Rocked Hard
I played a monster session at the Hard Rock on Monday. I really shouldn’t have.
Honestly, I should have known how the day was going to go when I got felted on the fourth hand of the day. I’m holding top two on a J-9 board that looks pretty innocuous. Of course, I was in the hand with the straddler who happened to be holding 6-8 and who happend to have turned the straight after a flop of 9-5-6. Ugly.
Things didn’t get much better from there when A-K went down to a set of 7s after a K-7-5 board with a diamond draw, and two pair (J-8 limped from the big blind) fell to a set of Kings after the pocket pair wasn’t raised pre-flop.
After a break for lunch, I returned to the game and things started to turn around. I managed to recoup most of my losses from the morning session until the massacre took place. Early position raised to $40 pre and got two callers. I popped it to $160 from the button with Kings and was reraised to $600 by EP. After the other two players folded, I made the call fearing the worst. The flop was all low balls and EP shoved for $1,100 into a $1,300 pot. I called (reluctantly) and was of course greeted by the only two cards I didn’t want to see. Back into the red for me.
I nursed my small stack for awhile longer and finally called it a night after shoving A-8 into a A-high board, only to be called by two better Aces. Put a fork in me… I was done.
On the plus side, former World Champion Jamie Gold spent a number of hours slumming in our little $2-$5 game and he turned out to be a much nicer guy than I would have ever expected. He showed some flashes of the Jamie we all remember from the WSOP, raising pots with junk and getting paid when he hit his hands. (The best of the night was when he shoved all-in on a 2-3-5 board with two diamonds. “You’re not afraid of the diamonds?, he asked his soon-to-be victim, then turned over A-4 with the Ace of Diamonds for the flopped wheel and the straight-flush redraw. It’s good to be Jamie Gold… it’s not so good to be me, however.)
Ah well… that’s poker.
