Bad Read, Good Outcome

That might have been the theme of my weekend. It was certainly the theme of two big hands I dragged the pot in.

Firstly - Special K raised preflop to $2.75 from early position. One caller before it gets to me on the button, where I had straddled to $1. I make the loose call of $1.75 with J6o, and the flop comes down a lovely J-6-x (x might = a king, but I don't really remember). K bets out, the other preflop caller folds, and I raise. I put him on AK or something of that nature. He thinks for a moment before he raised all in, and I call. He tables the first pair of aces he's seen since October (and I can attest to most of this, since I've been around for most of his sessions since October), and they've been cracked by some dumbass with J6o. The board doesn't pair and I double up.

Secondly - I don't remember any of the preflop action, but the flop came down with a king, and I had KJ soooted. Jim the Knife was firing on every street, and I was calling him down. I didn't feel like I could really re-raise with the Jack, but it was good enough to keep calling with. Everything finished out and Jim tabled a King as well, but no kicker. I didn't put him on anything that strong, but it was a good result. So my reads weren't spectacular, but the results were ok.

One hand where my read was good, and hand held up, went down a little like this. I'm in a blind. BadBlood raised, Jim called, and I looked down at 5d-2d. I remark that I have recently fallen in love with this trashy-assed hand, and make the call. The flop comes down 5-2-9 with two clubs, and I remark that I can't talk about how shitty my hand is, get a raggedy-ass flop like that and NOT bet out, so I bet out at it. Blood raised me, Jim moved all in over the top, and I had to have a nice long think about things. It took me a while, but I finally decided that Jim would make that move with a huge range of hands, and moved all in over the top for my last few pennies. Blood got out of the way, and Jim turned over the best and worst of all possible worlds for me - Kc-7c. I saw the flush draw, and did something I practically never do: I offered to run it twice.

It shows how snakebit I still feel about the last half of 2008 that I even offered to run it twice when I was a 64% favorite to win the hand. Jim agreed, and the board ran out club-free both times, leaving me to drag a huge pot. I finished up pretty significantly on the evening, making up for an awful showing the last time we had a game at my house. I thought about it later, and am still intrigued by my own offer to run it twice. It probably stemmed partially from playing at Blood's house the night before, where running it twice when there are big pots on the line is a fairly common occurence. It also stemmed from a sense of impending doom that goes back to last year, but the fact was that I was only on buy-in #1, and that's a pretty rare place for me to be that late in the evening.

So all in all it was a good weekend of poker, with me logging a rare pair of back-to-back winning sessions to put me back in the black for the year. It looks like the home game is on the road this weekend as your intrepid heroes head north into real hillbilly country to take on the games at the Tri-State race track in Charleston, WV. Lemme know if that's close to your neck of the woods (literally, woods) and we'll grab a beer.