Practice session

Las Vegas trip coming in 10 days. (!) But first a 7 hour $1-$2 session at the Cleveland Horseshoe...

I felt like I was on my A game for most of the night. I double barreled the only decent player at the table with nothing and got a fold. He sighed as he folded to my bet after a Queen came on the turn and said "I think I was ahead until that card came". "yeah, I got lucky", I replied, not completely lying. (I did get lucky enough to get a broadway card that I knew would apply pressure on him).

2 big hands accounted for my profit. One was top set vs. second set vs my friend LR - a standard cooler that doubled me up and took a bite out of his 4 buy-in profit. This one wasn't really worthy of discussion, we both played the hand correctly and he would have stacked me had the hands been reversed.

The second big hand for me was the last of the night. I didn't start this hand well, I actually limped with . It was a really weak table, but I was still in too early of position to limp with this hand. (This was one of the reasons I was sure it was time to go, actually) The button made it $10- he was a tightish, straightforward player. And then the big blind called - he was the worst player at the table. He bought in for $100 at a time and had reached into his pocket to rebuy 3 times already. I called behind.

The flop was a mixed bag, as it often the case with weak preflop holdings - we see a board. Trip aces for me, but the straightforward player was likely to have raised up my limp with a big ace. I was way ahead of big pairs or way behind the fourth ace.

Bad blind checked and so did I, waiting for the button to cbet. He checked behind. I already knew he was a chronic slowplayer, so I kept AK/AQ/AJ in his range for now.

We saw a , so now a flush was out there. I was looking to get the showdown. We both checked to the button again, and this time he bet out $15 into the $30-ish pot. Bad button called right away. I felt like I could still be behind bigger aces, and now KK caught me, but I also felt like KQ could be one of his hands, especially with the as a flush redraw. I was happy to make this $15 call into a $60 pot and see what would happen on the river.

What happened was the .

What a card! I caught just about every hand except AK. I could get value from all other his big aces, from KK, maybe 99 (I didn't think 99 was a very likely preflop raise from this player, and I knew A9 was not possible). I couldn't see any possible flush this player would have, either.

So I needed to bet something that AQ and AJ could call. If he raised, I would be in some kind of pickle, thinking he could do this equally with KK (which I was beating) or AK (which I wasn't). There are exactly 3 combos of each left. I tried hard not to think about this possibility.

I slid out $55. He looked a little surprised, but he thought for a second and then made the call. I knew right then I had him because he didn't raise.

Then, as a bonus, bad blind tanked also! He had something he was thinking about calling with. After about 30 seconds, he said "I have a flush, I'm not folding" - slid out a stack of red chips, and tabled .

I flipped over my full house, and the original raiser mucked. AQ/AJ I'm pretty sure.

I had one more hand to go before the end of the orbit. I folding something (can't even remember what it was), tipped the dealer $3, and then started putting my chips in a tray. 113 big blind profit on the night.