Sunday Lovely Sunday

Meant to write a post about Jordan's game on Friday, but events overtook it so I'll get that out of the way first.

After leaving work at 6:30, I had 3 hours to kill before the game, so I figured I'd fill it in by playing poker. Went to the club, dink and donked, pulled of one sweet bluff pushing someone off his pair of aces weak kicker, actually won a showdown or two, managed to book a small-but-I'll take it 125 win before heading downtown to the lair of Mr. High. When I got there, maybe five minutes late, I was surprised to see 6 guys already waiting--rare that people are so punctual but I think I was walking into a crack-den and they were jonesing to get their product.

Other than the host, the line-up included Kid Dynamite (whom I'd invited), Hoyazo, Drewspop, various and sundry Mikes that are friends with Jordan, and, arriving 15 minutes late as her perrogative when upping the average class factor of a get-together so much, the lovely Mrs. SoxLover.

She blended right in once Kid Dynamite got over his intial shyness at meeting her and went straight to his David Williams-eats-the-ass-of-some-old-chick story. What is it about my wife that brings out the best in my poker blogger friends? I guess they figure if she can put up with me, she must be pretty tolerant. Okay, that's a pretty good read.

Anyhoo, condense Friday night was me busting out in the first hand of the sit and go when the flush draw that I had been so donkishly chasing down Drewspop with actually got there. Unfortunately, he had the nut flush. Thing that threw me was that he was not betting the hand like a draw. This is perhaps because in addition to flopping a nut flush draw, he had flopped top pair and turned two pair. I was thoroughly powned from the start to the end of the hand.

I dealt the game for awhile, cheering Mrs. Sox on as she worked her way through the field. We then got enough players out to start a 0.50-1.00 (50 max) NL table with 5 and I left the dealing to the players. Sadly, Mrs. Sox bubbled but as usual vastly out performed her worse half.

In the cash game I think my game was pretty on. Helped in the beginning that the deck exploded as I kept on getting pocket pairs. Things took a turn to the south though as Drewspop proved he could beat from behind as well as ahead, cracking my big slick all in with his king jack offsuit. Yes, that's right, be bludgeoned me with the Donkey. He didn't stack me as I had him covered, but I had to rebuild my stack until Jordan showed up.

I had a good run taking chips from Mikey Aps, against whom I found position to be vital. Jordan, however, I played myself into a coffin against. Tricky tricky combination bluffs and semi-bluffs all in one hand with a scary board and big bets. Small problem in the plan was that he had flopped a set of queens and turned quads. Had to be queens of course.

I had to rebuild again, which I was able to, finally cashing out exactly even on the cash table, down my 60 buying at the tourney but at least up for the night.

Not before seeing Mikey Aps lay an absolutely terrible beat on my sweet wife (still wish he had done it to me instead). While talking to Jordan about how she needs to learn to bluff more, she looks at her cards and quickly grows quiet. With 26 behind, she opens the pot UTG to 4. Mikey smooth calls her immediately, something he was doing all night. Jordan and I both laugh as it's clear she had a big hand.

Flop comes 269 rainbow and after calculating, she bets out 6. Mikey raises her 10, and she pushes all in over the top. He calls the remaining bet and they flip over. She has the fishhooks. He has Doyle Brunson. Offsuit. Yes, he made these moves with ten-deuce offsuit. Anyone care to guess what card the river was? Hint: it was not a ten.

"I thought she had overs" was said. That ended the night.

Still, we had a blast, Jordan was a great host (especially as he cleaned up taking 1st in the tourney and getting me to pay him off in the cash game).

Fast forward through yesterday, which included less poker as we actually went out and did something non-poker related.

This morning, a little groggy from aforementioned night out, I slipped into the Sunday satellite for the 200+15 with Weak Player (I would link, but his last post was on the ARPANET). That went well as with Weak's urging, I was able to resist the urge to play QQ against a raise late in the tourney with a stack that he (correctly) deemed big enough to fold into the money--in these tourneys, the strategic play in the end is largely governed by the fact that all winners receive the same prize regardless of place. After winning, I immediately unregistered from the tourney, yielding T dollars on Stars that you can use for any tournament.

Took a break, and then we decided to play something else. Hadn't had much luck with the 20+2 180s, with 16 sessions only yielding two cashes, and each of those the minimum, but figured what the hell, it was a mostly harmless use of a Sunday afternoon that I was already up over 200 on.

So I played. Never really had to come from behind except once on the final table, when I raised 4x preflop from the button with TT, got called by the big blind, flopped 89J with two spades, got it all in and found out my opponent had called with QT suited and had flopped a straight. I had him covered but was facing a severe crippling. Then I got runner runner for flush. I had absolutely no sympathy for the guy.

We had some real head cases at the final table but I managed to double up on a few coin tosses and trap a couple of maniacs to grow from the second shortest stack with 8 to go to the second biggest with four to go. Then I got beaten up a bit when my KK fell at A4 all in preflop, and became short stack for a little while until I clawed my way back in it. By this time, I had a great cheering section of Weak Player, Garthmeister and Flux, all chatting away on Skype. My railbirds (which also included Weak's and my wives) got thicker when out of nowhere Surflexus popped up in the table chat. I guess all the support helped--thank you all so much:



I was for a few moments pretty disappointed not to take it down as I got heads up with a 2:1 deficit against a psychopath and at one point trapped him into giving me the lead. In the end, I probably lost patience (he was min-raising literally every hand) and got my chips in with second pair against his flopped top pair. I'll take it.

Thank to all the railbirds (even the jackass Yankee fan that was trying to put me on tilt with the high brow ribbing one comes to expect from fans of the Bombers).