Another week has passed and I’ve had some interesting hands, most were a blur.
It’s funny when you sit down to write about your experiences, the ones that stand out most in my mind are the ones that you lose. I try to pay attention so that I can learn from my mistakes, missteps and maybe just wishful thinking. I had a good week, so I’m happy with the overall results, but I know I can do better.
The first hand: (I am playing 2/5 NL HE cash games for all hands)
The aggressive player, two seats to my left, makes a preflop raise to $20 on my BB, two callers before me and I see a 6,7 diamonds for my hand. I call. The flop comes out 6,7, 2 rainbow and I check. The preflop raiser makes it $40 and everyone folds around to me. I raise to $100. He hesitates and calls. On the turn, a J diamonds comes out and I bet $100. He looks at his chips, hesitates and then goes all-in. Sigh. What do I do! I have top 2 pr and now a diamond draw on the turn. It’s another $170 to me. Did the turn give him trips, maybe he had trip 2s already? With no flush or straight possibility on board and a pot of $530, I call the raise. He turned over an open-ended straight draw with a 4,5 OS. I felt pretty good, for all of 10 seconds, until a 3 of clubs hits on the river. With a sheepish grin, he stacks the pot. Burning inside, I tap the table and say “nice hand”. The table moves on to the next hand. I waited a few hands, so that I didn’t let him know he was getting to me, and I went for a walk around the casino to regather my concentration. This usually means that I go pump $5 into a penny slot machine. Back to the table, in recovery mode and the game continues.
Another interesting hand:
I don’t recall ever seeing this before and I have no idea what the odds of it happening are, but here goes: The player two seats to my left (not same person from last example) raises preflop to $20, 3 people call before me, and I look down and see pocket 7s. I call. The flop comes out 3,7,8 with 2 clubs. The preflop raiser makes it $100 to go. I’m assuming that he has an over pair and wants to take the hand down now. One caller is before me. With trip 7s and a straight and flush possibility on board, I re-raised to $300. To my surprise, both players called immediately. On the turn, comes another club – Queen, the first player checks the second player goes all-in for his remaining $125. I can’t possibly fold at this point, if he has a flush, he has a flush and I’ll be paying him off. Maybe the river will pair the board. The other player calls also. The river is no help to me and I check. Fortunately, so does the other player. We all turn over our cards. Trip 3s for the all-in player, trip 7s for me and...trip 8s for the last player!! The whole table stared in amazement. Of course, all I saw was the $1,300 going to someone else. After all the excitement died down, I realized how lucky I was. I would have gone all-in on the turn, had the club not arrived. Count your blessings, right? I hope that I never see that hand again, unless of course, I am the one with the trip 8s. Ha Ha.
Next blog, I’d like to talk a little about how poker playing has affected my home life . .. Bye ‘til then.
4 comments:
You are showing a great attitude for those awful beats. Shows what a great player you are!
I actually had a very similar trips occurence in Atlantic City. I can't remember all the details but he had trip fours and I had trip fives. I was definitely short stack, he called me all in, and I was happy to oblige. After winning the hand, he said that it wasn't that big of a deal to him because I didn't have much, but it felt good to win anyway! :-) Certainly there weren't THREE sets of trips at the table!
Ouch, those are some painful hands. All you can do is learn from them and move on and hope it never ever happens again.
SL Girl -- Believe it! It happens!Your story really hit home. Yes, it happened to me also. I had only played poker in a casino a few times (I began playing in 2003) when I was dealt pocket 5s. I can't remember if the pot was raised or not, but it couldn't have been too expensive before the flop for me to stay in. I was easily scared out in those days. Flop came 3 5 6 of whatever. Bingo! I had hit a set. I can't remember who bet and who raised, but at some point all the chips got into the pot and I just knew I had it. What a shock when we all turned over pocket pairs that had tripped up on the flop. My middle set was no good! I too couldn't believe what had happened -- and I've never seen it since. Looks like we're part of an exclusive club!
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