Ups and Downs

Another weekend over, where do they go?
The rain fell, the only chance we had to get out was Monday morning and Mia was straining at the leash to get to the park. Got back for lunch as the heavens opened, so it was indoors most of the weekend, which does not lead to a happy Mia. She needs to run free and burn off the excess energy, or she is up early and late to bed. Still, we managed to have some fun with plasticine and felt faces.

Takes you back, huh?

Poker was a mixed affair, hence the title. On one site I dropped 100$ due to some amazing cards. Hands where you think you must be ahead, and are amazed when someone raises or bets into you, and you stop and think ‘the only hand I can lose to is…….’. And guess what the villain has? Grrrrr.
The most noticeable one was holding 8h 9h and seeing a flop of 2 9 9. I bet it hard and got a caller. Turn was an A and again I bet it hard, and the river was a 6. He had pocket 6’s.
Looking back, I think these hands you cannot get away from. When there are only 2 of you in the hand, I think it’s fair to assume it is unlikely he has the other 9 (though this is online poker!), though some players refuse to believe they are beaten, these miracle cards happen, so why not this hand?

So I licked my wounds and moved over to another site where I managed to turn 100$ into 274$ in 2 nights. Placed in a few SNG, but mainly this came from cash games, going against what I’ve been blogging the last few times, where most of my successes were coming from MTT or SNG.
I folded KK on 10 7 2 flop, with 2 suited cards and 2 opponents, after betting the flop and seeing a raise and a call. One player had a set of 7s and the other the flush draw, which hit the river, leaving me 3rd in a 3 horse race, had I called. Saved myself a few quid here, and I was pleased with my discipline and sensible-ness.
A spectacular run of cards saw 2 particular sessions turn a 25$ buy in to 100$+ and despite losing a buy in with a set to a rivered str8, I still put in a good profit. Swings and roundabouts, I guess.

The BritBlogger was another disappointment for me. This time I actually had some hands, but Kat always seemed to have better. She raised before me when I had AK, and perhaps my call was a mistake, I should have pushed, especially when I saw what she had. The flop (I think) was JJK and Kat bet about half the pot. I was tempted to push, but there was another player in the hand, and I thought another J could well be out there. So I folded, and Kat showed her 10 J. Raised early on with Aces and Kings, but got no callers so unable to cash in on any strong hands.
I busted out when I matched a J with 3 hearts on the flop, and saw a weakness when Pok3rMonkey reduced his turn bet somewhat, so I pushed all in. After using up most of his time-bank, he called and showed KK (no hearts) and out I went. Such a fine line between success and failure sometimes, as I know he was very tempted to fold. It was a good call on his part, and I’ve linked him up to the right so stop by his T’ai Chi blog and say goodbye to the Monkey as it moves over to Dudley/Dd/Resident Evil’s blog (what do we call him??) for the week.

The biggest surprise came when I check the leader board the next morning and saw position 3 – Burnley Mik. I Emailed Poker Stars support to advise them of the obvious mistake, he surely finished 13th not 3rd, and there was a basic programming error? But no, he did finish 3rd and made good on a promising chip stack for the first time! Only kidding Mik, good stuff – maybe the start of a roll?

Anyway, time to do something better…….