Thursday Night

Sorry about the delay in posting my poker after action reports. As I'm sure you all know, Blogger has been sucking it up lately. I should go ahead and move the blog to my regular website, but that might take more initiative than I have on hand right now.

Thursday was at Startime in Roswell. I had finished 10th there on Tuesday, and in 5th place the previous night at Sidelines, so I felt pretty good about my chances when I walked in. I'm still trying to make myself play tighter early in the tournament, and I was able to for the most part. When I am pretty sure I've got the nuts, I also need to sell my hand more, which I'm also slowly improving on.

I was doing OK until it was down to two tables, but I slowly got ground down to where I had the small blind and one 1k black chip left. I was tired at this point and had forgetten to put the small blind in yet, but the cards had already been dealt and I had also already looked at the A4o in my hand. Someone said something about the blind and I said "Oh, am I the small blind? I'm all in I guess." This was a poker faux paux, since there were four people before me that hadn't acted yet. It's not really that big of a deal, since it was only 1k in chips, and most people had well over 10k in their hands at the table at that point.

The guy to my left, however, who was about my age with a butch type hair cut and a stocky build, got overly pissed about it. He cussed, glared, and shook his head at me. I ended up winning the small pot after someone called me, so he kept glaring at me for the next 10 minutes. Normally everyone is laughing and cutting up at the table, but ours was quiet during that time. Finally he went all in after I called the blinds in front of him. He said something like "I raise all in 3300. 33 was my highschool football jersey so I've got a good feeling about this hand."

I was holding an A6o. This entire week I've held a lot of hands with an Ace and a low kicker and had done pretty well with them, so I called him. He was pissed that I called and he turned over a QJs, so it was pretty much a coin flip. I ended up winning the pot and knocking him out of the game. He stood up, cussed, and stormed out. I looked around the table and said "Well, I was in the band in highschool." Everyone laughed and the tension of the previous ten minutes was broken.

I made the final table again that night. Believe it or not I busted out with an A8o. I was on the short stack and pushed all in with it after a regular player named Sarah had just raised about 4k across the table from me and it was folded around to me. I pushed it in and it folded back to her. My raise was about 10k, so it was enough for her to think about it. She finally said "I'll contribute to your chips and called me."

"I just want to get all my money in with the best hand," I replied.

"I'm sure you have the best hand," she said and turned over an A4o.

I had won this type of hand a lot this week, but had also busted out with very similar hands the previous two nights. She pretty much needed a 4 so there were only 3 outs for me to really worry about out of the 48 that I hadn't seen yet, so I guess I was roughly 70% to win the hand.

So of course the flop had a 4 in it, turning the odds for me to win to about 12%. I finished in 5th place for the second night in a row, only two spots away from free food and drinks. For the week I finished 10th, 5th, and 5th, so I am definitely improving.