New Year poker

Its been quite a while since I wrote a blog but that is because I am now playing fairly consistently but not too frequently. Normally I am booking a small win each session with the occasional loss.

This week I did get in a session at Oceans 11 mainly so I could cash in a $200 player bonus before the bonus money ran out.  I played overnight in the small 2-2 game and slowly chipped up my $80 buy-in to about $800 when the following hand occurs.

Background - this is 9.26am - the double jackpot bad beat ends at 9.30am so this is effectively the last hand before it finishes. I get KK in early position and get in a pot with 2 ladies.

- Lady 1 is a reasonably solid player; has $300 - she likes to bet into pots to apply pressure but will fold to a decent raise. Her bet does not mean she has the goods and she plays mostly premium hands.
- Lady 2 is a passive player, has $250 - she loves to chase flush draws no matter the price. She has chased about 8 in a row but been quite lucky. She can play any 2 cards from any position but mostly suited cards.

So I raise preflop but keep the raise to $22 because I want to keep any jackpot hand (A-10, A-J, A-Q, AK and TT-AA) around as this is the last hand of the double jackpot. The 2 ladies call.

We see a Q high flop with 2 hearts and 2 raggy cards.

I .bet out $40 and Lady 1 raises to $80. Lady 2 takes quite a while but then flats the $80.  Back to me and I think about the players.

Lady 1 will often raise to test the water without really having hit the flop and always folds to a re-raise in that case. She did not look confident when putting in the raise. If she had QQ or AQ she would have raised preflop. As she likes premium hands that only leaves KQ or complete air in her range. So I think she will fold to a re-raise.

Lady 2 is a little more complicated but offers a lot of value. She would have raised AA, KK, QQ preflop but otherwise would call any other hand. If she has 2 hearts she will chase away her whole stack. She could have hit a raggy 2 pair also but thats the top of her range. She looked in pain calling the %80 which makes me think a flush draw is most likely.  I decide to make it a big re-raise and get all of Lady 2 chips in the pot and hope she is chasing the flush.

I raise to $280.

Lady 1 tanks for a while but eventually folds
Lady 2 tanks for a really long time before deciding to call.

She had a weak 2 pair. I didn't catch up and she won a largish pot with squeals of delight, high fives all around and I could see this was a rare feeling for her to have a big stack. Of course I congratulated her and told her it was well played and hoped she would stick around to give some back. Unfortunately about 15 mins later she left the table with all those chips.

Im not too upset how I played the hand. She called preflop with Q-7 off, hit the miracle 2 pair and cracked my overpair. But in general I think my reads were good and my plan for the hand had a great chance of pulling in a $500 pot. If she was chasing a flush she could have hit it and still won the pot. Even if I make her pay was over the odds to chase she still gets lucky sometimes.

I carried on playing and left a few hours later with a $550 profit. Not great, but ok. I probably wont play for another week or so unless I find a tournament somewhere this weekend.