Poker Friday

Players: Pokerhontasz, Pete, KingTubby,TheConge,Hadrosaur,Top_Jimmy

This week’s home game was moved to a Friday to suit players, and resulted in a 6 handed game with two new faces. Known simply as ’Pete’ our first new player caused some discomfort around the table when he loudly announced that he had a problem with ‘benders’. Pete has a serious issue with an allegedly perverted minority of people (myself shamefully included) who bend their hole cards slightly to view them secretively, and this tilted the lad from the start. Pete also took issue with the low stakes of our sit and go, but since these regular games are a new thing we want to make them as friendly and welcoming as possible to all our friends.  Our second new player is known as Hadrosaur (spelling?) and cast a much more unassuming presence at the table, possibly due to jenk cards for the first few rounds.

The first hand of the night prompted a steward’s enquiry regarding shuffling, since the flop brought JJJ with a turn 8 and river 9. This was a classic ‘battle of the blinds’ when KT limp-called a BB raise preflop. The turn actions were: bet-call and river bet-fold. TheConge later claimed he folded an ace which seems to fit the action and since KingTubby was first seat after the dealer, it seems likely Pete (KTs buddy) bottom-dealt him the case jack in his hole cards lolz! The early action saw generally passive play and Pete hitting some long-shot backdoor draws.  In one of these multiway pots Hadrosaur probe bet a draw heavy board to get HU with Pete, hit trips on the turn, but then lose to Pete’s straight on the river. TheConge noted, and I commented on the value of Mark’s so-called donk bet but on reflection a true donk bet is out of position into a preflop raiser.  Since Mark had position and probably the best hand, a probe with a good underpair is more of an informational bet, especially since the board only contained one overcard and was checked around to him.

With an imposing chip stack Pete became ‘table captain’ for a while and attempted to three bet my UTG raise at one point. I called preflop and on a Kxx board I checked with intent to call what would be an obvious bluffing spot, but Pete checked back. A blank turn resulted in check-check and I took it down on the river with a value sized bet. Looking back on this hand in the light of Pete’s later actions I am fairly happy with my play, since I was clearly WAWB (way ahead or way behind) but ultimately confused, since three-bet pots are usually pitched battles of doublethink post flop and Pete smiled unnervingly throughout the hand.  The other move that unnerved me early on was TheConge folding and showing top two pair after Pokerhontasz raised pre and led out on a monotone flop. The erstwhile overbetting monster had clearly brought his Ultra-tight A* game to the table and I felt like I was in a parallel universe, either that or TheConge was still hurting from King Tubby’s suck out against his top-two last time! I think Pokerhontasz must have used her WWDD (What would Doyle do?) mantra to dig deep and come up with such a genius bet against the only player on the table who could have laid down a hand in that spot!

Our first big blow up of the night started with Pete limping the HJ and TheConge announcing ‘call’ on the button but putting in a minraise. Conge should have been forced to only call the bet but we mistakenly left it as a raise, and this betting accident motivated Pete to reraise when it folded around to him again. Conge responded with a massive 4 bet leaving him with roughly a pot sized bet left behind.  Pete did not spend long in the tank before 5 bet shoving his mega stack and TheConge called faster than ‘A crack whore on giro day’ (thanks Charlie Don’t Surf for that one) and tabled KK. Pete threw down the mighty Q7s, dominated in spades. The board ran out Kd,Ac,4s,4h,6d and TheConge became overwhelming leader of the stack. He also later claimed he was ‘angle-shooting’ to induce spew with the miscalled hand so we will be looking to penalise the lad next time he pulls one of those stunts!

An interesting hand developed between myself and TheConge who minraised UTG and I 3 bet in position. Conge called and on a flop of 3,4,10 (two hearts) Conge bet and I shoved him deep into the tank.  The deeper the tank the worse the hand of course, and Conge eventually found a fold. He was representing a difficult decision with JJ but in fact was holding two napkins I am sure, since I can read Conge’s soul with Hellmuthian accuracy;) It was not long before we reached the bingo stage of the match and to cut a long story short there was a tonne of flips; plenty of cooking lagers; a row between me and Pokerhontasz when she slow-rolled again; a dodgy blow up from me calling way behind Hadrosaur’s stop and go’d KK; plenty more cooking lagers; an anti social early swerve from knocked out KingTubby and Pete and yet more cooking lagers.

Heads up actually featured a little bit of play on this occasion and the match was between a fairly short short stacked, sober Hadrosaur and a huge stacked-but-well-oiled Conge. The players quickly swapped stacks when in a limped pot Conge’s Q3 hit middle pair on A23 board, prompting Conge to shove a second Ace on the turn. Hadrosaur insta called holding A9 and a river 3 brought a comedy double take with talk around the table along the lines of ‘He’s made a full house, oh no it’s the second nuts, no hang on its quads, no its not!’ TheConge was a little shell shocked and stared at a board for ages, trying to magically turn his hand into the nuts!  It was not long before Conge preflop shoved one too many hands and Hadrosaur called down with K2 to beat 57 to victory. Hadrosaur’s ‘virgin victory’ moment was rendered in ink by Pokerhontasz,included below.  I think she has captured TheConge's confident table steez well. I will also include a bonus self portrait Pokerhontasz doodled in down time between hands, which needs to become her table icon online if we can hook that up somehow:) Also this post is way too long for a glossary, so I am sorry if anyone is befuddled by any new terminology.