Cleveland Horseshoe report

Five and a half hours wins me a stack - $202 profit playing $1-2 on a Friday night.

I've been wanting to work on my Monster Tilt problem that I mentioned in a prior post, but of course that depended on my hitting some big hands, which I hadn't really done much in the last 2 sessions. Last night was different. I raised pocket kings and improved on an Ace-King-Six rainbow flop. My opponent, a decent beginning player who is trying to play well, then donked right into my set. Oh, happy day. I immediately put him on a big ace or maybe a weak hand on this board like pocket tens, who just wants to get me off of a missed flop.

Thinking immediately of the "big hand, big pot" principle, I raised the bet to $35. I knew I wasn't winning much more from his garbage, so folding those hands out was no big deal. When he called the $35 raise, he really limited himself to a couple hands only - pocket sixes for bottom set, Ace-King for top-two, or maybe an ace-queen that doesn't believe me yet. I didn't think this player would be venturing any further down the bad kicker category with his ace.

He checked the next card. Since he seemed willing to keep playing, I kept the pressure on with a $60 turn bet. My opponent didn't look comfortable - he took his time and thought through his best move, and couldn't come up with one. He called. I knew he has ace-king now. Pocket sixes would put me on ace-king and get it in. He was too cautious to play a big pot with Ace-queen.

The river came and he checked again. I had like $110 left. I was controlling my monster tilt well - thinking hard about the best bet size. Shoving was too strong, and anything over $100 sounded too big to me. I settled on $85. He again took his time and finally called.

"You've got ace-king, huh? I said as I flipped the bad news. I felt bad for the kid - he was in a very rough spot against me.

I had a couple more monsters to practice my emotional control. I raised a little ace-seven and got 4 callers. I hit my flush draw but on a bad board for betting. I had position on the other three opponents so I just checked and took my free card. Wonder of wonders, it completed my flush. Better yet, one of the blinds bet into me. Once again, I got to take my time and consider the best course of action (a raise), got my opponent to do what I wanted (call me), and was able to maximize value in the hand. (he folded to a $75 river bet, my guess is that he had a single high flush card that missed on the river).

Finally, an obvious beginner player made a raise and I called with pocket fours. The flop came four/six/ten and he bet pot into me. I knew for 100% certainty he had an overpair. I remained calm, decided there was no way this guy could fold an overpair, raised, and he shoved. I called and had to dodge a third queen coming, which I did.

No big losing hands of note. I did have a hand where I called a shortstack shove with KQ on a JTx board, getting exactly 2-1 odds to chase my straight, and an overlay when I found out I was up against a weak jack and pairing my king or queen would give me a win as well. I lost $60 in this hand, but had no trouble doing so knowing my play was profitable long-term.

I'm keeping track of my Horseshoe results separately - I'm currently at a profit of $561 in 45.5 hours of poker (9 sessions). I'm running about 25BB/100 hands - a very strong showing so far.