Thanks for Giving

Pre-Thanksgiving tourneys were wonderful tonight. My cleaning lady did a wonderful job this morning making the Wall Street Poker room look all sparkly (sparkly is good) and everyone was in very good spirits. Even CK managed to extricate herself from work to join in the fun! The Slayer brought his girl Rachel, who was very game to try this tournament thing, even if she was pretty self-conscious about playing. Don’t sweat it Rachel! We’ve all been there at one time, I promise. E came along for the ride too, ostensibly to help me pick locations for my four new lithographs I bought on my birthday (August 12th rocks!). But after about an hour of just hanging out on the couch, watching basketball on mute, even the most patient girl has to call it a night. It’s up to you Wall Street Crew. We have to find a way to make E interested in this game., because I like this one and I really don’t want to have to make a hard choice! :-)

The first tourney had nothing going for me. Slayer, in typical fashion, kept drawing out on me. I gave up about half my chips to him early on when my AT flopped 984, rainbow. It checked all around and then a Ten popped up on the turn. I bet out the pot and Slayer min-raised me. Really? I called and the river was a brick. He bet out another 400 and I called because I wanted to see what kind of crap he had. How about 84o? Oy Vey. After that, I just couldn’t get much going and since everyone was playing pretty tight I had to wait for cards that didn’t come. I finished up in 8th place, but ahead of Slayer who promptly dumped his large stack to LJ. She’s good like that. I didn’t pay much attention after that, trying to split my time between E and Slayer, who was pestering me about our upcoming Vegas trip. By the time I found out what was going on, Tony S bubbled and it was No River Brown, LJ and Ken in the money. Ken, incidentally, came back from an ultra short stack to make it into the money. Good job Ken! LJ and Michael battled it out for the big money, with Michael finally taking out LJ, who was peeved that she blew so much of her early lead in the middle of the tourney. Still pretty damned good showing, if you ask me.

The second tourney played much better for me. I picked up a lot of good pots, but the funny thing is I didn’t have the monsters except once, which I totally blew. Every one of the hands I won was taken down with either excellent betting, or top pair plus excellent betting. I was just ‘on’ in terms of bet sizing. Which is why it was so puzzling that I misplayed the following hand. Blinds are 100/200 and I pick up AhJh (Asian Jew!) UTG +1. It folds to me and I pop it to 700. Just enough that I can get away from a re-raise but enough to make people think. It folds around to Matty Ebs, who thinks for an agonizing few seconds, plays with his chips and then smooth calls. I’m worried about what he’s got since my hand is not fantastic out of position and he’s capable of making moves. But his smooth call gets me thinking that he might have KQ or Jacks or Tens. So when the flop came Kh Ts 8c, I wasn’t happy. I checked, hoping he would think I was slow playing AK. To my amazement, he checked, giving me a free card. The turn was the most beautiful Qh I’ve ever seen. I made a completely hidden Broadway straight with the nut flush draw on the river! We were both relatively even in chips and I thought back to what I thought he might have had. I checked my nuts and he bet out 1000. I immediately pushed all in. But instead of insta-calling with TT, KQ or KJ, like I thought he had, he went into the tank and folded after about 30 seconds. He claimed JJ and I believe him given the action. But LJ gave me a verbal spanking as to why I didn’t smooth call that. But then what? If he’s got the straight draw, he might hit and we would chop the pot if an Ace came. If he’s got a set, he’s calling me, so my all-in is OK (I want the call). What hand is calling there that possibly has a chance of catching up? Maybe a flush draw? 8h9h? The range of hands is small and the chance he had the big hand he was slowplaying is big. So I went with my gut, which was wrong. Although, if you get right down to it, he DID have the big hand preflop. If I was in position on that hand, I might have been able to smooth call, but OOP is a tough place to smooth call, since I pretty much have to bet the river. It was also the only hand I showed down tonight (I’m making an effort), because it was just too pretty. Matty got his revenge on me though, doubling up more than once to go into the chip lead with 4 players left. My once mighty chip lead dwindled down to nothing and I got lucky to double through at just the right time with 88 in the BB vs. W’s A5 in the SB. No River had just doubled through as a shorter stack than me and my hopes of limping into the money were going down. The double through kept me healthy and when I woke up with AsTs when Michael pushed all-in, I called and took him out when his A3 couldn’t suck out a three. Three way, I still didn’t have a large chip lead, but I found AhKh and pushed all in with 3200 and blinds at 500/1000. Matty and W both called and checked it all the way down. I didn’t hit anything and was about to muck when I heard W say, “Queen high”. Matty said, “King High”. I said, “Ace high” and tripled up to take the lead! But only barely. Matty finally took out W when she started dwindling a bit and decided to push when her BB 27o hit a 2 on the flop. Matty called with top pair and took it down. It was getting pretty late in the night and it had been a tense three way battle for a good 30 minutes so Matty was amenable to chopping it up with me, taking first in the process.

An excellent night for everyone. Good poker, good friends and a nice relaxing weekend coming up. There’s plenty of poker on the way for me. Tomorrow night is a .50/1 NL cash game at the CrackHouse and Saturday night I’m going down to AC for some Tropicana action. Is a Pink Game in my future? Could be…

Stay tuned…