Good Times (and Good Timing)

Had an interesting session of pokery yesterday. Vera was out of town and not due to return until today, so around dinner time I’d sat down for what I’d thought would probably be a longer-than-usual stretch of play, Cheap Trick blaring along on the CPU jukebox.

Started out piddling around at the LHE tables (1/2) and coming out a few bucks ahead. Then for kicks played a couple of low buy-in MTTs, but didn’t get very far in either. That’s when I moved over to the pot limit Omaha tables to check out the lay of the land.

The number of players on all the sites generally goes up on the weekend, and sometimes one finds a high percentage of reckless types wanting to gamble it up at the Omaha tables. I took a seat at a full ring PLO25 table, bringing only $10. Have been doing that more and more often lately, mainly as a preventative measure. Sometimes when I first start playing I need a few hands to get back in the swing, and bringing a short stack tends to minimize the consequences of early mistakes.

A couple of players had about $45, and one fellow, AdamAnt, had just a hair under $100. On about my fifth hand I rivered a nut flush that bumped my stack up to $16 or so. Won a couple more smallish pots and was sitting at around $20 when players started to drop away from the table. Before too long, only AdamAnt and I remained. “Ant they all ran away,” I typed. “Yeah, why?” he responded. “Yr big stack i guess,” was my reply.

I started to think about leaving, too. AdamAnt still had about $92, and I had about $22. For whatever reason, I stuck around, and we took turns bluffing each other off of small pots for a pretty good while -- about 20 hands or so -- when the following hand took place.

I had the button (and thus was the SB) where I was dealt . I raised to 75 cents and AdamAnt called. Flop came , he checked, and I went ahead and bet $1.45. AdamAnt quickly raised $4.35 to $5.80. Straight seemed likely. Hell, more than likely -- obvious. But I was stubborn. “Ok,” I typed, and pushed all I could into the middle (about $18). He reraised me all-in, and we watched the turn and river come .

I had already mentally kissed my $10 buy-in goodbye when I saw his hand -- . He’d flopped bottom two, and hadn’t improved. My stack was up to $45.

We ended up chatting about the hand a bit in friendly way. I don’t believe either of us was all that proud of how he’d played it -- and we were both surprised at the other’s play as well. In any event, we continued along and eventually the empty seats began filling once again. I chipped up a bit more, and AdamAnt also continued to do well, pushing his stack back up around $100.

About an hour went by, then came another big showdown. I’d picked up on the button and called a preflop raise from AdamAnt. There were three of us in the hand. The flop came and AdamAnt bet pot (a little over five bucks). The third player got out of the way. I knew I was good and so pushed, he pushed back, and pretty soon there were about a hundred clams in the middle. Sure enough, he had the aces, plus a couple of baby clubs on the side. When neither a club nor the case ace appeared on the turn or river, I claimed the booty.

Things continued to go well for me over the next hour or so, then I ended up claiming all the rest of AdamAnt’s chips on a hand where I had A-A-Q-9, had preraised and he’d called, the flop came a pretty 8-T-J, and he decided to go for it with just 9-7-x-x. I was riding high, up over $140, when Vera surprisingly returned after a change of plans.

I quickly logged off, very glad to book what -- according to my short-stacked standards -- was a hell of a session. Afterwards I realized that I very likely would have remained at that table for a good while longer, and might well have made the same mistake AdamAnt had made. For him, it only took three hands, really, to bleed away his huge stack. Not claiming I’d played all three hands perfectly (or without risk), but he certainly took unnecessary -- and expensive -- chances in all three instances.

Hard to leave, though, when you’re running hot. Too bad for AdamAnt -- and fortunate for me -- that Mrs. AdamAnt didn’t call him away earlier.