Back to the action

Got back from Central America after a quick business trip kept me from the poker tables for a few days. Wanted to play live this evening but that fell through as family responsibilities kept me home. The good thing is that I worked on getting through the Poker Room bonus that looks like it will take forever. Luckily for me it seems that the site is good at attracting lots of poor players. Up $131 tonight at the ring tables but then felt like playing in a couple tournaments. Started with a one table SNG for $5 and won that and then came 2nd in a two table $5 SNG. So that added another $44 to the win column.

Again it just felt like tonight in the SNG's that I would hit my lucky river when needed to keep me in the tourney. Also, I don't think I have ever spiked so many hands with top two pair and with blind escalation people get over aggressive.

At the ring tables I was struggling for a long time this evening. Played over 500 hands tonight which is a lot for me with only two tables open. I find that at some tables I just can't win so I am trying to leave those tables before they cost me too much. Had AA quite often tonight which probably explains the good results. That being said I think I only won the blinds with AA three times and lost $15 with it when someone called down to river with top pair and caught 2nd pair on the river against me. Close to the end of the time I was playing I decided to open a NL100 table and put in a few hands at that level. About three hands in I get AA from the dealer button. One limper and one raise ahead of me to 3.5x bb so I reraise it to $6 just to try to see how big of a hand he has. The limper folds and the raiser comes over the top and makes it $10 which in most cases I would just call in this situation (but I do dislike the min raise against me!). Instead, I decided to reraise as if I wanted to end the hand right there or to make it a huge pot so they have to call post flop. So I push it to $30 and get called right away.

Flop is A 2h 4h which is a great flop for me but I don't like that flush draw but I can't imagine that they called without a big pocket pair. Opponent leads out with a push all in and I can't click call fast enough! They had QQ and it was an easy $87 towards the win column.

About a min after this happens I get my big hand at the NL50 table. Dealt AA in EP and raise to 4x bb which is standard for me. It folds around to the SB who reraises. Now at NL50 tables people only reraise with AA or KK which is the only difference from the NL100 tables. So in this case to hide the AA (I believe he has KK at this point) I just call the reraise. Flop is 9c, 10h, 4s which should get him betting but I have to be careful to not let the fish off of the hook. He leads out for $4, I raise to $8 and get reraised to $12. Now I am quite sure that I have him, and I am hoping that he couldn't play this way with 10's! Call the $12 and watch a 4d come on turn and he leads out for a $10 bet into a $31 pot which looked small but a push by me would be a pot sized bet so I pushed. He called and the river was a J and I was right that he had KK and I pulled $54 to the win column for this hand.

So outside of these hands I was fooling around too much and giving away chips in silly ways. Been a bit too aggressive in attacking short stacks at the table which has cost me. More stuff to work on to improve the game.

But in the meantime I will continue to try to maximize my winnings from solid hands. Didn't get KK, QQ, JJ tonight but had a few 10's and A's to make up for it.