Sloe Times

So I continued my NL play last night by switching tables so I could play with BG. I ended up sweating him for awhile and he was doing nicely. I missed getting a seat somehow when one opened up in 4th position and the next seat to open up was 6th position directly to BGs right. Muahaha I've got position ;) That didn't last too long before Al sits down immediately to my right. My first thought was this was cool, my second thought was that nothing good could come of this... at least not for me. Now for the action reel:

There were 5 hands before Al sat down that I didn't play. I can't play my usual garbage in front of another blogger, they'd laugh me off the table ;) I had 6, 6 in there, that I contributed to a $15 pot with, but a wicked flop of K, K, 4 had me bailing when the first bet hit the table.

Enter Al, stage right. I'm under the gun with 3, 3 and this time the flop was nice to me with 3, J, 5. It checks to me and rather than let someone chase their flush, I pot it and the chips come my direction when the table folds.

I've decided that Al must be trying to build a nice weak image on his blog because the next hand was the start of a decidedly up session for him. I think he scraped $3 on the turn with 3 hearts on the board. A couple of hands later I'm picking up a small pair again UTG with 2, 2. I limp in again, I think this is the last hand Al let me limp in on for the session and is probably the reason he didn't let me limp in any more after. The flop of Q, A, 3 didn't help, but the table checked and the turn came up 2. I suspected that Al slow played top pair when he lead out for $2 but having made my set I raised it up to $4. That's when Al kicked me off the team and called my bet. The river was T that checked to me so I lead out with $5. I ended up picking up $10 of mostly Al's money with my set vs. his A, 6.

A couple of hands later BG picked up $4 pre-flop by coming over the top of the UTG+1 raiser. It took me a second to figure out what happened since I don't think I've ever seen that happen at this level before. The next hand I'm on the button with 9, K and with Al being the only caller I raise it up to $1 and it ends up being Me, BB, and Al. I'm not sure why I try for these flush draws because every time I do, the dealer misses the signal and goes the other way. The flop is 6, 5, and A. It checks around and the turn drops J which Al throws $3 at and the table folds.

The low pair trend continues with 6, 6 a few hands later and the flops gives me a scary house with T, T, and T. BB checks and UTG leads out with $2. I went over the top fronting at least a house if not the fourth T and get it heads up into the turn. The turn was Q and it gets checked to me. I thought about it for a second trying to figure out if UTG might have a Q and go ahead and pot it which convinces him to fold.

Al's been creeping up with some small wins when I catch J, J to the right of the button (BG). UTG raises to $1 and gets one caller before it gets to me and I figure that it's probably better to try and take it down now than risk getting hammered by the overcard pair on the flop so I push in $4 which is slightly bigger than the pot and BG calls while the rest of the table folds out. I'm thinking to myself that this is going to hurt, I'm going up against QQ, KK, or AA, which then prompts the silent chant, "jack, jack, jack, jack." The flop is 7, J, 5. Having made my set, I check to see if BG thinks his overpair is still good. He leads out with a $10 bet and I figure he's trying to make me think he's got the Js that are in my hand so I go ahead and shove all-in and he naturally folds. From a play analysis standpoint I probably should have let the timer run down a bit and then just called to try and plant the idea of a small set in his mind and get at least one more bet out of him but I didn't.

A few hands later Al made a big rake against a scary board with Kowboys in the hole and an ace on the board that ended up being a pair of aces. Fortunately the pirate (I'll get to this in a bit) who was heads up with him had Jacks in the hole. I didn't get to play for awhile because between Al and BG (mostly Al) I couldn't limp in on my blinds and wasn't catching any decent cards. That's ok though because I'm up about $15 on this table and it's been fun hanging with the guys. Finally, I get a hand worth playing. I've got K, K in mid-late position and UTG (whom we'll now refer to as the pirate) raises it to $3 and it folds around to me and I raise it to $6 which the pirate calls. The flop is 9, 5, 2. The pirate checks to me and I lead off with a $12 bet which he calls. The turn is J and the pirate again checks to me. I sensed flush and checked it to see the river. The river is 5 and the pirate goes all-in. The pot is $43 and because he lead out, I'm wondering if he caught a set. I quickly dismiss this thought because who the hell would call $15 to the turn with 5x? Ok, maybe I had it wrong and he had 9s in the hole and caught his set on the flop and was just trying to get me to do all the betting with the check-calls. Nah, that didn't feel right either. I figured him for QJ and was trying to pick it up with his top pair on the board so I call. Me, I've got Kings and Fives. Him, he's got a Jack high flush with 4, 3 in the hole. I'm going to take the blame for being the bigger idiot here because I didn't go with my first instinct from the turn. I have to say though, it took a lot of stones to call someone who goes over the top of you with two small suited cards. Anyway, after flushing $27 on that hand I was now down for this table. To add insult to injury though, the pirate then bails from the table with my money (and some of BGs since I had pilfered it from him). I picked up a couple of pots to start the recovery, but about then the wife started taunting me with chili dogs and cheese dip so while I wanted to try and recover to the point of break even, having that money walk off the table and dinner smelling so good was sapping my will to play more. Shortly after I got up but not before Al made two more nice scrapes.

Final tally for my time at the table: Me -$9, BG was down but I think he recharged so it was tough to figure out how much, and Al was up like $50. It just seemed like he was ripping it up the whole time so I'm convinced that the poor play he blogs about it just a ruse to set people up to lose at the blogger tourney ;) Playing with BG and Al was a ton of fun, it took away that whole grind feel to it and while I feel a little bad about lightening BGs wallet I figure that he'll get it back out of me sooner or later.