Played in the $125 plus one rebuy tournament last Monday. There were approximately 130 entrants and we started off with 1500 chips at the 25/25 level. I'll just report on a few significant hands:

1) Get AQ in mid-position and make it 100 after one limper. Both blinds call as does limper. Flop comes AT5 rainbow. I make it 350 and get check-raised all-in by BB. I played with him for a while in a cash game while I waited for this tournament and he seemed pretty solid and reasonable. In a non-rebuy event or perhaps in a bigger buy-in event I fold here in a minute -- especially given that there was no flush draw on the board that he could be semi-bluffing with. However, given that this is a rebuy event I called for two reasons a) there is a chance he could be making a move with AJ or even the same hand as me. If he had AK I'm pretty sure he raises preflop; and b) it's a rebuy event so I can just rebuy. I was pretty sure he had AT or A5 and sure enough he had AT and I had to rebuy. Not crazy about my call, oh, well...

2) Nothing much happens for a while and then at the 25/50 level I call a raise from lp with KQ. Three of us see a flop of AKT, so I have second pair and a gut shot. EP makes it 400 and one guy calls before its to me. There's about 1300-1400 in pot and neither of these guys seems that strong. I don't think the 2nd guy has a strong A or he would have raised. The first guy could have a strong A but he could also have a flush draw (2 spades on board) or a weaker A, he's also the initial raiser so he could be making a continuation/feeler bet with a pair. I have 1500 left and decide to push. The 1100 more is significant to both assuming they don't love their hands. Even if they have an A I still have potentially 10 outs. They both fold and I'm back to even with around 3000 chips.

3) I get QQ from LP at the 50/100 level and make it 350. Two callers. Flop comes with an A. Checked to me. I bet 800 and both fold. That worked out well.

4) Women goes all-in with only about 1000 left. Guy to my right calls. I look down at JJ and push (I have 4000 at this point). Caller folds and I'm heads up against T9 and my J's hold.

5) Here's a mistake: Blinds are 100/200 with 25 ante. I just won a nice pot and am counting my chips when a guy who is short pushes with about 1000. I have AJs from the button and just call. The BB calls. Flop comes QJx and it's checked to me. I make it 1600 and get check-raised all-in by BB. He has me covered and I fold. He had QJ and would have folded PF if I would have isolated the all-in raiser AND my hand would have held-up against the all-in raiser. That sucked, but that's what I get for not paying attention. Unfortunately, I'm usually good for 1 or 2 of these per tournament. Need to avoid these.

6) A little later with blinds at 200/400 and 50 ante there are 3 limpers and I push with A6. I'm down to about 4000 at this point. One guy calls me -- he has me covered and he turns over 55 which is the best I could hope for. I turn an A and double up.

7) For the next hour or so I move up to about 10k, but it's up and down to get there. I come over the top of a 2k pf raise with 99 and he folds (he told me he had 66 and did seem to seriously consider calling... to bad). A few times I try to bully guys off hands and get re-raised and have to fold.

8) We are down around 30 -- pays top 18 or so. I have about 10k in chips with the blinds at 300/600 and 75 ante so there is close to 1500 in pot each hand before betting. I'm about 3rd in chips at my table, but probably around average for all participants.

Folded to button (which is pretty rare at this table). Button makes it 2000. I'm in BB and have K9o. The button is good LAG player. He has shown the ability to fold a hand. Another consideration... when I had A6, he agonized and folded, but there was one caller who had 55 and I won the race. He clearly wasn't happy with his fold that time.

I put myself in the button's shoes. It was fairly rare that it would get folded to the button in this spot with the blinds and antes so large so there were very few hands that he would not raise with. He also wasn't the kind of player to limp from the button knowing that I would likely smell weakness and raise him off his hand. So therefore his range was close to any two cards -- any pair, any A, K, Q, and connectors, two gappers, etc.

I also didn't feel like he was reckless, so he was likely to fold a large % of the hands in his range. Perhaps as high as 70-80%. Do you think this is too high?

Last, even if he called, I would not be in terrible shape to most of these hands. The only hands I really don't want to see are 99-AA, AK-A9 and KQ-KT, and there's a good chance he doesn't call with the K hands given that I could easily have an A.

The pot represented a 3rd of my stack. I'm not sure how this could be a good fold, but I would love to hear thoughts. Anyway, I call he turns over A9 and I get to go home!

