Interesting Week (15/30 and 9/18) Tues/Fri

I rolled into Cap Tuesday night around 9pm or so and just couldn't get anything going. The table was actually very good (in terms of action, not skill level)...aside from Davin and Wilson (who can sometimes slip into donk-mode), the table was very fishy. There were a couple girls playing who were very lpp, 30ish Asian guys that were laggy as shit, and the Mexican floor guy (Oscar I think) who just doesn't play very well. He ended up donating a couple racks to everyone's cause.

It was one of those tables where there would be at least four people to the flop, usually five and sometimes six, so you had to make your hands hold. That's okay, considering I've grinded out 4/8 for the last couple years, shouldn't be a problem. Well, the only problem was holding or hitting a flop for me, as at the end of the night, I was down close to $800 (about $780 or something like that) and took the biggest loss for a session that I've taken in awhile. The one shining moment of the night was a capped pre-flop hand (three-ways) where I flopped quads, aside from that...blech.

Alright well dropping $780 that night and a few hundred the week before really stuck it to my desire to play. I knew big swings of money were inevitable, but mentally preparing for them <> actually living them. I'm really suprised/proud of myself that I decided to play last night.

I showed up at Cap around 10:30pm or so and noticed there wasn't a 15/30 game going...bummer. 9/18 was running as the main game for the first time in a long time, so I put my name on the list and went to watch some Olympics in the lounge. I wasn't on the list for long, and in about 15 minutes or so I had a seat and was surveying the table.

Just like 15/30 the other night, this table was pretty fishy, and it would only get better as time wore on. Some main villains for the evening: Seat one was this 35-year old latin guy, bought in for $180 and cashed out a couple racks ($600). He played liked he belonged at 3/6, but he was sucking out left and right and just couldn't be stopped. Seat 3 was this young, incredibly cocky, laggish Asian kid (probably late 20's/early 30's). When he sat down Davin called him the "9/18 Specialist" so naturally I was somewhat curious to how he played. The first couple of hands he showed down were absolute garbage and nothing changed from that first couple hands I observed of his. He also talked a ton of shit, lucky for him none of his remarks were aimed at me, or else I had a great line saved up for him and his track and field looking jacket. Seat 4 was this older Asian guy that always wears a "The Italian Job" baseball hat (looks like he bought it for $3 on vacaction once). Seat 5 was...you guessed it...Wilson. Seat 6 was yours truly, and seat nine was this guy named Ben who looks a lot like JC Tran's brother, at least that's what Tommy said anyway.

One of the first big hands I won came with a5 of spades in the big blind. Seat four had been getting beat up a lot, so after four limpers, he raised OTB, Wilson folded, I called, everyone else called. I noticed he only had a small stack of chips left, maybe 16 or so, which would be about $48 in $3 chips. The flop came 467 with two spades. Wow, huge flop...and so I did something I almost never do...I donk-bet!

That's right kids, I am a firm believer in not d-betting, but my relative position was perfect. I had four people in between me and the original raiser, and I knew almost for certain that seat four was jamming up this flop no matter what, so I wanted to trap everyone's money in instead of CR'ing the flop and losing people who didn't want to call two bets. The plan started out great as the first two limpers called, the other two folded (seat three gave me some lip asking why I would donk-bet, but eventually folded), seat four raised, I 3-bet, one limper folded, the other one called, seat four capped and only had two chips left...

The turn was a blank, maybe a ten of hearts or something close. I bet, call, seat four called all-in. River was a jack of spades...I bet, the limper folded, and then I showed seat four who was all-in my nut flush. He showed a flopped set of sevens (ouch) and left angrily toward the door. Phew...right away I could tell this night had a shot of being the exact opposite as Tuesday night.

Fast forward a couple hours and I was firmly up a rack and some change. Aside from being sucked out on by seat one (one gutshot, one three-outer two pair hand) and seat three (river three-outered on a QQ7 flop, I had jacks, he had 87, capped pre-flop four ways, river was a 7), I was running pretty well and had no reason to complain. All of my TP hands (see AK, KQ, etc) and overpairs were holding, so I felt good. I took a quick orbit off after talking to Tommy about when he was going to show up so I could grab a lunch break, and after that I went up another rack with a sick three hand run.

John was dealing and I was dealt Aces my 2nd hand back...lost. Skip a couple hands and I was dealt Kings that held in a five-way raised pot pre-flop, lost with Queens to a King-high flop the very next hand, and then won with KQ of diamonds after flopping a Queen and hitting running 2's for a full-house the hand directly after that (obv I was ahead the whole way, but still). After those three hands I was up almost two racks and the table got much fishier as a couple straightforward players left and were replaced by more cocky young asian guys. Sam the floorman eventually came over to the table as well, and so we had an eight-handed 9/18 donkfest on our hands. Unfortunately for me I was card dead for three orbits, went to grab food when Tommy finally showed up, and came back to the table 20 mins later and thankfully nothing had changed.

I'll talk about the rest of the game tomorrow...it eventually got down to five and four-handed and was fun as shit (i.e. I came up close to another rack from short-handed play). Thanks for reading, look for part II of this entry in a couple days.