Daniel - Poker Journal
A Quickie Poker Blog
14 Sep 2007
Yesterday, after playing a full day of poker in the tournament I still didn’t get my fix so I jumped online to play at PokerStars.com for a while before bed. I hit my “quota” of 250 hands and turned what looked to be a $20,000 losing session into a $46,000 win. I was down to $5000 before sucking out on Stinger when my trip 8’s on the turn bested his flush on the river. That got me rolling and then I cracked AA with 23 for a monster, beat AK with QQ, etc.
The other big pot I won was a pot that I actually earned rather than got lucky. I chose to sit on Stinger’s left because of all of the online guys at Stars he seems to give me the most trouble so I wanted to have position on him. In this hand he raised to $800 from the small blind. He doesn’t really limp from the small blind, he either makes a large raise as he did, or folds. I called with A-6 The flop was A-8-6 with two spades. He bet 1200 and I called. The turn was the Ks putting the flush out there and I think he bet either 3400 or 3800, I’m not sure. I was getting a little worried that he may have me drawing dead to a hand like A8 or AK, but I called anyway hoping to play a checked down river.
The river was a fourth spade, the 6s. Now Stinger bet $10,200. Making two pair was completely irrelevant to my hand, it seems extremely unlikely that he would value bet aces up or a set on the river in that spot. What isn’t impossible, though, is him value betting the Qs or even a smaller spade. He seems to be an excellent player so his range wasn’t committed to the Qs or nothing, he could very possibly be value betting even the 10s.
I didn’t think he had it, though, as I felt like he might have checked the turn. Why? I can’t say, but based on the way we’d played some hands in the past, I thought that if he had one big spade, regardless of his other card, he might check it to me. Since he did bet both the flop and the turn, I felt like I was up against another monster or diddly squat. I called the $10,200 and he turned over 9c 10h.
It’s way too early to tell how I’ll fare in that game long term, but all early indications make me feel satisfied that I’m a favorite against most lineups online.
As for that other poker game, the one million pound first prize WSOPE, I’m still in that tournament as well. I played what I felt was a flawless day of poker, but saw my stack dwindle to $31,700 from a starting point of $60,900. I was dealt junk for most of the day and when I did find a playable hand I seemed to miss the flop completely. I did make two excellent reads on the river against two young aggressive Scandinavian kids. On one hands I called three barrels with KJ on a board of AK6 9 8. On the other hand I bet a flop of A-9-6 with 55, it went check check on the turn, the river was a Q and I called that bet and won the pot. Don’t these guys know I’m a “calling station?” J
Actually on both hands, if you watched the live feed on www.worldseriesofpoker.com you would have noticed that I picked up a significant tell on both players. The 55 was a super easy call based on body language and the KJ call was a combination of betting amounts/patterns as well as a physical tell.
Action starts up at 2:00pm local time again today and I imagine I’ll probably be at the TV table again today with the two chip leaders, Gus Hansen and Patrick Antonius. Obviously with those two guys at the table it’s going to affect my strategy in a big way. What I’ll be doing differently I can’t share with you, but if you watch the live feed it should become rather obvious early on.
