Wow

I saw some ridiculous hands tonite. I'll just leave it at that because most of my hands were uneventful. So the chip leader at the table ($2500+) raises to 45, a late position player calls, the BB makes it $145 the original raiser calls and the late position player calls. I don't really know much about these players because I have only been at the table 15 minutes or so. Flop comes Jc 6s 3h. BB bets $150, original raiser instantly says $300 and BB goes all in for $260 more for a total of $560. Late position player folds in between. Raiser grimaces but calls. Turn comes 7h and river comes 5h for a Jc 6s 3h 7h 5h board and BB doesn't turn over because Original raiser says ship it and turns over Jh 8h to rake the almost $1600 pot.

Next big hand. Its limped around, maybe 5-6 players. Flop comes 4c 5c 7d. SB who is the 2nd biggest chip stack with a little more than $1900 bets $60 which is about the pot. One middle position player calls and the button (our Jh8h player) raises it $250 more for a total of $310. The SB then raises it $500 on top for a total of $810. The button then goes all in for $3000. Actually, SB only has about $1100 remaining. He thinks for a long time and finally calls. Button turns over his 3d 6d before the cards come out and turn comes Jd and the river comes the 4d. SB turns over his 44 for quads. After his reraise gets pushed on by the only other big stack at the table I think I can probably lay down bottom set on that board. He claims he was committed AND he was getting odds. But this just is another example of people misusing math and poker terms to justify bad calls. When the Button pushes all in the small blind has to call $1100 more. The pot is massive with $810 from each, $60 from the folded flop caller, and $60 preflop. So he has to call $1100 to win $2030. Not even 2:1. But yet if he is up against a set, he has one out and needless to say is not getting his necessary 25:1 to odds. If he is up against a straight then he is not getting his necessary 3:1 odds. I suppose on the outer realm of possibility he could have reasoned that the button had a two pair and was overplaying it after seeing the above hand. All draws wouldn't make sense as even something like Ac7c or 6c7c would just call the $500 reraise. I can definetly understand raising $250 more with either the Ac7c or 6c7c but there would be very little point in rerereraising allin with it once somone has said they have a monster. So he has to think he is up against either 55, 77, 36, or 68 with the way the action has built up. Again you can factor in a very small probability that he would be up against 57. But yet he still calls and gets lucky.

So in both of these cases, the utter wrong decision got grossly paid off.
Luckily for me I had AA in the small blind when a late position player raises to $45 and mister Jh8h reraises to $145 so I go allin for $305 and raiser goes all in for $315 so of course Jh8h says I have to call with JJ. Its AA vs KK vs JJ. Flop comes A 10c 4c. Turn comes 7c. So Now i have to sweat because im up against KsKc. Thankfully it comes a spade on the river and I triple up. Outside of that, however, very little good came out of the night as Jh8h went broke about an hour later going from about $3000 to $0 in the course of 90 minutes and so did the action. So when ever i did get a decent to good hand I only won small pots and all my bluffs got called. Outside of the bluffing I think I played well, I played very tight in the beginning but i guess I can't take too much credit for that as the table was very actiony with lots of preflop raising and reraising so I wouldn't have a chance to come in.

The more I think about it, i could be considered an action junkie. Meaning as long as there is action I am happy. I am perfectly content sitting and playing no hands for 2 hours if there is raising and action around me. But when the table dies down and no one is playing a hand, all of a sudden J9off in late position becomes a raising hand. I think I have programmed myself to play big pot poker so it seems nonsensical to play 45 minutes of $5-$10 NLHE limping and seeing who can hit on a $30 pot first. I cannot tell if this means I would be good at tournaments or not. In the opening rounds it would be quite a bit of small pots so I could get in trouble there but as the blinds and antes escalate i think I might have a much better handle on the situation as long as the structure allows for some fold equity. Im not sure, frankly, I have never been in that situation to test it out. I am planning on playing at least one or two of the Stars and Stripes tournaments at the Bike coming up because they are pretty cheap. I might even play the O8 tournament because its only $100! Here's the schedule STARS AND STRIPES