I hadn’t played on America’s Card Room, though a number of people had recommended it, but I thought I’d take a whack at their FREEBUY series running this week. Nearly 60 guaranteed prize pool events with no cost for the initial buy-in, but small charges for rebuys and add-ons. Not that I was going to do either of those things.

I lasted all of thirty hands in #4, a $5K guarantee that I entered late. About the same in the $500 guarantee #8. In #12 (another $5K) I made it up to 35 hands, probably because I got aces twice. #17 was less than 20 hands, despite starting at the very beginning of the game. #19 was 2 hands, though I will say that was a set over set loss. #20, a $5K, sort of made up for it. Not a big payday, but I’m happy with the results.

America’s Cardroom FREEBUY Super Series #20 $5K NLHE

Hand 5 [9c 9d] BB T1,000 25/50
UTG2 raises to 150, BTN 3-bets to 350, I call, and UTG2 calls. The flop is [4d 2h 5d] and I shove. UTG2 folds, BTN calls with 1,275 behind. He has [7s 8s], the rest of the board runs out [qh ks] and I win.

Hand 11 [js 9d] BTN T2,110 30/60
I open to 180 and get called by BB. We check the board down [qh 5h 3d qs 3h], he opens [9h jc] and we split the pot.

Hand 14 [7c 7d] HJ T2,125 30/60
We’re seven-handed. I open to 180 and BTN calls. I c-bet 275 on the [jd 5s 8c] flopped get a call. [9c] gives me the ass-end of the  jack-high gunshot straight draw. I really need a six here. I check-fold to an all-in from BTN that would have put me all-in.

Hand 15 [jd kc] UTG T1,670 30/60
Open to 180 and everyone folds.

Hand 28 [ad 7d] UTG2 T1,560 40/80
I open to 240 and BTN calls. The flop is [td 2d 3h], I check-shove after BTN (same player who shoved on my in Hand 14) bets 300 and he folds.

Hand 34 [jc jd] CO T2,030 50/100/10
UTG1 limps and I raise to 650. My nemesis (currently BB) calls. The flop is [5h 4c 8d], he shoves, and I think my jacks are good, so I call. He has [ac 7c] for an over card, a gut-shot, and a backdoor flush, but there’s [ks] on the turn and [2c] on the river. so I double.

Hand 37 [kd kc] UTG1 T4,250 50/100/10
I open to 300 and get a call from BTN and BB. The flop is an unfortunate [9c ah 4s]. I c-bet 500, BTN calls, and I check fold to a bet on the [6h] turn.

Hand 42 [as qd] CO T3,250 50/100/10
UTG2 limps in and I raise to 400. BB and UTG2 call me. The flop is [9d jd 5d], and with the queen, I think I might be good. They check it to me, I shove 2.8K into 1.3K, and they fold.

Hand 43 [jd jh] T2,505 50/100/10HJ
UTG limps, I raise to 1K, UTG shoves for a total of 1,655, and I call. He has [qs ks], the board shows [kc 3s 6h 3h 8c] and he wins.

Hand 50 [9c 7c] SB T2,265 75/150/15
Action folds to me and I go all-in, since BB has only 715 behind his blind. He folds.

Hand 57 [ts tc] CO T2,300 100/200/20
Right around this point, I had to go pick my wife up from work early. I felt no remorse abandoning a freeroll, and figured if I was still in when I got back, I’d still be in. Otherwise I probably would have played this hand.

Hand 72 [6s js] UTG T1,275 125/250/25
My absence had coincided with the hourly break, so I didn’t miss as many hands as all that, but with only 11BB when I left, I did lose a substantial portion of my chips. No mind. This was the first hand after I got back, I was about to eat the blinds, so I shoved my 5BB. HJ re-shoved, and the BB got all-in, as well. The board ran out [kd 8d qd td 9s], nobody had a diamond, and my straight took the main pot. The largest stack with [ah qh] lost the most, and BB’s [kh qs] took a side pot for about a third of the chips he put in.

Hand 78 [qd 8d] UTG2 T3,685 150/300/30
UTG had a stack of 5.5K and limped in. I shoved for 12BB and the only call was from UTG. He had [3s 3h], I made a flush draw on the flop, a gut-shot on the turn, and a pair of eights on the river and took in 8K.

Hand 82 [ad kd] BTN T7,460 150/300/30
Everyone folds to me, I raise to 900, and the blinds fold.

