Some Rain During My Poker Drought

Even without the laptop it hasn’t been a complete poker drought these past couple of weeks. Last Monday night our indoor cricket team had a bye so, beer in hand (light - I was driving :)), a few of us decided to head down to Youngy’s place to play a few hands…

With four players (Myself, Youngy, Vaughano and Tony) playing we decided to try and get in two $5 NL “tournaments”, first place takes all, $1500 in starting chips and 20 minute levels. In the first game everyone was playing kind of cautiously for the first five or so levels and it really came down to one hand, a three way all-in! It went something like this:

UTG, my hole cards:

:Ac::Kc:

I raise, Youngy to my left re-raises all-in (I should mention at this point that he doubled up three times after being forced all-in by the blinds but still had a very small stack) for a little bit more. Tony calls and I re-raise all-in hoping to get heads up with Mr Young, Tony throws a spanner in the works and calls (he has me covered, just).

We all turn over our cards:

Youngy:

:2s::2d:*

Tony:

:As::9s:*

I have to admit at this point I’m fairly confident of picking up at least the (sizable) side pot, and am still hopeful of picking up something to knock out Youngy along they way :)

Of course, this is hold’em and anything can happen when those board cards are dealt:
:9d::5c::7c:*

Tony hit his top pair! But I still have hope, a king or a club will put me in front…

:4h:*

DOH!

:3s:*

DOH! DOH!

Youngy and I are out on the same hand and Tony moves well into the chip lead, Vaughano puts up a good fight but can’t overcome Tony’s chip dominance and Tony ends up taking the honours in first game.

Game number 2 was much more action packed and I got a little revenge on Tony early when in the BB I was dealt:

:4h::Jc:

Average cards at best right? Well the table limped around to me and I took the opportunity to see a free flop:

:2c::4s::6h:

An interesting flop, Vaughano in the SB checks and I decide to have a little bet to “see where I’m at” (about half the pot), Youngy folds, Tony calls and Vaughan folds. It’s Tony and I heads up and I’m wondering what he could possibly have to want to keep playing with this board, we see a turn:

I hit trips on the turn and feeling fairly confident that I’m holding the nuts (is there any other topic besides poker where I could get away with that line? :P), I check. Tony bets around half the pot and I just call. We see a river:

This is a potentially dangerous card for me and I’m silently kicking myself a little for slow playing the turn. I decide to just check again to see what he does (I wouldn’t hate a free showdown here), he bets the same amount he did on the turn though at that point something gives me the feeling that he hasn’t improved his hand in the slightest since the flop (can’t say exactly what it was, partly because I’m not 100% sure myself and partly because I don’t want Tony to read this and find out :)). I re-raise a fair amount (about 2x his original bet) and he calls to show me:

:Kd::Ks:*

My full-house wins… ouch! That makes up for the pair of nines ;)

This puts me in a good position chip wise (it’s still only level 1 at this point) so I tighten up a bit and try to let the others fight it out and fight they do! The exact circumstances escape me (earlier in the night we’d all tried a cherry beer from Belgium that Tony had brought from work, it costs $15AUD a bottle and the general consensus was that it tastes like cough syrup… I have a feeling it doesn’t do your memory any good either because there are a few big hands that I just can’t recall :)) but between halfway through level 1 and the start of level 3 both Tony and Youngy managed to get themselves knocked out (perhaps they’ll leave some comments reminding me of the details?), leaving Vaughano and I heads up.

I must admit this was a fun little hour of poker, the chip stacks were fairly even, the blinds were very low and the cards were for the most part interesting. Chips were moving back and forth pretty evenly as we both went through stages of being card dead and I was starting to regret the heads up advice I’d given Vaughano after Jo’s poker night a couple of weeks back because I have a feeling there were a few times there where he used it against me and I was bluffed out of a few chips, however, order was soon restored with the following two hands. The first of which I felt is what turned the game in my favour, in the BB I was dealt:

:Kc::Js:

V raised (as he’d been doing regularly) and I decided to make a stand and re-raised. He called. The flop came something like:

:8c::8s::4h:

V bet into it and I decided it was unlikely he’d hit anything and I put him on nothing trying to buy the pot. Hoping my nothing was better than his nothing I re-raised all-in. He folded and I took down the largest pot of recent times with a bluff (of sorts).

This gave me some breathing room and we swapped blinds for the next little while, until it all came down to this:

In the BB I was dealt:

:Ks::9c:

V min-raised, I called and we saw the flop:

:Ah::Kh::Jd:

V made a small bet and I got that feeling again … he didn’t have the Ace and I highly doubted he had a better King.

“All-In”, I decided to push half hoping he’d fold. I did have him covered, though if I lost this it would be tough to come back.

He called and turned over:

:Js::3d:

I breathed for the first time since he started counting his chips and Youngy dealt the turn and the river:

My king’s held up and I took the game… got to give credit to Vaughano though, he played well up until that loose call and there were a number of times where I thought he was going to take the game away from me. Well played!

Thanks to Youngy for having us around, I’m looking forward to the next one guys!

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 4th, 2006 at 12:30 am and is filed under My Poker Game, Poker. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.