but I just had to put this picture of her on here becasue it makes me laugh so hard when i look at it!!!! LOLOLOLOLOLOLOL!!!
Anyway on to poker talk....
Before i recount my weekend i want to mention a book that i just finished reading called How to Turn Your Poker Playing Into A Business by Ann-Margaret Johnston. I recommend it if you are uncertain about how you are taxed on you winnings whether poker is a hobby or your profession. It was an interesting read and definatley something i'll refer back to.
ok on to the poker playing
Friday morning I woke up did a few things a round the house, took Lucy for a walk then loaded up and hit the road. It took me 2 1/2 hours to get to Isle of capri, I got there around 12:30pm. I tried to check in but they did not have my room ready yet. No worries...I certainly knew how to pass the time! The buffet!! Ha! You thought I was going to say poker huh? WEll, yeah the buffet and then I headed up to the poker room. I approached the sign in desk and got put on the 2/4 and the 5/5 list. I preferered to play the 2/4 but i really didn;t want to wait for a long time so i figured I'd just play whatever came up first. They were just starting a new 5/5 table so that's where i took my seat but as it turned out there was someone at the 2/4 that wanted a seat at the 5/5 so we switched and everyone was happy. The big stack at my table was around$1000 so i was able to buyin for $500. And a way we go! First of all let me just say that if you havent played at the isle prepare your self!...This game plays so loose and much higher than 2/4. A standard raise is $20-$25 and still 5 players will see the flop! It was a very volatile game! I was debating what my strategy would be for this kinda game...there was so much gamble in it...so i figured i'd just jump in there and gamble too! :) One key hand that I won alot of chips in was a rare time that I was in the big blind and got to check my option with a Q 6. The flop came QQx. I bet $35, got called by one person. The turn was a 6....sweet full house. Now i bet about $75 and got raised to around $150, i called. The river was a blank I bet $150 the guy moves all in for about $250 I call and win a monster pot. I win a couple more small pots and build my chip stack up to around $1,100 in about 2 hours. Now here is where poker gets tricky for me. When to stop playing??? Well my first mistake was calling Dawne and telling her that I was up $600+. Of course she wanted me to stop playing right then...get up, cash out! But what was I supposed to do...go sit in my hotel room after only playing for 2 hours??? I came to play poker! So i promised her that i would play tighter for the rest of the day. Right. In all honesty I did tighten up but i took one really bad beat that cost me alot of chips. Here is the brief version: i was in the hand with 7 5 suited. the flop comes 775. Dream flop obviously. The problem was someone else had a seven too with a higher kicker. He hit his kicker on the river for a bigger full house. That hurt. Anyway I was up and down for the next few hours...never dropping below my initial $500 buyin. I finally got up and cashed out with about $150 profit. It was better than losing money but it still would have been nice to have won more.
:(
On to day 2. I woke up and drove to coushatta. The plan was to play in their 2/5 game for a couple of hours then play in their $230 tourny.
I had to wait for about 30 minutes before i got a seat I bought in again for $500 and only played for about an hour and a half before the tourny started. I honestly can not remember any remarkable hands....I just know that cashed out for about $660 so again a profit of $160. Much better though considering i didnt play for very long.
The tourny started at noon. And to be honest I was sort of wishing that i hadnt registered for it already becasue i would have liked to just keep playing the cash game. Mainly because i heard that the tourny only had like 40 people in it. Usually there is 100+ people but the hurricane aftermath was keeping alot of the texans away. Anyway, it started out well. Early on i flopped a full house holding a suited A5 and won alot of chips, then i floped 2 pair holding AQ again alot of chips, I raised with a 35 of diamonds and ended up making a flush and won alot of chips.....but then thing took a turn for the worse. The problem was with so few people there there was not as many chips in play therefor with the increasing blinds everone was feeling short stacked quickly. The whole tourny just played differently. Several people were discussing this. It basically sucked. Anyway i lost alot of chips to this guy that went AIPF with A9. I had pocket kings, i had to call. He ended up catching an ace of course. Then i was short stacked with about 12 people left. I was just looking for spots to double up. I picked up some decent hands managed to double up once with an A 8 spades and made the nut flush but it still didnt get me back in the game. My final hand (just short of the money) was a pecular hand. At this point i was looking for any ace to shove with. I picked up A2 suited in the big blind. Only one person had called my big blind everyone else folded including the small blind. I shoved. He had about the same amount of chips as me so i was thinking he would need a pretty good hand to call off all his chips with. He called me with 3 6 offsuit. weird. whatever. he hit a 6 on the flop. i never hit my ace and i was out. The bad news is that i did not cash, the good news it that i am happy with the way that i played and i cant see any mistakes that i made.
Back to the cash games!
I had to wait a bit for a seat then they started a new table that was a must move table. I played at the first table for about 15 minutes without any thing exciting happening except some guy being rude to the dealer. He made a string bet, (I saw his hand clearly go over the line), so the dealer wouldn't let him put more chips and he kept arguing with her. I kept my mouth shut but he was definately wrong. If he had kept on with it i might have said something to him. As it turned out he quieted down and then i got moved to the MAIN table. This game had been going on all nite long so there were some monster stacks on this table. Probably $20k on the table. I was really not thrilled to be moving to this table with my measly $500 and as it turned out i didnt have to! This guy Paul who is a regular was just telling the floor that he wanted to move from the other main table to the MAIN table, i hadnt even sat down yet so with a couple of nods of our heads it was decided...i would take his seat at the second main table and he would take my seat at the MAIN table. Getting all this??? Ok so now on to poker.....i like this table! This table was a little bit loose to but nothing like the Isle. The was these two black guys that were really kicking up the action and trying to bully people out of pots. Their chips stacks were up and down from $200 to $500 from one hand to the next. I was avoiding them. There was one person on my left that i was very anxious to get into a pot with though. I dont mean to sound rude but this guy was the fishy fish fish. Example: I had Ace Queen. The flop came Axx. He could not lay down his pocket queens to save his life (or his chips) I won about $200 off of him. He reloaded and i took another $75. I was very nice to him when i was taking his money though. He reloaded alot, $200 each time. He was in the whole maybe for about $1200. Bummer for him. I really wanted him to stick around but the problem was that one of the black guys was being kinda a jerk to him trying to intimidate him. So stupid. So the fish finally left. And several of us kinda came down on the black dude like saying.....man, why did you run him off??? Some people just dont get it. I mean if someone is losing a bunch of money why would you want to run them off??? I was trying to be really sympathetic when i took his money...kinda like "sorry buddy, it could happen to anyone you played well" even though he didn't. whatever. The only other hand i want to talk about (this post is getting long) is one where i had pocket aces. I raised preflop got a couple of callers. Flop came A T x. It was checked to me I bet, one person folded one person called. Actually i cant remember exactly how it all went down. Basically a jack hit on the river. The guy bet $45 and i thought about it and decided to just call just in case the guy had KQ and had just made a straight. Well that was in fact exactly what he had and so he beat my set of aces. The reason i am writing about this hand is because even though i lost this hand i only lost about $80. Several people at the table commented that it was incredibly disciplined of me not to go broke with that hand. So yeah that was good. looking back i should have bet bigger to push him off his draw. but at least i realized when i was beat and lost the minimum. soooo anyway i finally deicded to head home around 7pm. up another $175.
All in all:
cash games: + $485
tourny: -$230
not a very profitable weekend. oh well i had a great time and i at least i didnt lose money!!
