The Re-Squeeze

I was playing a 6 man Pot Limit Hold-em tournament on stars the other day when this hand came up. There is a few cool tidbits in this hand that i can talkin about. Lets set up the situation. It's the 4th level of the tournament and we need to start accumulating chips. My table image is Semi-Tight Aggressive showing down some hands that are good and others that i had re raised in spots with suited connectors and cracked some people hands when they flat called. The blinds are at 50/100. Here are the chip stacks.

Seat 1: JSharpton (4615 in chips)
Seat 2: Tristsomfaen (1810 in chips)
Seat 4: XT@TX (2205 in chips)
Seat 5: trixter23 (6720 in chips)
Seat 6: J . Be Good (2235 in chips)
trixter23: posts small blind 50
J . Be Good: posts big blind 100

JSharpton: raises 100 to 200

I'm in the small blind and UTG mini raises to 200. Unlike in some of my previous posts' this mini raise is a little bit different. Im not reading strength from this guy because he plays an extremely laggy style. I could put him on a very wide range of hands. It's folded around to me and i pick up

Dealt to trixter23 [Ac Ah]

Now i have some deciding to do. Lets eliminate the over the top push from consideration because hes not commited to the pot and he has a deep stack, so he can get away from the hand very easily. Also he may be raising on air. Now lets look at the big blind. What do we know about this player? Coincidentally we've been in this spot before. UTG has mini raised, ive flat called and the big blind has raised it up the size of the pot or gone all in. We both folded and he showed rags. I do this play also, but you better be sure i have a hand the next time i do it. My job is to get someones chips in the middle, hopefully pre flop, and if its not a scary board, on the flop. I really want to play my aces against 1 person and not 2. So i elect to flat call in the small blind hoping that the BB will try another squeeze play. If the board comes and i get resistance i may have to fold. Don't overplay your aces in a multi-way pot, remember its just a pair.

JSharpton: raises 100 to 200
Tristsomfaen: folds
XT@TX: folds
trixter23: calls 150
J . Be Good: raises 600 to 800

Excellent. Now we're pretty sure we're gettin J. Be Good's chips in the middle considering he has 1/3 his stack in the pot. If im in that situation i either go broke or win the pot. Lets see what sharpton does. If he raises, i could win a huge pot. If he folds, thats fine also. If he calls then what? He could flop a flush draw, or a set or whatever else he could be raising with.

JSharpton: calls 600

So he flat calls. A flat call shows strength to me. If he had a weaker holding he probably would have re raised to isolate him and the big blind. So we go ahead and re raise the pot.

trixter23: raises 2400 to 3200

Now im tellin sharpton that if he wants to see a flop hes playing for all his chips. I created a 2nd squeeze play in the small blind. We got pretty much what we wanted, maybe even a little bit more.

J . Be Good: calls 1435 and is all-in
JSharpton: folds

J. Be Good gets his chips in but unfortunately sharpton folds. I'm not sure what he could have had there. He saw be good shove 1/3 his chips in to.

*** FLOP *** [Qd Kh 4s]
*** TURN *** [Qd Kh 4s] [As]
*** RIVER *** [Qd Kh 4s As] [5s]
*** SHOW DOWN ***
trixter23: shows [Ac Ah] (three of a kind, Aces)
J . Be Good: shows [8h 8s] (a pair of Eights)
J . Be Good is sitting out
trixter23 collected 5270 from pot

By paying attention and watching how my opponents play, I took down a very nice pot. They put you here...

Party Final Table

I've actually been playing more steadily on party poker this week then i have at stars. Its so donkilicious over there. I entered a $5 freezeout and eventually made it to the Final Table, and in good shape for that fact.



The table was tight all around except for jwttw. He was the definity of USLAM(Ultra Super Loose Aggressive Machine). He was calling players all ins with 78 and hands like that, which was a significant portion of his stacl. I managed to stay away from him the whole time. There was 1 hand though where he mini raised and i had KQ in the bb. He would play Ax in any position on the table. I flopped a King and he rivered an ace after just flat calling my bets on the flop and the turn with no pair no draw. I lost a 1/3 my stack there. I got right back into the swing of things tho and was stealing blinds and antes left and right. Then doubled up with AA to USLAM's A9. I stayed out of trouble and just kept climbing. The problem was, party's blind structure is glitched. We got to break and Blinds were about to be 40k/8k.

It was the Final 4 and one of the guys asked to look at numbers. I said sure and went into the deal box. As soon as i saw the numbers i laughed and was like, "OK, lets get back to playing so i can raise 1/2 my stack when i have a good hand". Heres what the chop looked like.

In my opinion, the chip leader and 2nd in chips got the bad end of this deal. I took the +EV move considering the blinds. 2nd turned out to be $630. I wound up taking $544. Risking gettin sucked out on by USLAM wasnt my idea of going out in a good way. If you could comment on the chop that would be great.

GGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG-MEN!!!!

Prediction
Giants 17 - Eagles 14

Party .10/.25 Cash Games

I always knew about the gold mine at party, i just never found it. Well last night i believe i did. I wasn't in the mood to play any sit and go's so i went cash games. I don't have that much money on party since i always take it out of there. Thats all my bankroll on there can allow.

