Birthday Bliss – Round 4

Sat at a table and on the first hand I watched a dude shove all in for 135 BB’s preflop (female avatar…but no female poker player is that crazy) .  His opponent thought about it and called w/ 88…and won.  The original shover showed 95o.  I looked him up, and he was a maniac.

He immediately left the table, and I went in search of him.  Found him at another table with a seat open to his right.  The rest of the table would not fall under the category of desirable opponents – but this guy with this one move made me believe that he’d make it worth my while – and he didn’t know that I saw him shove with the 95o because I just sat down at the other table and never played a hand.

So I waited and waited.  27 hands…didn’t see a flop.  Partway through, the seat to his left opened up and I immediately jumped in so that he would be sitting to my right.   Eventually, 31 hands had been dealt and I saw 1 flop (which I won).

Maniac’s standard pre-flop raise was 7.5 BB’s…huge compared to anyone else.  I wanted a decent hand (not necessarily great) against him alone and in position – which I’d now have a good chance at thanks to my strategic seat change.  On hand 35 (25 mins in), he does his standard 7.5 BB raise.  I find myself w/ QTs.  I call.  This is way out of character for me…but I’m trusting in my position and his crazy persona to work in my favor.  The rest of the field gets the hell out of the way – knowing that I’ve only played 1 hand so far.  I don’t have a monster by any means, but the flop is favorable.   I flop a gutshot and a flush draw.  He acts first and bets the pot on the flop.  I call – hoping for a free river card.  Turn doesn’t improve my hand – but he checks and I get the free river card I’d hoped for.  River pairs the turn – somewhat scary – as he might have a boat, but I doubt it…and much to my liking it’s a heart.   So – to this point, this guy’s full-on bluffs have tended to be for all of his chips (I saw the 95o at the original table and he made one other all-in that was disproportionate to the pot-size on a weird board…there was no showdown, but I was suspicious).  So I called.  I figure this was about as good as it was gonna get – a flush vs the maniac…only a K-high flush could beat me or a full-house.  He showed 64o.  Squadoosh from Donkville!

Voila!  Thanks to the maniac I stood up with 114 BB’s after 27 minutes and playing only 3 out of 37 hands (played one more just so it didn’t look too much like a hit-n-run).  Muy bien!

Performance = Good
Patience = Great
Luck = Standard/Good
Opponent = Donkey
Results = Pleased

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Birthday Bliss – Round 3

Ok – back from Target & Cost Plus.  Got Ben’s gift taken care of.  He and Elaine are having a b-day party/housewarming next Friday.  Tomorrow they’re taking me to a concert in Mountain View – I’m stoked to see Jesus & Mary Chain headline the event.  Way cool.

Anyway, while browsing the tables I found a 6-seater that only had 2 players – I did my usual G2 and saw that one of them was loose-aggressive and had 100 BB’s he was ready to play with.  I decided to have a go at him heads up.

Things went sour for the poor guy pretty quickly.  I was pretty aggressive and took down some early pots.  Then w/ QTo flopped an open ender.  Which I hit and he paid me off bigtime.  On the river, I bet 1/2 his stack – thinking he’d come over top – but he just called.  Leaving him with 14 BB’s.  After that he just kept shoving.  I tested the waters a bit by limping on the button to see if he’d keep up the shoving, which he did.  All I really needed to do was pick a decent A hand and call for his remaining stack (back up to 18 BB’s).  I found myself with A8o and called – he showed JQs…I hit an A and it was all over.  98 BB’s in 4 mins.

While the results are pleasing, I want to believe that I picked the right opponent, the right table, the right stakes, and played smart-aggressive.  That’s what I want to believe anyway.  :-)

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Birthday Bliss – Round 2

Same as earlier – with less luck.

I ended up down about 30 BB’s about mid-way thru a 70 minute session.  Before this week, I’d have re-loaded.  But I decided to focus on performance rather than results – so I didn’t replenish.  I tried to play good solid poker.  Most players to my right were tight, so not much money was going to come from playing position – I’d have to rely on the loose players to my left to hang themselves.

While nobody “hung” themselves, I did manage to fight back and end up 10 BB’s ahead of my buy-in.  Not bad, of course, and to top it off – even keeled the whole time with little focus on profit – only on playing solid.  For the most part, mission accomplished!

Done for now – gonna go hit Target and maybe Cost Plus.

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Birthday Bliss in 15 minutes

Today’s the 37th birthday.  I went to bed fairly early and woke up to take Kevin and Katya to the airport.  More than happy to do this for them on my birthday because they both have birthdays that will occur while they’re on vacation.  Not only that, but I’d do anything for them…any time…any day.

After dropping them off, I grabbed the laptop and my books and headed to Lowry’s.  I read a fair amount from one of the new books.   With additional wisdom fresh in my brain – combined with yesterday’s performance – I was ready to sit down for a few.

Right Limit – check
Right Table – check
Right Seat – check

Buy-in – 50 BB’s (Deepstack table – could have bought in for 200 BB’s)

Things went smashingly as I built off of yesterday’s mantra.

Performance = Good
Luck = Good
Results = Good

50 BB’s in 15 mins.  Taking a break to enjoy a cheesesteak – on the house!  Very nice!

I expect to be playing a fair amount over the next 10 days for 2 reasons:

1)  K & K are out of town, so appraisal work might be slow
2)  FT had a snafu with one of my check withdrawls -as a gesture, they offered me $200 in bonus cash that I can earn over the next month.  I intend to get as much mileage out of that as possible while building the bankroll rather than depleting it.

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