Nothing worked. No hands, no bluffs that worked. Getting whittled. Raised with A-J. The flop was K-Q-J. Decided to raise again and was called. Skip to the end, he had A-10 and had flopped the straight. I was down to 200. On the next hand I went all-in with K-3. I figured there was 8 minutes left until rebuys ended, might as well beat the clock. But I tripled up instead. Sitting in the big blind with 3 callers, I looked down at A-A. Yes! Went all in with 750, and doubled up to 1700 or so.
I stayed there for another 30 minutes doing nothing. The blinds are now at 100-200. In the big blind I have 9-9. Caller, caller, small blind raises to 600. I’m not sure what to do. I don’t have that much capital, the odds are good I’m going to end up all-in. 9s are good, but there are certainly a lot of hands that beat it. I should probably go all-in right now with my last 1200. Ah, I just call. The flop is 7-8-10. That’s a good flop for me. Open ended straight, a made pair, and no high cards on the board. Small blind checks. I go all-in. I get one caller. He had pocket 4s which do not hold up. Suddenly I find myself with ~4500 chips. I’m feeling good.
Blinds at 150-300. 10 players at the table. 3 limpers. Small blind limps. I am big blind, I look down at A-Q. That’s a raising hand! I raise it to 600. The 3 limpers call. The small blind thinks about it for a while and goes all in with ~3200. Hm. There was 2400 in the pot already, so he could have most anything and be stealing. I don’t think so. I think he has something. I’m thinking pocket Jacks, Queens, maybe even Kings. I think about it a long time since I have ~3200 myself. I call. 2 of the limpers fold. The last limper calls. I turn over my A-Q. Small blind turns over A-A. Argh, he totally snookered me!! And the limper turns over… J-8. J-8? Really? You called with J-8?
Do I even need to tell who won the hand? Me and the Aces were disgusted at being knocked out by J-8. We were royally cheesed. I felt like I didn’t mind being knocked by misread Aces, but J-8!? Cmon!
However, I now think it’s not quite so cut and dry. The J-8 player was looking at a pot of around 8,000 dollars that cost 3200 to call. That’s bad odds with J-8, but not quite so crazy. He was the big stack by a large margin, he had at least 12,000 already. In fact, I would argue that his bad play was the initial limp. After that pot odds were working for him to make the play merely shaky, not horrible.
Tonight: -$20