Hit the Road, Jacks

Portland Players Club $250 Freeroll

I’d barely sat down at table 2 when I was moved (before the first hand) to table 3 in the small blind. I was sitting between a dead stack in seat 2 and a woman on my left I hadn’t played against before.

On the button I raised with [2x 3x] to 150 and made bottom pair on the flop. I stayed with it until the river when I got a [3x], then took a few hundred more off my neighbor who’d hit top pair.

Just a couple hands later, I had a [kx 9x] and raised to 200. The flop was [kx 4x 4x] and I pushed for another 700, ending up heads-up with the same player. [kx] on the turn and I was golden unless she had pocket fours. I bet 1,200 and she called. When the [6x] came on the river, I figured she must have the other king, and it was a chop, so I didn’t bet it (a decision I would come to regret). I flipped over my full house and said I thought it would be a chop; she flipped over [8x 8x] and said she figured I had nothing.

I won a number of other pots simply by betting out, but made a big mistake with [6x 6x]. I pushed after an unassuming flop, thinking the player at the other end (one of the Encore dealers) was on an ace. He flipped [jx jx] and made a set on the flop, reducing my stack by over 3,000 chips.

A dry spell hit me as the break approached and I was down to just 600 chips when I called a raise to 700 with [8s 5s]. Another player called the raise and three of us saw the flop with a split pot. The cards were [jx 5x 4x]. The last caller made a bet that pushed the original raiser out of the hand and it was heads-up for the main pot. He had [qs js], but I got lucky with another five on the river for a set and tripled up.

After the break, I pulled in a few more small pots, then picked up [tx tx] in the SB. Only one player came into the hand with a raise, then I re-raised to 2,200, only to have BB raise me all-in. The original raiser dropped out and I had to call, only to be up against [jx jx] again. The flop put out another one, and by the turn I was drawing dead.

One hour and thirty-five minutes. -100% ROI. 22nd of 32 players.

QuickDraw

Aces Players Club $10K Guarantee (10,000 chips)

Got into in from late position with [kx qx] on a [jx tx 7x] flop. Pre-flop there are three of us in for 625 each. Post-flop, SB leads out with a bet of 1,400, gets a call, and I re-raise to 3,400 with the open-ended straight draw. SB pushes all-in for less than I have left, seat nine goes all-in with enough to cover me, and I call. It’s my draw against two sets: SB has [jx jx], the other caller has [tx tx]. I’m actually in better shape to win it all than the tens (it’s 27%/69%/4%, but no ace or nine shows, the jacks triple up, and the tens take the rest of my chips. At least I saved myself the cost of an add-on tonight.

Fifty-five minutes. -100% ROI. 59th of 61 players.

Only 17 winning days before EPT Prague.