Had to drop off some tworags/commerce promotional cards at the Commerce this afternoon and even though I didn't have much time to play I couldn't resist at least a little action so I dropped $400 down at the $5/10 NL (400 max) table, ordered some chicken kabobs - food is free at these limits - and began a quick session. Only had about an hour to play, but what the heck.

I observed for a few hands. Many hands went unraised and almost all reasonable raises in the $15-25 range got called by at least one or two players. This was also one of these weird games where every hand seemed to be won by a nut flush or fullhouse.

After about an orbit I'm dealt A9 in the SB and complete with 4 limpers in front of me. Flop comes with two diamonds and I make it $30. Two people call. The turn brings the flush and I make it $75 and one guy calls. The board pairs which worries me just a bit, but I decide to make it $100 (kind of a value bet) and might consider folding to a push. He folds.

Played a few other meaningless hands before this one comes up. I'm in the BB and UTG makes it $20 and 5 people call! I look down at Q5 and call. The flop comes 557. Nice. I probably need to check, but most people don't bet the 5, so I decide to lead out with $50. One guy calls. The turn is the nasty 7 for 5577. The SB makes it $100. Hmmm. I'm having a hard time putting him on a hand I can beat. Now if he was super confident that I had a 5, then his bet is brilliant, but how can he be that confident? My lead on the flop could easily be a 7, an overpair or a bluff. In fact, more often than not it isn't a 5. On the other hand, if he had a 7, then why lead? I decided that he might lead, because if I don't have a 7 he assumes I'll check. I ended up folding. It seemed like the right decision here. Any thoughts?

The only other semi-interesting hand was this. I have AKo in EP, and make it $20. The HJ calls (he only has another $60 or so behind), the CO makes it $100. I have about $320 left so I really have only two options, I'm not deep enough to call and fold on the flop. I decide to do the only reasonable thing here (at least to my warped mind) and push. Of course the HJ calls and the CO calls too. The board brings all low cards, but 3 spades. The short-stack had KsJs and the CO had the same AK as me, so I lost about $80 on the hand. Not sure how good a call it was for the other AK guy -- probably pretty close. Let's see:

He is calling $220 into a $520ish pot, so he's getting more than 2-1, but what can he reasonably put me on? I raised, there was a caller and he RR. It sure looks like my range is QQ, KK, AA, AK. It's probably close. Just did an Evaluator scenario and it looks to be about BE. Take a look here.

Nothing more happens and I lose about half of my buy-in. No big hands, no terrible hands, just lots of small bleeding over the 1.5 hour session.

One crazy hand to note just as I'm stacking my chips. A guy goes all-in for $250 and shows me his TT. Another guy calls. The guy called so fast that the TT guy is worried about an overpair, but then the flop comes 678o and the turn is a 9 so Mr. TT seems golden. The river brings another 8. The opponent turns over 99. Can you believe that? Let's do some calculations on the QuickOdds program:

Preflop he's an 82% favorite
On flop he's a 76% favorite
On turn he's still a 73% favorite

I guess it wasn't as bad as it seemed. The straight draw on the flop and trips on the turn kept it closer than it looked at the end.

I've been playing a little heads-up lately on pokerstars. Nothing major, just a little $1/2 or $2/4 every once in a while. Here's a beauty that you might all enjoy. You can vew in on pokerhand.org. I also reproduced below. Of course I give this hand up if I don't have the nut flush draw to go along with my KK. This is one of those hands where you hit your draw, get pretty happy and then sit in disbelief as the chips don't come to your side of the table as you expect. Always lots of fun!

