Last night (this morning?) I got the opportunity to hit the poker room in the Adelaide Casino and play a bit of $4/$8 limit hold’em.

Now, it should be noted that the plan for the night was not to play cards, instead I was out celebrating with a few friends. This meant that by the time I got to the casino I had polished off more than my share of alcoholic beverages…. not the best state to be in when playing poker

Anyway, over the course of a couple of hours at the table I played (in my opinion) a pretty solid game. Let me run through a few of the more interesting hands…

Hand #1:

Raised pre-flop from a relatively early position (the table was very loose-passive at this point, next to no preflop raises, people playing with everything) and was called by a guy who had been playing extremely loose and calling down to the river with hands no better than middle pair/weak kicker. No one else called, the blinds folded (this shocked me, I think they may have noticed how tight I’d been playing) and we went heads up into the flop:

Nothing really to help me and since my opponent could be playing anything and I know he’s almost guaranteed to raise me if he’s hit anything I check, he checks and the turn comes:

No help to me, but surely no help to him either. With my opponents check on the flop, I decide that he hasn’t hit anything and given that the four was unlikely to have helped him I decide to bet, he calls and we see the river:

I really doubt he has the jack, but I haven’t hit anything either and as I believe this player is unbluffable, I check. He bets. Now, I just know that he doesn’t have the jack… he would have been betting/raising like a mad man on the flop if he did. But there are three other cards out there that he could have to beat me and in my mind it is very likely he’s called my original raise with Ax suited and paired up his kicker on that board, I fold. A kind of shocked look comes over his face and he flips over his cards to show me:

King high, he only had bloody king high!! I’d love to think that he made a brilliant read on me and pushed me out of that pot with his superior skills but that would almost certainly be giving him too much credit. As I watched him proceed to lose his entire stack in fairly short time after this hand I knew he’d just got lucky.

I stand by my decision to fold against this opponent in this situation, sure it meant I lost with the best hand in this case but in the long run I’m pretty sure I’d be losing money making that call.

Hand #2:

Raised it up preflop and got a couple of callers, all low cards came on the flop and I bet again to end up heads up with a guy who had hit top pair on the low board. He called my bets down to the river and my kings held up to give me my first pot for the night.

Hand #3:

On the button I again raised it up and was called only by the BB.

Flop:

He checks, I bet, he calls. At this point I put him on the flush draw, I’ve been watching this guy’s play a fair bit and I know he wouldn’t have checked had he hit the ace.

Turn:

He checks, I bet again and he calls.

River:

He checks, I figure he’s missed his draw and I’m not getting anymore money out of him. There’s also a small chance he does actually have the ace so I simply check and show him my queens. For some reason he decides to flip up his cards and show me that all he actually had was the 6!

After playing a few more hands and chasing a couple of draws that didn’t come off I was down around $40, I would have loved to stick around and keep playing with these guys but it was 5:30 am, the sun was coming up and it was time to go to bed. They would just have to give me their money another day.

One thing is for sure, I’ll be reading my “Small Stakes Hold’em”, putting together a live bankroll and heading back to these tables sometime soon… there’s money to be made!