Chris Halverson’s Blog

Balance: $92.99 (-$5.62 from previous)
Ranking: 28/165
Level: 50/1

So close again. My high water mark for the night was $99.11. That’s right, less than 1BB away, a whopping 89 cents, and I couldn’t quite get it. I played two orbits after that and got nothing and decided to call it a night.

I could have had it too had I been paying attention to the pot versus my balance at the time. In other words, I would have thrown in a raise at the end and if he called I would have had it. Basically, I went into weak mode yet again.

I got rockets in MP and raised, folded to SB who raised. BB and UTG called. I made it four and everybody called. Flop came down KQ9 rainbow and I was loving that as I was sure it hit somebody. SB led out and everybody called. I probably was weak here too as I probably had the best hand, but JT is an obvious possibility. Turn brings an A and while I made my set, the board is very scary. SB bets, BB calls, UTG folds and I raise to figure out where I’m at. I figure if somebody raises I’m probably dead. SB does indeed raise. Damn. BB calls again though so I’m getting incredible odds to continue, so I call again. I could very well be drawing dead, but if the board pairs I’ve got to be good and I still have top set. The river is a 4 and SB bets. BB calls and I just call. SB flips over AQo, BB shows T2o and MHIG. Had I just raised there and been called I would have met my goal.

I played a little weak on that hand and a couple of others throughout the night. It seemed like whenever I got big pockets, the flop would be very scary. This put me into check/call mode in fear of being raised. I made a dumb play early in the night that put me on the defensive a bit. I had top two pair, but the river brought a potential straight. Early position led out and I raised and he raised me back. Opps. I honestly didn’t really see him staying in with the straight. It was a double gutshot on the flop and there had been betting, so I didn’t put him on it. I thought he may have been trying to buy the pot and was more than happy to raise.

I did watch one 2+2 OIC’er bust out. I had played with him a bit over the last couple of days and he was playing in super-LAG mode trying to either bust of move up quickly. I think that’s kind of the strategy when doing the OIC and getting down to about $25. You don’t get your money back until you bust, so it’s actually in your best interest to be hyper-agressive.

I only played OIC stuff last night. I need to get jamming on the Crypto sites, there’s no way I’m going to clear all those bonuses this month. I did deposit into Interpoker so at least that one will stack and I can clear it next month. No SNGs since last week either. This is mostly due to a lack of a known block of time to play. Last night’s session was actually 3 sessions, one as short as 15 minutes. I generally don’t like to play unless I can play for an hour at a time, but of course sometimes real life comes into play.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 24th, 2004 at 8:37 am and is filed under . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.