Pokerstars Game (?) Hold'em No Limit ($1/$2) - 2025/11/26 - 18:00:30 (ET)
Table 'Yunnan II' 2-max Seat #2 is the button
Seat 1: Hero ($122 in chips)
Seat 2: djforever ($225.40 in chips)
djforever: posts small blind $1
Hero : posts big blind $2

Holecards:
Dealt to Hero KK
RAISE djforever, $4 to $6
RAISE Hero , $10 to $16
CALL djforever, $10

Flop: (Pot: $32)
3A6
BET Hero , $22
RAISE djforever, $28 to $50
RAISE Hero , $56 to $106 and is all-in
CALL djforever, $56

Turn: (Pot: $244)
3A6 7

River: (Pot: $244)
3A67 5
>>>djforever said, "gg"

Showdown:
Hero : shows KK (a flush Ace high)
djforever: shows 54 (a straight flush Three to Seven)
djforever collected $243 .50 from pot

SUMMARY:
Total pot $244 | Rake $0.50

We're happy to report that we changed ISP's this past weekend and are now on our own dedicated equipment. Up until now, we have been co-located on a server with other websites. The server was in Canada so we had two issues that were causing speed/response-time problems. First, when other websites experienced high volume our speed was affected. Second, because the server was located in another country, there were basic internet connection issues from time to time.

We believe that the new ISP and the new dedicated equipment should greatly help to solve these issues and result in a faster performing site. Please let us know if you are seeing our pages load quicker. If you are still experiencing any speed issues, do not hesitate to drop me an email or post a comment to this blog entry. I'm at scot@tworags.com.

On another topic, we're in the process of redesigning the site. This should take another month or so to be implemented. The new look will give us a friendlier/less corporate look. It will also better highlight our focus on blogging, trip reports and room listings/reviews. If any of you are interested in seeing some of the new layouts and designs, we would be happy to share them with you and hear your opinions. In the near future, I'll probably post some JPG's of the new interface and ask for comments.

- Scot

Edmond and I met with the marketing folks at the Bike today and we were done around 5pm. I saw no reason to head out the door when the sweat sound of chips hitting the felt beckoned me to stay a while. Edmond agreed to play too, and we were both immediately seated at a $5/$5 table with $300-$500 stakes.

There were 1-3 empty seats during our 2 hour session and the play was fairly loose preflop with many limped pots. Standard 3x or 4x PF raises didn't usually accomplish much to thin the field, and often PF raises as much as $30-40 were made regularly. One guy even raised $100+ PF with one small raise in front of him and won the pot when he was called by two big cards. The $200 guy had 83o!

I bought in for the max $500 and in the first orbit I'm dealt K6 in late position. Four of us see a flop of:

QT6.

The SB makes it 40 and one other guys calls. I decide to make a loose call with botton pair, backdoor flush draw and position. I really did it more because of the position than anything else, but yes, it was a very iffy call.

The turn brings a club. The SB now makes it $100 and the other player folds. The SB was as deep as me so with a minimum of 9 outs and more likely up to 14 outs, it was an easy call for me. The river brought a club and didn't pair the board so I was fairly confident I had the nuts.

The SB made it $140 and had a few hundred left as did I. Now I don't like to hollywood, but to be honest, I hadn't checked my suits since the hand started and I was now not 100% sure I had the clubs -- only 99.8% sure. My problem was that if I looked back at the cards and then pushed it would be so obvious I had the flush. So I pretended to be ready to fold, looking at my cards and then purposely waited a good 30-40 seconds. Not for the hollywood effect, but to separate the looking at my cards from the pushing. Hey, I know it's hard for him to put me on the backdoor flush so it probably didn't matter. He called very quickly and the table clearly was not impressed with my suckout. Even Edmond gave me a look. Hey, it never sucks to win a $1,000 pot. Given the guy's quick call he likely had trips so my 5 outs might not have been good enough, but I guess two pair was possible too.

I stayed with a stack of $1,000 for the next hour or so. Didn’t catch many hands and when I did, I got no action. On two consecutive hands I hit two pair on the flop with QT, and got no action and then raised PF with QQ, got one caller, hit trips, made a standard continuation bet and got not action again. Soon thereafter, this hand came up. Edmond felt I played it like a donk. What do you think?

I’m dealt Q5 on the bottom. A bunch of limpers and I limp too. The flop comes down:

KJ2

An EP player makes it 15 and 2 callers so I call too with the the second nut flush draw. The turn brings the T so the board reads:

KJ2T

And now I have the open-ended straight draw and the second-nut flush draw. It’s checked to me and I make it $30. It’s folded to the guy to my right who raises it $60. He could have a made hand or also a Q. I don’t think he has a K given his call of a small bet on the flop, but I guess KT is possible or even TT.

