Happy New Year

I hope everyone had a good one.

Yesterday was a clean start, a new session if you will. Believe it or not, I decided to start out with triple draw.

I found a juicy 3-6 table with Weak Player (not that it was juicy because of Weak Player) and several 3 card draw 3 betting small blind maniacs. The end of the previous sentence might not make sense to the bulk of the world with no experience (or interest) in playing triple draw, but trust me when I tell you, someone who is willing to three-bet preflop from the small blind and then draw 3 cards on the first draw is someone with whom you want to play.

I went a little card dead and unfortunately was unable to profit from the table. That is pretty cold prose, let me try again: it sucked ass. But I did have this dealt to me for the ages:

That's right, I had a pat straight flush dealt to me in triple draw deuce-seven, where the goal of the hand is to get the lowest possible hand and straights and straight flushes DO count against you. It's actually a thought to play this, as I could drop the 9 and draw for a very rough 8 (need a 2 or 3 no heart but not a 4) but it's a very marginal move to draw to six outs to catch a hand that has a good chance of being second best, particularly out of position and facing a raise.

So I laid down the monster, but not before taking the screen shot (obviously).

We followed this up with a 20+2 180 Sit and Go at stars without success, then on to a $50 NL cash ring game on Full Tilt. No dice as my JJ didn't hold up against AK and my AJ fell victim to a jack high flop and smooth called aces.

Frustration mounted a bit, so I did what all frustration-avoiding people should do--I switched to over to Razz, another fun kick in the junk low game. Contrary to form, I did manage to make some decent scratch there at an early session, almost getting back to black for the day.

So lets relax, have a drink, and play something stupid. How about a 2500 player 10+1 at Party? That's got to fit the bill. Weak and I fired it up, and off we went. Had a few hands early and managed to take down a decent pot to get my stack in a reasonable space. Then I noticed that it was pretty difficult to protect hands preflop. Shall I say impossible?

Betting out didn't seem to work so I figured I'd give the old limp-all in reraise a shot. 2nd UTG, folds to my aces, I check. 4 callers of the 30 blind to the small blind--oh crap am I going to have to play this 7 ways? Nope, small blind, makes it 150 to go. Bingo! Folds to me and I push with 1500. Man on my immediate right had me covered and actually calls (was he limp raising too???) as does the small blind with exactly 39 chips less than me. Caller had AK off and SB had 77.

Oh brother. No need to tell you which card higher than six and less than eight hit the flop, but let's just say I was a bit short stacked.

No problem. I doubled up, tripled up, doubled up, tripled up plus (set of 4s called by two players with top pair (Jack) middle kicker), until I actually had 1400 chips again, this time just under the tourney average. Oh what a story was this going to make, coming back from the felt to take down the massive field.

But then I got aces again.

Middle position raises the 50 blind to 250 and it folds around to me in the big blind. I push. He calls with the relative monster of Hilton Sisters. Queen on the flop and I'm done, aces no good twice. Everyone has this story, but I felt particularly like Sisyphus.

So back to Razz. Started a new 5-10 session and got the crap kicked out of me for the first hour, down almost 200. But I felt the table was good and I kept in there, eventually building to a profit before slipping back to a small loss. But not before opening a second 3-6 table with Weak Player. This table was the single juiciest razz table ever in the history of mankind. Okay, maybe not that good but it was a good table. So good I actually climbed back into the black on the day, notwithstanding one last 18 player Sit and Go I second-bubbled on: up $9 American.

Oh while all this was going on Mrs. SoxLover and Mrs. Weak Player each cashed in a 2000+ Stars 2+0.20, with Mrs. Weak Player (following my sage advice to the short stack that she should "shove in the damn chips" and cracking aces with sooooooted King-six along the way--vicarious revenge) outlasting more than 2000 players to rake in her own $9 American.

Happy New Year indeed.