Anyway, i fire up 4 games and go to work. I started out fairly tight as always, just seeing how people are playing. Premium cards started to come and i would raise it up, and probably about 75% of the time everyone would fold to a continuation bet. After that i pretty much was playing any 2 in position. Everyones play was so predictable and it was easy to take pots.

Last night i played for approximately 2 hours. Without hitting any flops i was happy about my results.

Table 1: 1 hr 56 mins - $Won +$17.23 $Won/Hr +$8.91
Table 2: 1 hr 59 mins - $Won +$18.08 $Won/Hr +$9.12
Table 3: 1 hr 58 mins - $Won +$14.85 $Won/Hr +$7.93
Table 4: 1 hr 55 mins - $Won +$3.15 $Won/Hr +$1.64

I forgot to mention im playing full ring and not 6 max. I got up this morning and as you saw in my previous post, its a HUGE college football day. Cash games are perfect because you can get up and leave whenever you want. So i fired up party and got to the cash games. I hit a sick run of cards and i left up 60 bucks in 75 hands.

Table 1: 14 mins - $Won -$.40 $Won/Hr -$1.71
Table 2: 15 mins - $Won +$5.20 $Won/Hr +$20.80
Table 3: 17 mins - $Won +$11.76 $Won/Hr +$41.51
Table 4: 20 mins - $Won +$42.15 $Won/Hr +$126.45


This is only through 693 hands and i imagine ill hit a bad patch. I had a few other sessions also in between there and here are the rest of the stats.

Hands: 693
WonHands%: 14.43%
SawFlop%: 24.1%
$Won: $111.54
$Won/Hand: .16
BB/100 Hands: 32.19
WonSawFlop%: 59.88%
Showdowns%: 3.61%
ShowdownsWon%: 72.0
PreFlopRaise%: 12.82%

Good luck on the tables!

Good Night

I had a pretty good night. I was in the $5 rebuy, and 2 $7.70 PLO 300 Max Tournaments. The $5 Rebuy i couldnt really get anything going during the first hour. During the second hour i managed to triple up on 1 hand when i had aces. I wound up just cashing after going card dead. I think i got like 178th which is pretty bad, but i took about 55 dollars and i was in for 15.

The $7.70 PLO's were pretty easy. I did forget to mention it was PLO HI/LO. I was just card dead in the one and finished 18th of 300. The other one i managed to Final Table and got 7th. I could have gone deeper, but i was bludgeoning my table while we were 12-10 handed. The last hand before we went to the final 9, i had my whole stack in the middle with AAK3 double suited, but of course i got drew out on. I wound up going out a short time later. Overall a decent night though.

We have season tickets for the Giants and i was at the game sunday night. I'll tell you what, that please was L-O-U-D. I've been to lots of games, including the nfc championship game and a couple other playoff games, and this was by far the loudest its been. It was a very tough loss. But the G-Men shot themselves in the foot not once but several times. Yes there was a phantom pass interference call on Tim Carter, but it could have been avoided. 3rd and 2 with 4:34 on the clock and they are throwing the ball for what reason? Get the first down then come out gunnin. You miss there and what you're going to go for it on our own 35? It was a bad play call. Next up for us are the Eagles on Sunday.

This saturday is going to be awesome. We have several HUGE matchups.

#3 Auburn vs #6 LSU
#2 Notre Dame vs #11 Michigan
#12 Louisville vs #17 Miami
#15 Oklahoma vs #18 Oregon
#20 TCU vs #24 Texas Tech
#19 Nebraska vs #4 USC
#7 Florida vs #13 Tennessee

On another note i got yet another new monitor. This Samsung 20" LCD Widescreen. I can 4 table on this one w/out overlap which will be key.

We'll Never Forget

September 11th, 2001. Everyone remembers where they were on this fateful day. Some were at work, others at school. No matter where you wound up on this day, by the end of it, our country would be changed forever.

At this time i was a Senior in high school. The day started off like any other. Then i walked into my 2nd period Photography class and seing my teacher just staring awe-struck at the television. It was 8:49 am. Apparently a plane had just hit the World Trade Center in New York. No one at this point knew what else would unfold. Some said it was just a freak accident, but questions were already starting to fly. At first most students werent that worried. It was more about the fire than anything else. Then approximately 25 minutes later as we were still watching the 1st tower burn, another plane came out of no where and struck the 2nd Tower. Another half hour goes by, now the Pentagon has been struck by a "plane". This is when everyone knew, something was terribly wrong.

Reports keep flowing in about possible hijackings from terrorists. Everyone at the site is in complete panic, not knowing what to do. You see people running with wounds on their heads through the streets of New York. Then another plane crashes into a field in Pennsylvania. As i look around the room at my friends, the same fateful look on each and every face, I didn't know what to expect next. One thing we all knew though, America was under attack..or were we?

I'm going to link everyone to a video at the end of this post that i STRONGLY urge everyone to watch. The evidence and coincidences that arise in this film are just absolutely astounding. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, so you can draw your own conclusions. I do believe the video speaks very strongly for itself.

Everyone says another attack is imminent. Are we going to be prepared this time? Or can the government not prepare the nation for their own attacks?

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7866929448192753501&q=9%2F11&hl=en

http://www.loosechange911.com

For now thats all, to all the families who lost loved ones, the fireman, policeman, every live that was lost..God Bless you.