Hand 83 [as ac] CO T8,120 150/300/30
HJ goes all-in for 2,655 and I re-raise all-in. He has [qd qc], the board is [kd 7c 3h kh 3d] and I win.

Hand 84 [ks ts] HJ T11,435 150/300/30
UTG min-raises, getting called by UTG2, me, CO, and BB. The flop is [4c kh jh], gets checked to me, and I bet 2K, two-thirds the pot. CO calls, and UTG shoves for just 243 more, with UTG2 getting out of the way. I call, and so does CO. We both check the [js] on the turn, but I go all-in on the [kd] river, hoping to essentially wipe out CO if he can call with a jack. He folds, though, BB has [9h qd] and I take the whole pot.

Hand 92 [ad ah] HJ T17,911 175/350/35
I open to 1,050 and everyone folds. Still, good to have aces twice in ten hands.

Hand 99 [js kc] CO T17,816 200/400/40
I open to 1,200 and everyone folds.

Hand 110 [td qs] UTG T17,551 225/450/45
My opening raise is to 1,350. BTN re-raises to 3,150, the blinds get out of the way, and I call. [kc 4c 2s] on the flop, I don’t think I’m going anywhere there and check-fold to a bet.

Hand 111 [9d tc] BB T14,356  225/450/45
UTG min-raises and gets called by BTN and SB. I come along and see a flop of [6d qd 2s], then check-fold to a c-bet and call.

Hand 123 [ac ah] UTG T11,531 275/550/55
Sort of ridiculous. My third pocket pair of aces in 40 hands. Online poker is rigged! I bet 1,650, the BB goes all-in for 2,530, and I call. He has [6c 5c], the board is [qd qc 4s 3h 5s] and I have to admit I sweated a bit on the river, even though I had him well-covered.

Hand 125 [5h ah] BTN T14,446 275/550/55
I raise 3x and the blinds fold. By the way, if you wonder how I ended up on the button after only two hands, I can say that it wasn’t because of a table change. There appears to be a glitch in the ACR software when a player is knocked out of the small blind. I went from UTG on hand 123 to SB on hand 124, skipping BB.

Hand 128 [9h jh] UTG2 T15,546 275/550/55
I raise to 1,650, getting a call from UTG3. [kc 2d 3s] on the flop, and I fail to c-bet. I get [jc] on the turn and check it, then bet 1,540 on the [8s] river. UTG3 calls with the Mutant Jack [ad jd].

Hand 130 [qs ah] UTG T12,241 300/600/60
I 3x to 1.8K and everyone folds.

Hand 134 [6c ac] HJ T13,981 300/600/60
Raise and everyone folds.

Hand 136 [qh ts] UTG3 T15,301 300/600/60
UTG raises to 1,800, I call. The flop is [4d 4s tc] and I shove over a c-bet of 2,400 to get a fold.

Hand 144 [jh 9h] HJ T19,456 325/650/65
UTG1 limps, I raise to 2.6K, and everyone folds.

Hand 150 [6h ah] SB T22,241 350/700/70
Everyone folds to me, I raise to 2,100, and BB folds.

Hand 160 [td jh] CO T21,561 400/800/80
UTG2 limps, I limp (uncharacteristically), and BB checks. The flop is [4s ks 5h]. Everyone checks. [kd] on the turn, UTG2 bets 1,600, and I fold.

Hand 163 [td jd] UTG1 T20,521 400/800/80
I raise and everyone folds.

Hand 164 [as 5s] UTG T22,361 400/800/80
I min-raise for some reason and get min-re-raised from the big stack at the table in HJ. I call and we see a flop of [jh 7c 8s] Then I check-fold to a bet of 1,600.

Hand 165 [2c 4c] BB T19,881 500/1K/100
Action folds to SB who min-raises me from a stack of 12.5K. I call, thinking of PokerGrump‘s penchant for the deuce-four, and the flop is [4h 8d 4d]. I raise SB’s bet of 2.5K to 7K to make sure there’s no flush draws, and he folds.

Hand 166 [jh ad] SB T25,131 500/1K/100
UTG1 puts in more than half his stack with a raise to 3K. The big stack in UTG2 does that cute little min-re-raise thing and makes it 5K. I feel like all these chips are mine, and shove for 25K. UTG1 goes all-in, UTG2 folds, and I’m up against [ah td]. The board is [kc 9h kd 3h 6c]. Probably not going to get away with that again.

