100 Big Bets?! (Part 1)

So before I get into my huge Friday (11/26), I should mention I had a fairly awful Tuesday. Today's Saturday and I was trying to finish up the Third part of the 4/8 and 6/12 story (don't think I'm going to bother), get into the downer day at 6/12 where I played for about nine hours and took about a $400 loss (just a shit day vs a good table) and then talk about blacking out and running like God yesterday.

Tuesday I had a really nice table full of LPPs and one spewtard, but alas my big hands couldn't hold, my draws wouldn't hit, and to be honest being down only $400 at the end of the day kind of felt like a gift. Tuesday was the first real hint of adversity I had been faced with since I started playing regularly again around the end of October. Sure there were rough hours of patches here and there, but I always seemed to regroup and get it back. In fact, to this point I had only had one losing session out of the last eight, and it was only for $100. Nine hours of my life and a couple racks later, I left Capitol feeling the sting of some runbad.

Thursday I ate at my parents' house for Thanksgiving dinner, drove home, and promptly passed out around 8pm...only to stumble out of bed around 530am. Wow, wtf? I showered, did some exercising, surfed the interwebs, then decided to grab a shower and see if Capitol would have any good daytime action. Most people were off work shopping, but maybe I'd get lucky and catch some good games. I rolled up at about 9:30am and to my surprise there was a ShortHanded (SH) 6/12 game going on.

I recognized a couple players, notably SK in the two seat, a young floorman in the four, and then a couple older gentleman I didn't recognize on the other side of the table. These guys were playing four handed, no jackpot drop. Man, my kind of players! I love shorthanded, but early on I got beat up pretty badly. Sometime in the 2nd orbit my AK lost to a rivered two pair by KT. King high flop, we capped the flop, he check called my turn then led a rivered ten. A couple orbits after that I ran QQ into KK and then whiffed a couple AK/AQ type hands. Not a pretty start whatsoever, and I quickly found my initial $300 buy in cut almost in half.

The game slowly started to fill up during the early morning massacre, and eventually after about an hour of some really fun SH play we had a full table. After the initial drop I picked up some decent hands against SK and it brought me back around even. SK was playing much more aggressively today than I had seen him play before, in fact, he was absolutely maniacal. He played just about every hand during SH play, and it continued once the game was full. A lot of beginner books talk about avoiding maniacs on your direct left, but honestly I have come to enjoy it.

Whenever I opened a pot SK would usually coldcall me, and then post we'd play some poker. It seemed like he was raising the flop with literally any piece you could think of, sometimes he'd have pure air. I was in Shifty calldown mode (you vegas forum trip guys will get that reference), basically what I'm saying is I'm taking SK to showdown a very high percentage of the time. My position was actually a blessing, as I would act, then SK, and then all the pressure would be on the rest of the table. I bet, SK raises, and now it's up to the rest of the table to define their hand. He was building me pots when I usually had the best of it, loosening up the table by the amount of action he was giving, and overall making it much easier for me to play the other opponents.

Later on another super aggressive player came to the table and sat in seat six. So now I have a maniac on my direct left and a maniac across the table. OH BOY! I'll call the seat 6 maniac PS, as he had a sweet Pokerstars beanie on. PS and SK, when heads up, were in some AWESOME hands together. A husband/wife combo waiting for the 1/3 NL game to start looked absolutely stunned in amazement. The wife would gasp "look at them, THEY HAVE NOTHING!" AK vs KQ, no pairs on the board, capped pre, four bets on the flop, two bets on the turn, one bet on the river. And you want to talk about fast. Read this as fast as you can. Raise, three bet, cap. Burn, turn. Bet, raise, re-raise. The chips splashing the felt from one side to another. It was like watching a tennis match, each one trying to raise the other faster and harder than before. IT WAS AWESOME!

So now that you get a feeling about what my table looks like (amazing), I'll post a couple hands then get going to bed. I've been up 30 hours now with a 40 minute power nap squeezed in before work last night. KV, a real pretty asian girl opens for six chips from seat seven in a kill pot (this is a call). Seat nine calls, I look down at two red Kings and raise to 12 chips. SK calls, folds back around to KV and seat nine who both call. Flop is 433 rainbow. Checks to me and I bet, miraculously SK finds a fold, KV folds, seat nine raises. I hadn't played with seat nine before, but I found out later he was also waiting for a NL seat. I three bet and he only calls. The turn is a ten and again seat nine leads. I raise again and this time he folds. Hmmph. Odd.

Next hand I raise the blinds from EP with QJ sooooted, blinds fold, it's now a kill pot, stakes are 12/24. I'm UTG+2 I believe and pick up AQ of clubs. I open for six chips (this is a call, I do this in every kill pot because normally opening to 12 gets everyone to fold and you win three chips; you don't have to post a kill blind in this cardroom). Oh by the way, I'm ready to LRR this hand. Instead SK calls, the NL husband calls from seat four and one of the blinds calls. The flop comes Q84 with two clubs. Cha ching. Now I wish someone had raised pre. I lead, SK calls, everyone else folds. The turn is a nine of clubs. I bet, SK raises, I three bet, he calls. The river blanks out, I bet he calls and I show the winner. Weeeee this turns out to be the start of the run. I'll try and blog the 2nd part when I wake up, thanks for reading.