I like weekends
I took another short day at work tonight, so I decided to try and make good use of my time playing poker. Nothing really Earth-shattering went on at this session, so there's not a lot to go over lesson-wise. There was a waiting list when I first got to the casino, but after only a few minutes they opened up a new 1/2 NLHE table, so I plopped down and started my night.

I've decided I much prefer opening a table to joining a table already in progress. When a new table opens, with the buy-in cap, I'm never facing a big stack right off the bat. Not only that, but with all the people that buy in short, sometimes I am the big stack. ;) Also everyone is more or less new to each other, so that gives me license to open up a bit more and play a little more fast and loose than I do by default.

This I did for the first little while at tonight's session. It actually went pretty well; I was buying pots here and there, and I ran myself up about $100. Then I got a string of good hands. AA, I raised pre-flop from EP and got no callers. Then KK in late position. A middle position player opened for $12 (standard raise), one caller, then I pop it to $50. Everybody folds. Then I get QQ. A different middle position player opens for $12, it folds to me, I make it $35, others fold, opener calls. I take it down on the K-high flop with a bet. Those three hands happened in fairly rapid succession, so I realized that even playing fast and loose wasn't apparently gaining me any extra action, so I started thinking about slowing down a little bit.

I will now recount the dirtiest hand I played all night. :) I limped in on the button with 85 off after a few limpers, and we end up seeing the flop six-handed. The flop comes K64 rainbow, giving me a gutshot draw. One of the blinds, a new player to the table but a solid and tricky guy, opens for $12, a pot-sized bet. It folds around to me. We're heads-up, I've got position and a crappy draw, and I figure there's just a good a chance that this guy has air as a king, so I raise it to $35. He calls. Oops. I guess it wasn't air. The turn comes a 6, pairing the board. Villain checks to me, and I figure I've got to take it down now or not at all, so I make it $50 to go. He snap-calls, and I know I'm sunk. I guess he has the king after all. His snap-call told me that he was reading me for a bluff, too, so I know I can't take it down on the river. I resign myself to the loss, but a beautiful 7 slides off on the river, and I spike my gutshot. So dirty. Now I'm so glad he's read me for a bluff. :) He checks to me, and I give it a small Hollywood pause. I know I can bet big here, because he thinks I'm bluffing. I make it $75, and he only pauses a beat before calling. I apologize and tell him I hit my gutshot. He flashes a king, and mucks his hand. (He later claimed to have king-jack, but I actually have my doubts that his kicker was that strong. I really gave him a lower kicker than that. Of course, I don't really have a reason to disbelieve him, so that might have been the truth. Tough one.) He picked up and left soon after that. Sorry, man. I do love them gutshots. ;)

Anyway. At that point I was up about $200, and I figured I'd used up my fast-and-loose karma for the day, so I went back to tight mode. Between that and the then crappy run of cards I got, I sat there and folded for about the next two hours. :) Serves me right. After so much doing nothing, I started loosening up again and taking shots here and there, but things weren't quite so easy any more as the table had fallen into more of a rhythm and I was trying to fight against it. Not very Zen. Anyway, I gave back a lot of my profit on bad bluffs and even worse calls, so that didn't go too well. I corrected my course, though, and brought myself back up to a decent stack...maybe about $150 ahead after I stacked a short-stack guy who had just been losing all night. Opened for an EP raise of $15, it folded around to me and I popped it to $55 (his stack size) to isolate with pocket eights. It worked and I isolated, and we were off to the races when he tabled QJ off. I was happy to take the coin flip, frankly, and I won the race, so I bid him farewell and stacked his chips.

The final hour or so of play is mostly a haze to me. I stayed too long this time, methinks. I wasn't particularly tired, but I was really zoned. I caught myself losing focus on the game, and even memory of what had transpired. I know I dropped almost $100 bucks and I couldn't even remember how. Going back over the hands in my mind, I maybe accounted for $30 or so in losses, but for the life of me I couldn't figure out how I had bled off so much of my stack without realizing it. It's possible that having nothing but a Snickers bar for dinner affected my mental abilities somewhat. At any rate, I fought my way back up, and then, I'm ashamed to admit, bought a nice pot off a guy in a horribly mercenary and cutthroat fashion. But, hey, poker is poker, and I needs mah money. I figured between that and my realization that I was losing track of what was happening at the table, it was time to call it a night. I booked a nice win tonight ($250), and it sure beats the doldrums at work. A guy could get used to this. ;)

Peace out, everybody.