Poker Jones

I'm still just barely playing enough poker to cover my infrequent poker jones. I'll watch an episode of "Poker After Dark" on DVR and I will want to play a few hands, or I'll read another chapter of "Hunting Fish" and want to get in some table time.

So far the results have been amazingly good. I still have no reliable method for depositing money into the sites, so I am playing pretty small stakes. The last three sessions have been $25NL at PokerStars, and the results have been EXACTLY the same. A player who's not as good as he thinks he is slow plays a big hand and I accidentally crack him for his whole stack.

The first one was a while back so I don't remember all the details, except that I limped in MP with T8s. I flopped top pair and a very short player raised me. There were two of a suit on the board so I put him all in, thinking he was on a flush draw. I spiked a second ten on the turn and his AA was cracked.

Next time I call a raise with AJ sooooted and the player after me also calls. The flop has two of my suit so I put in a bet and the original raiser folds but the player who was after me just called. The turn was a jack so I put the caller all in. He called and my flush came in on the river, to crack his QQ.

On the final time I called with KQ sooooooooted in middle position and saw a Q high flop. I bet around the size of the pot and got re-raised. The only hand I was worried about was AQ but since there was no PF raise I called the re-raise and turned a K. Now I was hoping for AQ and checked. He checked behind and the river was a picture perfect Q. I pushed and he used up all his time bank before calling with AQ. Would have been a great fold. I couldn't have made it. But had he raised pre-flop I probably would have folded to the re-raise on the flop.

Maybe I'm the moron and these players are really smart because I was way behind them and most of the time they got their money in when they were huge favorites and I had to get lucky. But most of them never even gave me a chance to fold my hand. I don't know if they thought they were trapping pre-flop, but the only people they trapped was themselves.

If you are going to play big pairs that soft pre-flop and not try to define your opponents hands, you better be DAMN good at reading your opponents bets, and be able to lay down in VERY tough situations. And that's pretty damn good. Better than me.