A good weekend

Last weekend was the "deepstack" at Terry's house. What an amazing house. His poker room is amazing as well. Thanks for hosting Terry. It is a great place to play cards.
I started drinking in the afternoon on Saturday before I made the trek to his place. It was one of those days where we took the kids out to lunch and ended up with a few beers. The problem was the "few beers" were 22 ounces each. I met Ang, Nicole and Chaz before the tourney and had another beer (which I could not even finish) and a jager bomb. I hate Jager. (I had to use google to get the correct spelling of Jager) By the time I got to Terry's place I was feeling pretty good.

I ended up with a pretty tough first table. I had Colin, Malcolm, Ang, Chaz, Brad, Meat, Ken and Rob. I really tried to just stay out of a lot of trouble and chip up. I was fairly successful at that table. I picked off a bluff by Ken and then Malcolm three barrelled me and I called with 99. There were only 3 over cards.

When we combined to 2 tables I had a pretty good stack. I played a hand horribly and I wish I could have a do over. I limped with AQ clubs. Why? I have NO idea. I flopped a flush draw. Chaz bet out on the king high board. I just called. Mistake number 2 in the hand. Chaz bet on the turn. I raised her. Mistake number 3 in the hand. Although I knew Chaz was not really strong, she is never folding to me in this spot. The river was a blank. Chaz checked to me. I thought for a minute and my brain was screaming just check behind. Nope. I fired again. Mistake number 4 in the hand. Chaz thought for a while and correctly pieced it together. Good Call. She had k5. Top pair no kicker. I was right in my read that she was not strong, but I did not listen to my self that she will never fold to me in that spot. Hey, it is not often that you can make a mistake at every point in the hand and still have chips.

Somehow I managed to make it to the final table. I was fairly short-stacked when we got there. We played 9 handed for quite a while. I just kept picking my spots and tried to play smart poker. At the break, Meat, Chaz, Prowest and Mark were the chips leaders with well over 60k. Malcolm was close by with about 45k. The rest of us were just hanging around. Meat, being Meat, told Chaz that if (when) they got heads up they could chop. Meat was out 9th. That made me happy. He thinks that he is the best player ever and I love outlasting him. When he got busted, there was talk of an 8 way chop. Um. No freakin way. I was still fairly short stacked but there was still no way I would ever chop 8 handed there. Malcolm tried to entice me to chop by pointing out that if we chopped, Meat would be the bubble boy. HMM. That sounded good, but no way was I chopping 8 handed.

A train wreck occurred shortly after Meat got busted. Malcolm spewed some chips and then shoved with A5. Chaz shoved behind him with AJ. Mark woke up with QQ. A safe board and Malcolm is out, Chaz' stack is decimated and Mark has a bunch of chips. Chaz ended up out soon after that hand on the bubble.

A very funny hand occurred between Karl and Hip hop. Karl limped utg with about 8 big blinds. Hmm. Wonder what he has? Hip Hop shoves with 10 10. I had AQs and insta-folded. Of course Karl has AA. Of course Hip Hop hits a 10. Hip Hop knew Karl had AA or KK at the least but still shoved. I can't really blame in that spot because of his chip stack, but he knew he was behind. 4 handed. Blinds are about to go to 5,000-10,000 in about 3 minutes. Anyone want to chop now. Please. Pretty Please. I only had 40k in chips. No one took me up on the offer. I picked up QQ in the big blind and Hip Hop shoved the small blind while only looking at a K. That is the right move in that spot. I got lucky to wake up with a hand. My QQ held and I was back in the game. Hip Hop got knocked out during that level. We played a few hands 3 handed when Mark who had the chip lead, although not a huge one, suggested an even chop. At that point we were guaranteed more than 2nd place money. Financially it made sense to chop. Also, even the big stack only had about 17 big blinds and the blinds were about to go up to 7,000-15,000. So we chopped 3 way for $800 each. A $700 profit. Not bad for an evening worth of "work".

I folded two hands at the final table that 8 months ago I would have played and I believe it saved my tournament. We were 7 handed. Prowest had been pretty active (surprise surprise) and was raising and limping quite a bit. He made a decent sized raise and I looked down at AJs. It was a weird spot. My chip stack dictated that I could not just call. It was either shove or fold. I could not make my self shove there so I folded. Someone made a comment to him about playing a lot of hands so he flipped over AK. Wow. Good lay down me. I may have caught my J, but I was way behind. It felt really good to fold that hand in that spot. I also folded 66. This was a pretty easy fold, but the old Jen would have seen a pocket pair and gotten all my chips in the middle regardless of the action before me. I cannot remember all of the action now, but I remember I would have lost had I put my chips in the middle.

I played the cash game for a short period of time and lost $20. I was not really in the mood to play cash, but I hung around for the fun.

The next day I had to drive to Detroit for work. That was fun on less than 2 hours of sleep. I cannot be that close to a Casino and not attend. I know that Matt G goes to Detroit fairly often, so I asked him the best place to play. He suggested Motor City, so there I went. I have to actually work now as my boss is a bitch. I will write later about the Detroit trip and my first session of Omaha 8.