I made my way over to the Huslter last night for the 7pm tournament. Hadn't played any poker for a few weeks so when StrayBullet mentioned that he would be in town and was game for meeting at the Hustler, I was in. I showed up a few hours early and took a seat at the $5/10 NL table. Actually, they didn't have a seat initially so i played a little 2/5 for about 30 minutes. The buy-in there was $300 and I ran that up to about $500 when my seat opened at the 5/10 table. I bought in for another 300. My stacked only moved a bit in the time I spent there. It was about 6:50 and I was about to cash in my chips so that I could take my seat for the 7pm tournament when this LAST hand came up.

I'm in LP with A K and there is one limper to me. I make it $35. One blind comes in and the limper completed. The flop comes K J 8 . Checked to me and I make it $110. The blind folds and the limper calls.

The turn is the Q. It's limped to me again. This guy had only been playing for about 20 minutes but I did see him calling a few hands and showing down top pair, weak kicker type holdings, so I felt a weak K was in his range. I also felt that if he had trips, two pair or just hit the straight I would find out right now. So I bet $200 and he called pretty quickly which made me think that he was on the flush draw.

The river was an offsuit A. So now I have two pair, but a T completes the straight. Within just a few seconds he pushes in all of his chips and he has me covered. I have just over $500 left. So I have invested 350ish in the pot so far and there is about 1200 in the pot in total.

Could he have had a broken flush draw with the T ? How about a hand like KT? As i said before, I really don't see him having a set here given the flush draw on board he would have had to raise.

As for reads, I did see him showing down some suspect holdings, but haven't seen him make any big bluffs. He did look like the kind of player who was capable of it, but that was just a gut feeling, no specifics to rely on.

What would you do and why? Results to follow.

Just finished watching the last episode of HSP season 3. There were several great hands, but one in particular had me a bit confused. Brian Townsend raises preflop to about $2400 with AQo and Patrick Antonius, who appears to have position, re-pops it to $6600 so it's about 4200 more to call. Townsend asks Antonius how much he has behind him, which turns out to be aroudn $500k, and Brian has him covered. Townsend, after much deliberation decided to fold. Now given Antonius's loose image (he had 96h in this hand), i really don't see a fold here. Now i'm assuming the reasons for this are that Brian would be OOP after the flop, if he does hit the A or Q he feels that he won't get paid and there is a chance that Antonius has him dominated with AK/QQ-AA. However, looking at it another way, it's also just as likely that he could have Antonius dominated with a hand like AJ, Ax, KQ, QJ, etc. Sure, nobody wants to play Antonius out of position, but still... your thoughts?

I played in the last event at the LAPC prior to the main event. It was another $1k event with about 500 runners. Like last week, I got off to another fast start. On the second orbit I was dealt QQ from UTG, raised, was called by a later position player and bet every street. The guy mucked the river and I won about 1500. From there my stack pretty much stayed the same, at around 4-4.5k (we started with 2.5k) for the next few hours. There was really no eventful hands to report until...

About 2 minutes before the 7pm dinner break I raise on the button with KJs. Both blinds call. They were solid and aggressive players. The flop came Q95rags. They checked and I checked. The turn brought J and two of the same suit. They both checked again. There was approximately 1k in the pot. I was 99% sure that my TP, good kicker was the best hand. There was no way that these guys would check twice with a hand that could be me. I raised to 1k and the SB thought for about 10 seconds and pushed (we had about the same stack size). Given my initial read i decided that he was either making a move or was on a flush draw. I beat him into the pot and he showed A5 and a flush draw. He didn't improve and I was off to the races with a great stack of 8.5k at the dinner break.

We came back from the break and I quickly win $1k more when I made a blind steal attempt from late position, both blinds called, missed the flop, both blinds checked and took it down with a c-bet.

For the next two hours things didn't go quite as well. I just couldn't get things going. I did catch AA/KK/QQ. On the AA and KK hands I raised and nobody called. On the QQ hand, an aggressive opponent raised from LP, I reraised and he called. I led out the flop with a 2/3rds pot sized bet and he called. An A fell on the turn and he led out and I folded. He showed a flopped set of 5's, so the A actually saved me. This guy and i were tangling a lot and I was ready to go to the felt with my QQ.

The same guy was constantly raising my blinds so one time I called his raise from the BB with nothing and led out on the flop (still with nothing). He raised me all-in and I folded. That one cost me 1k.

