It’s a Merry Furlough Xmas (Furlough Redux)
Those of you that have read this blog from the beginning may recall that I started it when the federal government had it’s first big shutdown in recent memory in the fall of 2013. Now, a little more than 5 years and almost 2000 hours of 30/60 LHE later, here we are, with no realistic chance of avoiding a shutdown, perhaps until after New Years (Note: I've started writing this just before Xmas, just slow on posting). I’ve obviously lost my commitment to this blog but I thought I’d give followers an update since I have some time on my hands now.
I see my last update was in April, before I went to Foxwoods (lost a little bit playing 150/300 mix in a very soft lineup and a bunch playing 75 stud) and WSOP (split my time between 100/200 mix at Bellagio where I had my first ever $10K day (in the black) and taking horrific beats in NLHE donkaments). I’ll try to find some of my texts to friends about these later. Post-WSOP I had good run at the 30 game at Astar, winning 11 of 14 sessions, but I had a couple of terrible 50/100 sessions that damped my enthusiasm so I decided in mid-September to stay away from the poker room until November, do some hiking and biking now that the weather had cooled off a bit. I actually wasn’t sure I was going to return in November but I did and it feels pretty good. Actually, it feels great because I had 10 consecutive winning sessions at 30/60, including multiple 50 big bet wins. This crazy heater saw me winning almost 4 BBs/hr over this time frame, it’s not surprising that I was looking forward to the next session with a run like this. It finally came crashing back to earth yesterday (Sunday December 24th), all the big hands were cracked and all of the draws bricked (unless my opponents had them). All good heaters must come to an end…
Here’s some of the more interesting hands over the past several weeks.
1-Last night (Sunday) saw this crazy hand: one limp, straightforward reg raises, fish calls, hero 3b button with A
K
, BB calls, all call, pot 465. Flop is basically gin, A
Q
7
, chks to me and I bet, BB folds, limper calls reg raises fish calls hero 3b limper folds, reg now 4b fish calls and hero calls, figuring he needs a K or a spade now, pot 855. I’m certain that reg has AQ, fish could have a pair, 2 pair, a set, a flush, or a flush draw. Turn is 7
, bet/raise(?!)/call;call, pot 1215. Now I’m pretty sure I need the flush to hit. River is 10
, k/b/f;c. That’s right, I folded getting 21:1-the
fur coat dilemma! Pretty sure I’ve never done that before but I’m sure that fish has the flush, which he does, J
8
. Reg flashed an A when he folded.
2-Very similar to previous hand: mediocre straightforward reg opens, one call, SB folds, I just call A
K
in BB. Flop is again monotone, K
9
3
, reg bets caller folds, hero cr/4b. Reg will never show up with K9 here, likely AK or KxQ
. Turn is a blank b/c. River K
, b/r/c. 99, ugh.
Actually hadyet another hand go down like that the previous day, flop top/top with nut flush redraw lose to a flopped flush. Can’t ever recall having that happen so frequently for a seeming unusual scenario, monotone flops are reasonably infrequent.
It wasn’t all coolers of course. Here’s a big suckout from Saturday night:
3-Table is crazy loose, guy on my direct right is VPIP about 90%, not sure what constitutes a fold in his playbook after seeing some hands he’ll play for a raise. Villain in this hand is the same reg from hand 2 above. Hero opens JTs UTG, gun+1 calls, reg 3b, blinds both call, hero caps, all call, pot 600. Flop T62r one of my suit, bcrc3; c4(?!)ccc, pot 1200. Turn 8, kkb(??)cr; fccc, pot 1680. I hesitated for quite a bit before betting-villain could definitely have capped with 2 overs, and wtf does VPIP90 have?? Convinced that I need to improve on river to win this monster, and behold the lovely J on the river. VPIP90 chks, I don’t think I can count on villain betting here so I bet, caller folds, and both call. Villain shows me his QQ, VPIP90 tells me he had T6, completely plausible. I'm priced in until the river no matter what, nice to suck out occasionally.
