Weatherford Outing A Success

Saturday night was the monthly $1-2 hold’em game in Weatherford and I was more than content to log a $210 profit for the evening. I played for nine hours and earned $23.33 an hour.

Ever since winning $1,200 back in March, my wife, Joanna, has it in her head that every trip should end up like that one, but that just isn’t going to be the case. While there’s plenty of money to be made at that game, a really good night on a normal basis would be winning somewhere between $600-900. A good night is between $200-600. Any sort of profit less than that is certainly a good thing but feels like a waste because there are thousands of dollars in the room, and since the game is only held once a month it is a long wait until the next opportunity.

I had only three hands of interest, and one of those was played about as straight forward as possible. I started the night with $100 and quickly (within 20 minutes) was down to $60. The worst part of that was I don’t know where I lost $40 in so quick a time span. I even considered the idea that I didn’t get a full $100 when I started because I couldn’t recall where I had spent so much money in so little time. I did have a lot of speculative hands worth seeing a flop with, but I just couldn’t for the life of me think I had paid $40 in pre-flop and flop bets without something to show for it.

After that point I made an all-in bet when there was $60 in the pot and I had top pair, top kicker. I wouldn’t have gone all in had I more money, but with about $50 at the time, I couldn’t see why I would make a bet of $25-35 with a flush and straight draw possible, only leaving myself $15-25 on the turn. Had I done that I wouldn’t have enough to push out those on the draw or even people with an inferior hand hoping to hit two pair or three of a kind on the river for such a small risk to win a large pot.

So, I pushed all in for $50 or so and figured if they wanted to draw to a big hand then they would have to pay big for it. Even if I don’t get a call then I essentially double up without risking a showdown, which is what happened as nobody called my bet.

Back at a little more than $100 I started to build my stack with small-pot wins until I came to what would be ultimately the biggest pot of the night for me. At this point I had $175 in front of me and covered the two players involved in this particular hand. I was dealt the two red aces and raised it to $8 after two callers before me. A player after me called, as did one of the guys who had limped in prior to my raise. There is now $27 in the pot after three $8 calls and the $3 from blinds.

So with three players seeing a flop, the cards came out A-8-4 rainbow. With the very best hand at this point and little fear of being drawn out on, I decided to play it a little slower than I normally would, which meant not making a continuation bet. By checking the flop I might get them to think I have kings or queens and am not happy about seeing an ace on the flop, prompting them to bet if they happen to have the last ace.

Well, my plan didn’t get to take form because the first guy to act led out with a bet of $13. So now I have to decide if I want to raise or call. Raising shows I am not afraid of the ace and may scare off anyone holding top pair. Calling is more deceptive and entices the guy behind me to call the bet as well. The obvious play here is to simply call with no threat of being outdrawn on. Should something scary come on the turn then we can reassess the situation.

I called the $13 as did the guy behind me; excellent outcome for me. Now the pot has $66 in it.

The turn is the jack of clubs, creating an A-8-4-J board with two clubs. The first guy to act bet again. This time he went all in for $82. I am ecstatic over this. Of course, on the outside I am thinking hard about what to do and making it look like I am worried about what the guy behind me is going to do. After about 20 seconds I called.

Now this hand looked to be exactly what people who play cards dream about with a huge hand that doesn’t need a ton of decision making resulting in a big pot. Well, it only got better because after some hemming and hawing from the player behind me, he said he was going to go all in also. I politely said call after waiting a second or two, not even needing a count, and flipped up my set of aces. It turned out I barely had him covered by only about $10. The second guy called me an SOB in a friendly, joking manner and said he had a set of eights.

The final card came, which didn’t help his eights, and the other guy who was all in showed the final ace, not particularly caring what his kicker was because he knew it didn’t matter. After all was said and done I had $475 in front of me, which was my peak for the evening.

With a large amount of chips in front of me, I started playing a lot of speculative hands to see if I could hit a well-hidden straight or two pair that could get a lot of money in the pot against opponents with high cards thinking they were good. Instead it just resulted in a quick decline that made me have to tighten back up once I was down to $250. Two of those losses were against my kryptonite, Jay, one being because I didn’t bet enough with top pair, top kicker on the flop to get a fold and the other was a chess-like battle that never went past the flop. Let’s take a look at the latter.

Jay is a very good player who is aggressive and hard to put on hands. Of all the people at the Weatherford game, he is among those who I don’t like to be at a table with (a list which includes Jason, Phil, and Clint). The hand in question was one that I held K-Q offsuit. Jay raised it pre-flop to $10. I was the only player to call the bet, creating a $23 pot with the blinds.

