[x] Epic

Monday was my longest day as professional. Stay with me on this one.

1:50pm

I get a seat in the Garden City 8/16 game. It turns out Garden City is doing flooring construction on half the room, and consequently there are fewer tables all crowded together at the half of the room I usually don't play in. To make a long story short, it sucks, but I'm already there and first up for 20/40, so I play.

I watch 3 hands. Seat 6 is a confirmed lunatic.

I post in and find KTo in bad position (first to act after the button). Maniac raises and I 3-bet with one other player in the pot. The flop is:

K84

I bet, maniac calls, other player raises, I 3-bet, maniac folds, other player calls.

8

I bet he calls

8

I bet he calls and shows K7. He rivered me for half the pot, as we both have 8s full of Kings.

Very next hand.

I raise red Jacks in the cutoff and like 6 people see the flop of 922

Somebody bets right into me and I raise. The pot is heads up on the turn but is kind of big.

2

I now have 2s full of Jacks. He bets into me again, and again I raise. He calls.

9

He bets into me a final time and I want to vomit. I light 16 dollars on fire as he rolls Q9 off, for 9s full of 2s (I have 2s full of jacks...his hand wins). Two hands, two full houses, 1/2 of one pot. After 35 minutes of this garbage I get called for 20/40 and somehow manage to have won 80 dollars. I really don't know how that happened.

2:25pm

My table is the middle of the most crowded part of the floor and I'm not happy about it. It's just an awful place to play, nothing like the usual sedate mid-stakes area where we usually get sheltered. I play for 1 hour and loose 300 dollars, mostly because I'm an idiot:

A bad player limps in the High jack and I raise KK in the cutoff. Button and small blind fold. A good winning player* 3-bets from the big blind. Bad player calls, I cap it, and away we go.

Good player's range here is probably TT+ and AK. He usually would be even tighter than this, but he surely knows I could be isolating the terrible player who open limped in late position.

T84r

Great flop I say. They check to me and I bet. They both call.

J (still no flush draw)

That's an awful, awful card. Good player checks, bad player donks. I tank, and idiotically decide to call (this gets worse). The good player then raises in rhythm (I've shown weakness by tanking but don't realize this), and the bad player calls. I have a brain anuyerism (sp?) and fold, the river bricks off, and the good player shows QQ to scoop the pot. My (flawed) logic...I don't even want to get into it. I needed to raise the turn to charge his AK to draw, but by tanking I invited him to take a shot. I folded because I figured one of them had me beat for sure. Fail. So I call Bay 101 and drive on over.

Note: The problem here is that I turbo folded my hand and didn't "slow down" to think about it on the turn. I am prone to doing that and need to fix it. In this case a careful analysis would have allowed me to realize that while I would be burning 2 bets a good portion of the time if I went to show down, I did have enough equity to make the calls (and it wasn't very close). Better still would have been to raise the turn, but that decision is probably less awful.

* Note that when I say "good player" the term is very relative. To the average reader a game filled with 8 of this player would be a shark tank. To some people I know from two plus two, 8 of him in a game would constitute grounds to order a beer and commence the feeding frenzy. To me, he is merely a solid opponent, well above the average skill-level I encounter. A table filled with him would not be worth sitting in, but I doubt I'd lose more than the rake.

3:50pm

I play 5 hands of live 6/12 and manage to win 37 dollars. Again I don't recall how.

3:55pm

I am seated in the 20 game, change tables like 4 times, and eventually find myself in "the best" game which isn't even that good. Fortunately I flop a nut straight and two sets and manage to leave up 1050 dollars after 3.5 hours. No interesting hands really happened except these two gems:

First hand I post in with 92 off. I get a free look and flop a pair of 9s. I raise the lunatic when he bets, but he 3-bets and I just call. Turn is a blessed deuce and I raise him again and get TWO callers (they both had flush draws). River blanks off and I drag a monster.

Much later...Lunatic live 40s it, gets raised by another aggressive player, and I cap it with AQ of diamonds. The flop goes off 4 handed:

A42

I bet and get two calls, one from the maniac and one from a late position guy who took 4 bets to the face preflop. Preflop 3-better folds getting 19:1 closing the action. lol.

6

I bet and only maniac calls.

6

I bet and maniac CHECK RAISES ALL IN FOR 3 MORE CHIPS. Let's think about this. First of all, going for a check/raise is always risky. Your opponent must bet, then actually pay off the raise. Second of all, in this case he's only getting 3 more chips instead of the full 8 for his risk. Just awful. I call the 15 bucks in the massive pot and he rolls

T6 off

Just. Wow.

7:30pm

In my car on the way home I resolve to play more tonight (I have to get home soon to take care of Tyson). I get home, have some dinner, take him for a walk, and head straight back to Bay 101.

9pm

They open a new table and I get a seat after 5 minutes of live 6/12 in which I lose only 8 dollars in posted blinds. I play for 6 hours and lose about a rack of chips. The player on my right, who is truly awful, owns my soul by making 3 flushes in 3 tries against my top pair, set, and two pair, and also finds AA against my KQs (flop was JT2 so I paid him to draw and of course missed), AQ against my AJ, and TT against my 88. It was one of those sessions where you just know you're a huge favorite at the table the but cards simply will not cooperate.

3:30am

On the way home I realize I had an absolute blast. My table for the night session at bay 101 was a ton of fun (a "state competitor" gymnast and I talked about the Olympics, Charles the "big black dude" was just an animated and fun guy, and "awful dude on my left" was very friendly). I got to work on my "i'm going back to school" story for everyone, and even though I lost 500 dollars left quite happy.

Result for the day: meh, something like +300....i'll figure it out eventually.