Here’s a “wtf is he thinking” from 2/5-100 spread limit, while waiting for 30/60-I don't know if the altitude and weed makes Colorado poker players bad but something sure does:
4-My first hand at the table so no reads, two limps, I raise AK to 25 from cutoff, button calls blinds fold limpers call. Flop AKTr, I bet 45, button calls limper1 calls limper2 folds. Turn 6 I bet 100 button calls limper1 folds. River 3 I bet 100, button tanks, turns his K9o face up and stares at me, I say "That's a big hand", "I know", tanks some more and calls. 😀 Poker is good!
Games were extra good later in the fall as the bad beat jackpot got bigger and the qualifier starting dropping towards Aces full of Jacks when I played this hand (aces full of queens is qualifier, BBJ is at $460K):
5-My kill after having QQ and KK hold up in consecutive hands, joke to the dealer that the natural progression is AA, look down and I have…KK again! UTG opens, hero 3b gun+1, gun+2 is all in for less, blinds fold and UTG calls. Flop is AK9r, he ck/c, turn is a blank, same action, and he folds the river. As I’m raking in the side pot, all in guy rolls over his AA! We had 2 pulls for the case K, I would’ve won $138K (30% of the BBJ) if it had come in. Same situation was what won it about a week or so later at a 2/5 game, AA vs JJ, AJx on flop, J on turn, they got it all in on the river and celebrated.
Of course, the run good has to be balanced a bit with some run bad:
6-Raise and 2 calls, I raise button Q
Jc
blinds fold, 4 of us see a K
5
5
flop, I bet, opener calls raise fold call call. Turn 6
kbc;c,. River K
🙁, I call on the off chance he has a flush (fur coat dilemma again) but he has a K
7-Kill pot I open KQo UTG, killer calls and 2 in position callers. Flop AJ9 I bet all call. Turn Q, 3 chks, fish bets the button, all call. River J chks through. I chop with fish who has Q6dd, there are no diamonds on flop. Hands like this just leave me shaking my head
I obviously had some serious good luck to win 10 straight sessions, this was how one of those great sessions started:
8-Early in the session, 4 bets to me in the BB with A
K
, flop Tx5
4
, button, who capped preflop, bets, I raise, opener folds, others call (?). Not sure what button is capping/betting that doesn’t involve an overpair, why isn’t he 3betting here?? Turn is an offsuit 3, I chk, preflop 3better bets, button calls, hero calls. River 2
and I donk, 3better folds and button calls. He didn’t look too happy, and things just kept getting worse for him.
9-A couple of orbits later, 5 limpers, button (same guy as last hand) raises, I call K
5
in Bb, 7 of us see a Tx7
3
flop, button bets, only 3 callers. Turn 3, only 2 callers, river K and I donk, only button calls. He’s pretty much lost it at this point, the rest of the session did not go well for him…
There’s very few players that I will table change to bum hunt since the games are usually pretty good, but this next guy is pretty special. Very passive unless he has a huge hand, I got lucky in 2 big pots against him:
10-Our tilted guy from hands 8 and 9 above raises a limper because he's tilted and raising everything, I 3b KJo from the cutoff, button (our Q6s fish from hand 7) cold calls 3 and special dude (SD) caps from SB, his range is exactly AA. 5 of us see a K93 flop, SD bets all call. Turn K and he chks, tilted guy bets, I raise, button folds, both call. River J they both call and I rake in a $1300 pot 😀
Finally, our last hand before I head up to the Astar, SD from hand 10 is our victim again:
11- I open JTs hijack, SD calls button, big blind calls. Flop T83r I bet, SD calls, BB folds. Turn J I bet, he calls. River J he raises and calls my 3b, he has KJ. It’s good to run good…
Okay, that’s enough hands for now, DougL has reminded me I’ve been procrastinating on getting this posted. I’ve played a few more sessions since I wrote this, not all of them good.
One final note: my colleague just came back from Japan and brought me this as a present:
This is good stuff, very smooth, and hard to find in the US (well, I’ve never seen it at my liquor store, it’s probably possible to order it online, but it tastes much better knowing it came from Japan).
Okay, this is really the final note: I know that updates to this blog aren't even sporadic anymore. I do rather enjoy writing them, and I especially like that I've met a lot of good people because of this, both here in Colorado and in various other venues. Work is a lot less busy for me at the moment so I'll try to do better on keeping you all up to date but I've promised that before...