Poker Trip

I took a trip down to Chumash last week. Joe put me in, and believe it or not there was no action at the 2/5NL game on a friday night...pathetic. For the longest time the only games they spread were 2/4, 3/6, 4/8, the occasional 6/12, and the 2/5NL $200 max. Just recently they started spreading a 1/2NL $50 max buy-in. The game has very little play and is chalk full of horrible players. Of course with horrible players comes a minefield of rediculous calls and terrible beats. And of course, we showed up at around 6PM on a saturday and there was four $50NL games going and ONE friggin $200NL. Joe was staking me on this night, and seeing as how there was a list of only about six players on the $200NL list, it looked to be a while before either of us took a seat. So I figured I'd ante up and play the $50NL game.

After folding the first few rounds I figured I'd take a stab at the pot from the button. There were two limpers and I bumped it to $8 with the Ks8h. I got one caller out of the SB and the others folded. The board came up a pretty decent As Qs 9s. The caller checked and I bet out $15. He tried to check behind me.....and then after he was told that he couldn't check he called the bet. Haha fantastic. The turn was a K. Now I figured to have the best hand as well as, obviously, the best draw. Except now he bet into me. $10 was the bet in front of me. With $60 in the pot and with me on only $20 I had an easy jam and got a quick call. I turned over my hand and he tabled Jd9c. River: Jh. REBUY

I wasn't too upset since I was expecting that in this game goin in, so I quickly bought for another $50. It took less than 20 minutes for me to get into another confrontation with this guy. In middle position I raised it up to $8 after one limper with the 56s. He called without hesitation behind me and it folded around. The board came up with what I thought, again, was a pretty good flop for me. With 3s 4s Jd, I bet $12 into the caller. He raised another $12. And again, with a $50 buy-in, I was forced into another situation where I felt the money needed to go in. There was only one hand that I was fearful of, and that was the AJs. IF he did have that hand then I was only a 2.5-1 dog on the hand but I was getting laid 3.7-1 on my last $18 after his raise. Given his previous hand holdings I highly doubted he had anything that huge, and if he didn't have the AJs then I'm looking to be a 55-45 favorite over any other pair, still ahead against a 4 3, and a slight dog to a set but still facing major odds. Fortunately for ME I overthought the situation and he ended up calling me with Q3 offsuit, putting me as a 70-30 favorite. Fortunately for HIM I blank blanked and had to rebuy again.

That one kind of frustrated me. I took a deep breath and shelled out the next $50. Again, it took me less than 20 minutes to hook up with another guy who wanted to put all of his money in on the flop. Luckily for ME I had flopped a set with my 77 on a board of 5-7-8. Luckily for HIM he had decided to put his whole stack in on a Q6 and managed to turn the 9 as I managed to blank the chance to boat the river. AAAGGHH. It's cool I got more to play. I rebought for another $50 and was able to at least get back another $100 before they finally started a 2/5NL $200 max three hours after we arrived.

I was up and down in the 2/5NL game. I bought in for the max $200 and never broke the $450 mark. I kept getting up to $450 and then getting knocked back down to $200. Then I'd get back up to $400, then back down to $200. I felt like I was playing ok but not great. It's been about a month since I've played a session at the Mash, but I definitely felt better than I did last time when I lost my mind. This time I felt like I was making good plays and good reads to get a little ground, but then I would lose it back in tough situations. There was two situations where I probably could've saved money. In the first situation I got stuck on a tough read. I had two choices and picked the wrong read. In the second situation I got overly aggressive against the wrong player and had I been less aggressive I could've saved a bit of money. Overall I ended up down on the session, but I know what I need to fix and what to get a hold of next time I get a back.

We got Paul's game tomorrow and I'm hopin to take down some cash in that cuz I'm feelin like I can right now. Although I've barely played in the past month I'm feelin like I can cruise right now and take down the ole' weekend tourney against weak players. Updates to come on Sunday/Monday.