. Or check fold if I blanked. There is even a decent argument for mucking KJs in the first place - especially with big stack sticky on my immediate left.
Oh well.
Overall I still feel really good about my play on Sunday - and felt even better after last night watching one of the best live tournament players in the world, JC Tran, make a call for half of his stack with A7o pre-flop against the nittiest player at the table. Truly horrific - but understandable being that JC had been card dead for over 5 hours and was in a pressure cooker event in front of millions of people.
Nice to know that stone cold killers like Tran are human too.
Looking forward very much to my home game this Saturday - I took second last month and would've had first locked up if not for a nightmare beat from a player that called off to stack off with bottom pair against my TP good kicker and turned her 2 outer.
I've also got the LA Poker Open at Commerce coming up - I hope I get a chance to plunk down $150 for their 200K guarantee the following weekend.