I'm thinking that he might even have the A so perhaps I don't want to see a club at all. In fact, maybe a miss is my best bet because the club could mean a big loss and an A or 9 might simply be a split pot.

I decide to call and a junk card falls on the river. The guy checks to me. Hmmm… He’s a tight player, but he is not a bad player. The raise on the turn could have meant so many things: he didn’t believe my bet and wanted to take it away with a so/so hand or a draw, he had a draw too with the A, etc. Anyway, no way I’m winning this hand with a check and with both draws missing I felt it was EV to take the chance so I bet $100. He called me with the nut flush! It turns out that I was drawing dead.

Everyone was congratulating him for his check, but I don’t think it was a good move. He didn’t know that I had a missed draw and if I did I wasn’t always betting there. I think he needed to bet there to get value out of his hand the most often. Thoughts on my play and his check?

Going forward nothing very exciting happened. I raised quite a bit with hands like AQ, KQ, 88, etc., and every time got callers and then had to surrender my hand on the flop either to an EP raise or to a RR or call after I made a CB.

There was one hand where I screwed up just a bit (or should I say another hand). I had a flush draw on the turn with second pair and an A on the board. My opponent raised $50 and I’m getting almost 2-1 to call. I have at least 9 outs, but more likely he only had an A so I could have up to 14 outs. I looked at the guy’s stack and he only had $100 more. I just didn’t feel like calling with such a small stack behind him, but I guess it was close.

I decided to leave at 7pm and locked in a profit of $150. Not great, but better than a losing session. I didn’t play my best poker, I probably fell too much into the slow rhythm of the game instead of forcing my opponents to play my game a little more. Does that make any sense? I’m not sure even I understand what I mean!!!

** BTW, we both ate a delicious chicken kabob dinner which was on the house. The service and food at the Bike is always first rate. The players were friendly and management handled a little screw-up very professionally. Here's what happened to the best I can tell. A guy gets busted and buys in for another $130 or so and is waiting for his chips. Somehow he ended up with $230, but only $130 was his, he owed the dealer $100. He proceeds to get into a hand where he doubles up and the opponent gives him $230. Well, a few minutes later everyone realizes that he owes the dealer $100 and the other player $100. He doesn't want to give it back. He finally does, but it takes at least 5 minutes for it to happen. Ed, please correct me if I didn't get the details exactly right.

I had registered for the Pokerstars free-roll blog championship. The tournament started at 12pm CA time, but we had plans to at 12:15 and wouldn't be back for about 3 hours. That gave me 15 minutes to play like a complete maniac and see what I could do with my stack. I figured if I could double or triple my stack size, I might have something left when I returned.

We started with 10k in chips and just went at it from the first hand. For example, on the first hand a guy raises to 150 and there were 3 callers. I quickly made it 3k to go and took it down. This type of thing happened for the first orbit and I was sitting with 16k. So I had substantially increased my stack with no regard for what hand I had and without ever going past the flop. Of course someone could have woken up with a hand, but I tried to feel it out and determine to the best I could when people were hedging their bets.

I then called a raise with 66 and flopped trips. I made pot sized bets against one opponent, but the river brought both the flush and straight possibilities so when he checked to me on the river I checked too. Of course he got there so I was back down to 11k. No problem, within the next orbit I got back up to 19k. That's when my wife came in and told me we had to go. i didn't think a 19k stack was enough to last until I got back, so now I decided to push on every hand until I got called hoping to suck out.

I raised or re-raised all-in on 4 consecutive hands. On the 4th hand a guy called me with AT. I had only 97, but wasn't that far behind. He won the hand and I kept doing it again while my wife yelled from the car for me to join her! I got into two more 40/60 type all-ins and lost them both and I was put out of my misery for good!

Anyway, the moral of the story is that if I actually played like a maniac, BUT had a bit more control it would have really been interesting. I assume this is the way a lot of the better tournament players do it. They start off very, very aggressive to try and build a stack quickly. In this case if I didn't need to do the all-in trick and simply kept on pushing the edges when I knew that guys were not willing to take chances early on, I would have had no problem doubling or even tripling my stack fairly quickly.