Hand 167 [ad ac] BTN T37,166 500/1K/100
On average you get a pair of aces every 221 hands. This is the fourth time I’ve had them in 167 hands. That’s more than five times as often as average. HJ limps in, CO shoves for 7.9K, and I shove 37K. The blinds and HJ drop out, CO has [as 9h] and I make a full house by the turn.

Hand 176 [th qc] BTN T46,096 600/1.2K/120
Action folds to me, I raise 3x, blinds fold.

Hand 178 [as 2s] HJ T48,736 600/1.2K/120
I open to 3.6K and the guy who used to min-3-bet calls from BB. The flop is [ac 2h 4c]. He check-calls my 5K bet. I put him all-in on the [5c] turn and he folds.

Hand 180 [kh 7h] UTG2 T58,776 600/1.2K/120
I open to 3.6K, BB calls with 10.9K behind. The flop is [6h 2c 9d] and we both check. [2s] on the turn, he bets 4.8K and there’s just nothing there for me, so I fold.

Hand 191 [7s 7c] UTG T51,936 750/1.5K/150
This never happens in my live games. Not to me, at least. I open to 4.5K as the table leader. Mr. min-3bet calls from HJ and we’re HU to the [7d 2s 7h] flop. He’s been aggressive all along, and but he’s managed to recover from a couple of major set-back and has about 26K behind. I check my quads to see what he want to do. He checks, and the turn is [jd]. I fishily bet 3K into a pot of 12.6K, and he calls. [qc] on the turn. I make a half-pot bet of 9K and he calls!  Unfortunately, this not being Bovada, I don’t get to see his cards.

Hand 207 [Ks tc] UTG T68,766 900/1.8K/180
I pop it up to 5.4K and everyone folds.

Hand 210 [8d 8c] BTN T69,846 900/1.8K/180
UTG and UTG1 limp in, I raise to 7.2K, and they both call. The flop is [6s ad 3s] and I know I’m done. UTG goes all-in, UTG1 (the min-3-better) only has 1.4 left, so he calls. I fold. It’s [kh as] for the big stack versus [qc kc] for the 3-better, who’s finally gone.

Hand 211 [jc 9c] CO T62,466 900/1.8K/180
A super-big hand. I raise to 5.4K and BTN calls. Both blinds fold. The flop is [kc qs 5c], giving me a gut-shot straight flush draw, among other things. I have almost 59K left; BTN has just over 17K. I make a teeny bet of 1.8K and get the expected shove, which I call. [ts] on the turn fills in my straight, and I beat his [as ac]. This, children, is why you should 3-bet those things.

Hand 222 [qc th] UTG1 T84,156 1K/2K/200
New table as we’ve gotten into or close to the money at this point. Not a lot of money, but money, nonetheless. I open to 6K and get called by SB who has 34K behind. We check the flop, then he goes all-in on the turn with the board reading [3c kh 5s 9c] and I don’t feel like risking half my stack on a gut-shot, so I fold.

Hand 229 [jh ks] UTG3 T73,636 1.2K/2.4K/240
I call a min-raise from one of the big stacks, in UTG1 then the other big stack, in HJ, bounces up to 12K. UTG1 folds, I call, The flop is [3h ac ts], we both check to the [8s] turn, he bets 11.5K on the turn and that’s as far as I want to go.

Hand 234 [ts qc] SB T57,376 1.5K/3K/300
When action folded to BTN and he shoved 32K in, it just didn’t seem right. I had him covered by 25K and BB only had another 16K, so I wasn’t going out if I made a mis-read or got unlucky. Fortunately, neither of those were the case. BTN had [qs 4s], the board ran out [5c jd 3s qd 6s]—all of the low kicker queen combos except the one he had—and I knocked him out.

Hand 240 [qs js] BTN T85,612 1.5K/3K/300
HJ limped in, I raised to 9K, and everyone folded.

Hand 252 [td 8d] UTG1 T86,312 1.75K/3.5K/350
I open to 10.5K, BTN goes all-in for 78K, and everyone else folds.

Hand 257 [th ad] UTG3 T68,412 2K/4K/400
I make it 12K, the big stack in SB calls and the flop is [ts qc 3s]. He uses my fishy bet trap, betting 4K into a 31K pot and I go all in against his [kh kd] to get knocked out.

Only 16% VPIP, this game, though it seemed like I played a lot of hands. I made pre-flop raises with more than 12% of the hands I was dealt (both those figures include the period when I was away from the table). I went to showdown with 35% of the hands I played, and I won 80% of my showdowns.

257 hands. Four-and-a-half hours. 72nd of 4,692 entries, with 823 rebuys and 73 add ons.