One interesting hand that came up along the way: I have J8 from LP and call with two limpers in front of me. The button calls so for of us (the BB too) see a flop of J95. The first two players check, I decide to check to see what the button does (I intend to check-raise if I feel he's trying to bluff at it). The button bets 1k which is about the pot. The first EP player pushes and the next EP folds (he later showed AJ for TPTK and was also intending to CR). I fold and the button calls with J9 for two pair. The other player (who was my aggressive nemisis) shows QT and hits his K for a straight and doubles up. He was all-in and would have been out -- this is important since...

I now have about 7.5k which isn't great, but it's not horribe. Blinds are 100-200 with a 25 ante so I still have plenty of play. Here's my knockout hand, it pretty much played itself I believe:

I'm in the SB. Two limpers and my aggressive nemisis makes it 2300 more so there is about 3k+ in the pot. I look down at AK. With so much in the pot already and given the wide range I put on the raiser, I decide to push. He calls instantly and shows QQ. I don't improve and am out at 11pm with about 100 players left.

I was pretty happy with my play. You need to win hands like my AK/QQ hand. If I do, I'm at 15k and am one of the top 10% in chips. I also had AA/KK 3 times after the dinner break and didn't get action once. I had QQ and lost about 1.5k and then lost my stack with AK. You must win some money with these hands, but I didn't. What are you going to do?

So my wife and I planned to head up to Santa Barbara wine country for a romantic Valentine's dinner at the Sunstone Vineyard with a few other couples. She booked a room at the new Chumash resort. I recalled reading the poker listing of the Chumash poker room up on Tworags, so I was hoping to get in a session or two if I’m able to find some time.

We arrived Friday afternoon and she was a bit under the weather and wanted to get a good night sleep in so she would be rested for the big dinner the following night. Okay, I guess I'll just have to go down to the poker room. Not too bad...

I get there a bit past 9pm, and it is packed. They are spreading 4 NL tables at the $100-200 buyin level with 2/5 blinds and one NL table at the $300-500 level with 5/10 blinds. The lists are 15+ names deep, so I also put my name on some limit list and go to the cafe to grab some food. I get back 30 minutes later and the NL list hasn't moved much but my name comes up for the 4/8 limit game after another 15-20 minutes.

I haven't played much limit in about 2 years, and I'm not a big fan. I try to play a pretty straightforward/TAG game and don't enter many pots. I did have AK one time from LP, raised, get two callers and bet the rag flop, bet a blank turn and folded to a bet by an EP player on the river when I missed again.

I also played a few community pots with 8-9 players but never really made a hand for the 45 minutes or so I played. I think I lost about $70 in total when my name finally came up for the $100-200 game.

I buy-in for the max $200. The table consisted of a mix between blue-collar types in their 30’s and 40’s and college kids, probably coming up from UCSB. Everyone was very friendly and seemed to know each other.

To say I was card dead would be an understatement. Not only did I not get many/any premium hands, but when I did play a hand I rarely hit a flop. On several occasions I would raise from late position, continuation bet when it was checked to me and sometimes even fire a second and even third bullet when I could sense that my opponents wanted me to check. Well, in almost all cases I would get called down by opponents with very little – second and third pair type hands, but they were usually good enough against me.

Of course I tried to change gears and wait for big hands, but even then I would usually lose. For example, one time I three bet a guy with QQ, got called and then on an A rag flop the guy checks to me. I felt compelled to bet, the guy agonizes and calls, he checks again on the turn, I check too, he bets the river I call (probably a bit tilted) and he shows AT.

I played until 2:30am and maybe won 3-5 hands the entire time! One time I did stack a guy when I hit trips on the flop and my opponents didn’t believe I had it so they called me down, but hands like that were few and far between. I lost a few buy-ins and never could get anything going. I did have a good rep to get action for my premium hands, but it just didn’t work out for me. As they say… that’s poker!

I did have a good experience and was impressed with the room. The dealers and players were friendly, the action was good and management was very professional. They could use a bigger room with more tables and a bigger waiting area, but other than that I had no complaints and look forward to my next trip up to Santa Barbara!

* There was a guy there who won about 10 buy-ins – he cashed in for $2k which is quite a lot in a $200 max buy-in game. Not only did the guy have an incredible run of cards, but it seemed that every time he hit a big hand, someone else hit a big hand too, but it was just under his hand. At one point he was dealt KK three times in two orbits. Each time he stacked a player who also had a premium hand, just not quite as strong as his. Just an incredible run of cards.