Where you left your keys ...Rick's Cafe Americain

Last night continued my run of good fortune at Omaha/8 SNG’s with a 2d place finish.  I also joined a $25 NL ring game and after I rocky start I finished the session up another $20.  Not much to report except that its nice to have people bet into you when you are holding the nuts.  A monkey could have won with those hands, and some may say that a monkey did.

I sat down at a PL table again with the $20 I won last night and burned through it in under 20 minutes.  I came down with a severe case of Second Best Hand and the Felt Burn that results.  When a third king fell on the river and a pair of aces in my hand I got check raised by a player holding the case king.  He called my bet after the two king flop, so I should have seen that coming.  Pretty sure that the pot odds required that I call the final couple of bucks, though. 

I don’t remember the next hand I lost, except to say that I knew the player from last night and he is a money drain.  Still, it doesn’t mean he doesn’t have a hand.  I didn’t even notice that the river created a straight possibility and I bet into it with just trip aces (and the second best low to boot). Needless to say, the straight and the better low were sitting in my opponents’ hands.

The final hand was a depressing suckout.  I started with only $2.20 of my original $20.  Holding k♠2♠44, I called the .25 blind with four other limpers.  The flop was 7♠-3-4♠, giving me trips and a K flush draw.  Again, the river created the wheel and my trip 4s didn’t hold up.  UTG checks, the player to his left bets .75 one player calls and I go all-in with my trips.  The bettor and the caller both call my raise.  The turn is an 8, which is nice because now I have added a mediocre low possibility (24/378).  But the river is a 2, which doesn’t improve my trips, doesn’t improve my low and improved the original bettor - who called me with A♣T♥7♥5♥ - from a pair of 7s with an A kicker and a low of A3457 (a better low than me, but certainly not a great low to CALL with)the wheel. 

I guess the good news is that I never had to show my cards, so even though I ended up getting rivered, my opponents in the game may wrongly conclude that I bet with nothing and I may get paid off by the players at the table when my strong hands at the flop survive the river.  The other good news is that I am accurately putting my opponents on their hands and doing most of my betting when I have the best of the hand; the correlated bad news is that I am not laying down good hands at the river when I know that they aren’t the best hands anymore because a voice in my head whispers “call ... call ... call” and I obey.  I have to stop listening to that voice.

Real time blogging: While writing this I had another decent tournament.  3d place in a 5+.50 NL Hold ‘em SNG.  I had made it back from an early bad beat to make the final three, and had played the final three well enough to draw essentially even with the other two players.  All was going fairly well, and I’m not sure I should have played the hand any differently than I did.

I raised and called a big preflop reraise with JJ.  I called all-in when the flop was 773. (Hard to tell if this was a mistake.  The player was pretty tight, but was playing a lot of nonsense.  I wouldn’t have been surprised by any small pair.) Alas, my opponent was holding QQ.  Neither of us improved with the turn or the river and I busted out.  With the exception of the last hand, I was very happy with my play.  Mostly because I ignored the voice.

Poker blogs

Just a quick note to add the addition to the blogroll of HDouble’s The Cards Speak and the updating of the link for Felicia Lee.

Also, I wanted to point to Love and Casino War, a blog with an awkward name but some excellent and interesting poker content.  He recently posted a good analysis of the expected values of starting hands played at the high-volume Party Poker site.  The data contains some surprises that aren’t, on second thought, all that surprising.