Weatherford (May 25)

We are nearly through five full months of 2014 and unfortunately I have only played three sessions of poker in that time.  The first game I won $60, the second game saw a loss of the same amount, and this most recent game resulted in a $215 profit.  After eight hours of play I logged a $26.88 hourly rate for the evening.

The game started very well for me, as I was able to build my $100 buy-in into $510 after about four hours.  I was hitting a lot of great hands and they were always slightly better than my opponent’s hand.  The sickest win of the night for me was when the river card gave me a full house while at the same time making a flush for my opponent.

There were two hands of consequence that I thought I would share.  They are a bit of bragging as I made the correct decision (folding) for both, but that partly is what this blog is about.  The first situation was when after the river I had top pair (aces) with a jack kicker.  The cards on the board were A-Q-?-10-?.  The two unknown cards were inconsequential and there was no flush available.  I had raised pre-flop with my A-J suited and by the end of the hand, with betting on the flop and a check on the turn, it was down to two of us.  I made a bet about half the size of the pot and was raised by about three times the size of my bet.  I considered that if I was beat it was likely by either A-10 for two pair or K-J for a straight.  I figured A-K or A-Q would have re-raised me pre-flop by the player I was up against.

After a few minutes of thinking the hand through, I was leaning toward the straight.  I just couldn’t fathom a hand my opponent held that was worse than mine and he would be raising me on the river, unless it was a complete bluff.  I opted to fold and showed my hand.  He was startled at what I was folding and when asked if he would show he allowed me to pick one card.  The card shown was a king.  That meant he had to hold either an ace or a jack for me to have made the correct decision.  The next day I called him and asked what he held.  He said it was the straight and I have no reason to not believe him.

The second hand in question was near the very end of the night.  I held A-5 and a player behind me made it $10 to go pre-flop.  A player on my right called and I called.  The flop was A-5-2 with two clubs.  The player on my right checked, I checked, with plans to raise after the pre-flop raiser made a continuation bet, and the pre-flop raiser obliged by making a $20 bet.  The player on my right then raised it to $100 even.

This was not part of the plan.  I had about $350 in front of me at this point and knew it was going to cost all of my chips by the end of the hand, so I had to be sure I had the best of it by the end.  With the top two pair the only hands that beat me were three aces, three fives, three twos, and a straight with 4-3.  Normally I would not rule out the player who had raised it to a hundo having 4-3, but in the last six months he has been in quite the slump and those types of speculative hands are starting to be removed from his repertoire.  That left a pocket pair that hit.

With a little out-loud discussion, but not revealing what I had as I did not want to give away anything to the player behind me, I decided I indeed was beat.  I folded, as did the pre-flop raiser behind me.  He showed K-9 of clubs, which gave him the nut flush draw.  He decided it was too expensive without me involved to draw for the flush.  I showed my top two pair and the winner of the hand showed pocket twos.

I’ve said this before, but sometimes the most memorable plays of the night are not calls, but folds.

With so little playing time this year due to Sawyer being born I decided to look back at my results since 2009.  I added up my career stats and discovered I have won nearly $5,000 in poker games over the course of 464.5 hours of play.  My hourly rate since keeping these statistics is $10.70.  Not great, but it is better than being a losing player.