Jay311md 4 - Donks 1

I've played in 5 home games now, over the past month and a half. I have won 4 of them, and lost 1 due to my own stupidity. If only I didn't push with AK against a really tight player. So, all is going great. The one I won last night was really great though.

So my sister in law calls me and asks if I want to play in a little home game they were getting together. So I decided that I needed to stretch my poker muscles and not just sit around and bitch about not playing. Things were going great for the first hour. I was slowly chipping up and had a little lead. Then I overplayed KK against a huge donkey. The table had been playing extremely weak-passive and very, very loose. They would limp just about every hand. Against players like that, you have to play position and wait for the right spots. They will call raises with all kinds of goofy hands and push with second or even third pair. SO I get KK and raise the 5 limpers. Sure enough, two of them call. The flop comes 8-4-4. Player out of position overbets the pot by 2X's. I call in position. The turn brings a 9. He bets even bigger, I shove in and he calls. He tables A4...GG me. So I had to rebuy.

From there, I just couldn't really pick up many hands, and went to my small ball approach. Basically, I would raise a lot of hands from the hijack, cutoff and button, and look to catch some reads. If I got any resistance, I would shut down. So I kept my chips around 20,000, but couldn't seem to get anything going. Long story short, we get down to 3 handed and I'm the super small stack. I still have about 20,000 and the other two each have about 90-100,000. The loose idiot makes a move with QJ off out of position in a raised pot and went broke to the nut flush. So I'm now heads up with an 11:1 chip deficit.

I had caught a few reads on my opponent, and had some good opportunities to double through. The first one came down like this. I only have about 10 BB's left. He flat calls, I check in the BB. The flop comes K-10-8, giving me a 10 with no kicker. I check it to him and I catch the read I had on him. He bets the flop, and I check raise him all in. He calls and tables J9 for the straight draw. He gets no help and I double through. We play a few hands and I take a few pots down. I'm now sitting at about 45,000. I get AK and he flat calls on the button. The blinds are 1,000-2,000 with a 300 ante. I raise OOP to 7,000. He flat calls. The flop comes 10-8-4 with two clubs. I bet about 2/3 the pot, he flat calls. The turn brings a Queen. I check with the intention of calling, depending on his bet. He checks behind, very interesting. He was an aggressive player and would have bet just about any hand, except for a draw. He would have bet any pair, but with one card to come I think my read and double would have made him check a draw and hope to get there. The river brings another 8. I check it to him and he shoves all in. Holy ape shit. Again I had caught a few reads on him and went through the hand in my head. There really wasn't any kind of hand that made sense. I decided to go with my read and my instincts and called. He showed A9 suited for just a flush draw, and I doubled through again with AK high.

So we play for another hour and a half, and I slowly chip him down. I knew once I doubled through the first time that I had the advantage. So I ended up pushing him with small raises and cbets. If he played back, I would re-evaluate and either fold or look to get good pot/implied odds. The final hand was pretty standard. Button shove with Q8 off, and I called with A3 suited. No pairs hit and Ace high was good. Not a bad result, so I need to keep it up.

I have been watching a lot of videos on Poker VT. Boosted J's videos were kind of boring and he played really poorly, I thought. Hopefully his next videos will be better, because he is a good player and I was not impressed with the sessions he was putting together. JC Alvarado is a great cash game player. His videos were quite informative and impressive. But the coup de grats was Negreanu's Small Ball videos. By far worth the price of admission. I am going to go through and review them one more time. They are so great.

There's a few players blogs that I wonder why they took them down. Goldseraph and Jimmythehat19 I'm looking in your directions. I looked forward to reading your musings, rants, and bragaments. Wonder what happened to the "great" Jimmy. He didn't lack for confidence, but for some reason he took his blog down....hmmm.