Poker tidbits

With my new purchase, various sports, and a bout with the cold taking up a lot of time, I haven’t spent many hours at the poker tables for the majority of the week.

Thursday I dipped my toes in at the 50PL tables at Intertops. I’ve been running very well at the 25PL tables, so I thought it was time to take a shot. Well, it went extremely poorly as I managed to run through a buy-in and a half due to some bad play and a couple bad beats. But, it did make way for my best session at the 25PL tables when I went back later to make up for some of the loss. I finished the night at $152 at one table, $101 at a second and $36 at the third (which I started late). So, that was just shy of 4x my buy-in of $75 at all three tables. Not so bad, and more than enough to make up for my $80 loss earlier. Unfortunately, I hit sub-zero cards at the 2/4 table at Pacific and managed to pay most of those profits back in blinds. Unlike my usual cold cards, there were no beats, there was just three hours with maybe 4 legitimate starting hands that missed so badly I had to give them up before the river. Usually I get a few bad beats thrown in there when my cards are cold, but there wasn’t even anything to compete with.

My games yesterday were not much more profitable as I finished my hands at Paradise to unlock the last 5 dollars of my bonus. Of course, I managed to lose twice as much as I unlocked in bonus. The site was full of maniacs and few of my hands held up. But, I did get a 1-year subscription to Canadian Card Player out of the deal, so I’ll consider it breaking even.

I also had a completely crazy hand at Poker Stars. I find AA in the small blind and it’s raised ahead of me. I re-raise to try to thin the field further and the big blind caps it. We’re down to three for the flop (the original raiser called the re-raises while the rest of the field decided that the extra two bets weren’t worth calling). The flop comes rainbow rags and I bet out, raised from the big blind, I re-raise, he caps. At this point I start to wonder what he might have. Possibly a set, but I’m thinking overpair is more likely. Suits me fine and when the turn comes out a brick and I bet. Called again by both players. An offsuit ten on the turn and there are no flush opportunities and a couple unlikely straights. So, I bet and am called down again. He had 75s and hit two pair on the flop. I couldn’t even conceive of not only calling 2 extra bets from the big blind but capping with this hand. Oh well, I suppose he’ll be donating to my bankroll in the long run, but I had been anticipating picking up a fair sized pot on this hand. I guess my hand reading skills need work.

I also just finished reading Cloutier & McEvoy’s Championship No-limit and Pot-limit Hold’em. It was alright. Not many new insights although I found Cloutier’s suggestions on playing risk prevention poker in tournaments interesting. Of course, it’s difficult to apply to the crazy world of internet poker due to the sheer amount of poor play, but I have been finding recently that sometimes it is just better not to get involved with some situations because anything short of the perfect flop will leave a lot of questions about where you stand.

2 Responses to “Poker tidbits”

  1. BG says:

    Not that I’d see two bets and cap with 57o, but 57s is my favorite hand. Just to make you feel a little bit better I guess…

  2. tp says:

    As long it wasn’t you that was at the table, I think I can probably deal with it. There are just some extremes of bad play that make me mental. Or maybe he was just being tricky and trying to get into the pot and dance around. Yeah right!