The flop was A-10-6 with no real flush possibility for me and Jay made a pot-sized bet of $25. Here is where the thought-based fighting came in to play for both of us. The way Jay played this particular hand up to this point made me think he was holding a high pocket pair like kings, queens, or jacks. I ruled out aces and tens because he most likely wouldn’t make that big of a bet with such a large hand and I didn’t consider nines or lower because his pre-flop bet was not the right kind of amount for that holding. I’ve played with Jay enough to get these kinds of feelings during a hand with him and sometimes they prove right.

So, with him having a pocket pair that was lower than the ace, I thought a small raise would get him to fold, thinking I held the ace for a higher pair, and if I was wrong then I wouldn’t lose a ton of money on my misread. I made a minimum raise to $50. The size I chose was because a lot of times against lesser players a minimum raise means they are holding a monster hand. I thought he might take that into consideration when thinking about what to do.

After a minute of consideration and stacking chips around, Jay made a raise of his own, putting out an additional $50, making the bet $100. This put me in a tough spot because I certainly can’t make a call. I either have to make another raise, which would likely have to be an all-in because if I left anything behind it would be so small that I couldn’t do anything with it on the turn to get Jay to fold, or I have to fold my hand now. Keep in mind I have a king and a queen, which is nothing right now. I could make a straight with a jack, but I don’t really want to put everything I have on the line for an inside straight. So if I do raise, it is with the hope I don’t get called.

Let’s go back to what I think he has. After the flop and his initial bet I put him on kings, queens, or jacks. Those are looking less likely now with Jay re-raising my raise, but still a small possibility he is being stubborn. I have to now consider that he has the ace with either a king kicker or even a ten or six to make two pair. I still am not considering a set because he would let me bet it for him.

Since I have hardly anything to work with and I would have to go all in for any hope of winning the hand, I elected to fold the hand. Speaking with Jay later in the night, it turns out he did have pocket jacks like I thought he did. He said he had a feeling I was trying to represent the ace and push him off of his pocket pair, which is exactly what I was doing. So to recap, we both had the other person’s hand pegged and it was a matter of who would say chicken first, which happened to be me.

After breaking down from two tables to one for the final few hours of the night, I hovered between$200-300 for the rest of the night. I did have one big hand that put me up above that amount after I had dwindled down a significant amount when my pocket queens held up twice against A-K suited.

The pot was raised to $8 by a player two to my right, whose name was Steve. I re-raised with my two queens, one of which was a heart, and made it $30 to play. It folded around through the blinds to another guy named Matt and Phil, who both called after just limping in the beginning. I figure one of those two have a pocket pair that they are willing to pay through the nose for to see if it hits the flop. The other one I’m not too sure about. It came back to Steve, who called the $22 re-raise. So there was $120 in the pot at this point and I had only the other Matt covered. Phil and Steve both were beating me by about $400 each.

I should note that I did some table talk about how I thought all the money would be going into the middle pre-flop because I didn’t want to risk any more money without seeing three cards, allowing me to know if an over to my queens came on the flop. By making the statements I did, I was hoping to scare anyone with kings or ace-king from pushing again. And if they do push in the middle, I could be pretty confident they were holding aces because they would not only be confident of their hand, but they would think I was willing to call for all my chips pre-flop, which I wasn’t. The ploy apparently worked because one of the players did have ace-king and another guy said he was thinking about pushing until I said the comments I did.

So with four of us to go and me being last to act, the flop came with nothing higher than a nine and two hearts. I don’t remember the cards exactly, but they didn’t include an eight or a three.

The other Matt was first to act and with little hesitation he moved all in for $50. Phil immediately folded and Steve folded not too much longer after that. With $170 in the pot and getting more than three to one for a call, I took my chances against Matt flopping a set and called. I also wasn’t too concerned about him having a set because with the raising and re-raising going on behind him, he would probably let us bet it and get more people to call in order to build a bigger pot for his great hand.

After making the call I flipped up my over-pair to the board and he flipped over the ace and king of hearts for a flush draw. Someone asked if we wanted to do business, meaning run the final two cards twice, to which I said I would allow Matt to make the decision. At this game I will always give a single opponent the option if he wants to and normally do not initiate “the business.” Matt said he wanted to run it twice and we did, but it didn’t matter because I won both times.

I mentioned the flop didn’t have a three or an eight because Phil said he had pocket threes and Steve said he had pocket eights. Obviously, had the flop contained one of those cards they would have made the all-in call.

I was pleased with how the night went. So much in fact, Clint and I are going to WinStar tonight to play some more before his wife gets home from New York City.

With last month’s $200 loss and this month’s $210 win, I have won a total of $2,865 since last November and in 2010 I have logged a profit of $1,250. Sadly though, $1,185 of that $1,250 came in one nine-hour session. My hourly profit for the year would be $14.30 and it is $19.90 since starting to seriously play poker again in November. Not terrible numbers considering I make $12 an hour in my cubicle. Maybe living the dream isn’t such a fantasy after all.