Before I start, let me say good job to J$ for making a nice post!
And Tommy, you suck.
Now that we got that out of the way, let me also apologize in advance for those of you that don't play poker, because that's what I want to talk about tonight.
So tonight after work I went to the Clarendon Grill to play in a free Texas Hold'em no limit tournament. Every Tuesday night they have 2 free tournaments that regularly get about 40 people a tournament. I figured this would be a good opportunity for me to play in an unfamilar setting against a bunch of strangers. Good practice.
I sat down at a table full of dudes. Some of them were obviously regulars. One of them was def annoying. I played pretty tight to start with. I didn't really get any cards so I didn't get involved too much. I saw an opportunity to buy a pot and I did. I'd say the table was generally loose/agressive (i.e. people played a lot of hands and they played them hard).
The tournament has to end in about 3 hours so the blinds go up real fast. At this point, the blinds were 100/200. I was the big blind and I got Jack/9 unsuited. Everybody else folded and the small blind just called. I figure he's got shit, so I'll take a stab at buying his blind (I just watched him do the exact same thing the previous hand), so I raise him by 500. He calls, and my read is that he's just protecting his blind. So far so good (and as it turns out, I was right on). Then the flop comes Jack-8-4. I just flopped top pair. He checks, and I figure I need to drive him out right now so I bet 1000. Now he re-raises me 1500. I have 1800 left in chips. What to do, what to do??? And here's where I played like a rookie. Though I didn't think some of the other players were that great, this guy had played pretty solid. Yes I have top pair, yes I have a lot of chips in the pot, and yes I have to think about accumulating chips with the blinds going up so fast. But here I should have slowed down and thought about it. I just made a big bet, and this guy just check-raised me. He could be trying to scare me away, but I should have read it right and known I was beat.
Needless to say, I re-raised and went all in (no point in calling with only 300 chips left). Turns out he had J-8. A weak starting hand, but in his opinion good enough to defend his blind with. He flopped 2 pair. The turn gave me an extra out with a flush draw, but the river was an 8 to give him a full house.
Pack it up fab, time to go home, and you just lasted a whopping 33 minutes!
I'm not too happy about reading him wrong, but hopefully I'll learn from it.
That's my poker story for the day.
On a completely separate note, I'm going up to NYC this weekend to hang out with the usual suspects and see Ato in a show:
http://www.theblowin.com/Should be a good time.
