Life and Times of a Poker Addict

At keeping up with this blog lately. :)

In any event, my cash game hiatus continues. After a less than successful trip to AC at the end of January and the subsequent closing of the local cash games due to some legal issues in February, there just isn't anything going on anywhere near here to make some money. The end of February saw a horrible run at the 3/6 tables online and thus was born a short break from cash games that has now stretched to over a month.

I'm still getting plenty of tournament action in around here with the usual suspects, around 2-3 per week. I've been getting my tournament mojo back lately insofar as my comfort level with reading other players and taking down pots with nothing when I need to. The only time I haven't played optimally in the last two months was when I went card dead for about 4 levels about 3 hours into one of our tourneys, got tired and just gave up, getting myself busted when I moved in with middle pair when I was 100% certain I was beat.

Last night, after being the beneficiary of a super spectacular runner runner straight in a 3 way all-in pot, I was off and running to a nice win. I'm gonna put some money back online and try and satellite into the Pokerroom Grand tournament at the end of April. And I may not play a cash game until after that. I've really enjoyed the break and feel like it strengthened my overall poker thinking but I'll have to wait until I get back on the felt to determine if that's actually the case or not.

Had an interesting hand come up when I was heads up with PokerDon at the end of our shorthanded tourney on Sunday night. I had a very slight chip lead, maybe 650-550, at the start of the hand with blinds at 6-12. Don raised to 36, I peeked down at AQ, reraised to 100 and Don smooth called. At that point, I felt 95% certain that I had the best hand. The flop came down Jh10d10d. I fired out 80 into the 200 pot and Don thought for a moment before reraising me to 210. Now I started to consider all his hand possibilities, I didn't think that he had a 10, I thought he would have played it differently. It was possible that the he had a hand like AJ or KJ, but again for some reason I just wasn't feeling like he had hit the board. So if he hadn't hit the board what were the most likely hands that he had? KQ, K9, Q9, 44-99 and AK or AQ. I felt like those were the hands he'd most likely raise with, call a reraise with and then reraise on the flop. If he had an underpair then we were 50-50 and I was likely to pick up more outs on the turn if I didn't make my hand there, everything else I was ahead of with the exception of AK, and I was willing to chance that. In any event, within 20 seconds or so I had decided I was most likely ahead or at worst a coin flip so I moved in.

It surprised Don, but he had likely come to the same conclusion I had, as he called me he said, "I think you have an underpair, so I can't fold this hand." He turned over K9, and the board bricked out and my Ace high was good. He wasn't particularly enthralled with my call, feeling like I should have laid down to his reraise, but I'm curious what other people think they may have done there.