.05/.10 NLH LH 20/5/07

Opening balance: $82.18

Buy in : $10 (1 table)
No. of hands : 115
Left with : $28.08

Closing balance : $100.26

Running total: -$6.84/745
-68ptbb/745

I crushed this table. Absolutely murdered it. The cards were with me, of course, but I played the best I've played in a really long time. Very tight, very aggressive, steamrollered the table but without getting suckered in. Woo!

One hand I was unsure about my play. Third to act, with three behind me plus the blinds. I pick up pocket twos. UTG and UTG+1 fold. I fold. My reasoning is as follows.

If I raise, it'll look like a steal. The only player I would suspect of playing back at me just because it's me has already folded. Anyone calling my raise will have a hand. If I'm not the 80:20 underdog, I'm in a coinflip.

The flop will help me about 12% of the time. Even then, I could be behind to set over set, although that's about a 1% chance. Any flop without a 2 is scary, and any flop with an A or K is instafold.

Further, I don't have good implied odds. Nobody is paying me off (I'm stealing a lot). My image could do with some tightening up, and this is a good hand to fold to do that.

But it is still a good hand, a pocket pair, ahead of most preflop. The fold is a very conservative play, hardly indicative of crushing the table. Ultimately, I feel it was the right choice (I would have done the same thing with 33/44/55/66) to be safe, but I feel I was missing some value.

Another hand that bothered me. And these are the two low points in a fantastic session. It's crazy to get excited about having $100 in my account when I had ten times that a few months ago, but now that I'm micro grinding I feel every penny.

Here's the hand.

Seat 4: YagaS ( $27.79 USD )
Seat 2: Mathias8879 ( $6.61 USD )
ChulioZ posts small blind [$0.05 USD].
fly_agaric posts big blind [$0.10 USD].
** Dealing down cards **
Dealt to YagaS [ Th Ac ]
1 fold
Mathias8879 raises [$0.20 USD]
1 fold
YagaS calls [$0.20 USD]
3 folds
** Dealing Flop ** [ Ts, 4s, Ah ]
Mathias8879 bets [$0.40 USD]
YagaS raises [$1.60 USD]
Mathias8879 folds
YagaS shows [ Th, Ac ]two pairs, Aces and Tens.
YagaS wins $2.49 USD from the main pot with two pairs, Aces and Tens.

So, the villain has no respect for me. I've pushed him around a bit, taken pots off him where I've had good hands and he thinks I'm bluffing, pushed him out when I've had weak hands he might have beaten (generally, I've not been bluffing much, but I did put in a couple against this guy). That could mean one of two things. Either he's now scared of me, so I should treat him gently, or he might want to play back at me, reraise with weaker hands than normal etc. I don't know which it will be.

I'm aiming at his entire stack. If he fires back, I can get his stack by the turn if he bets it, the river if I'm the aggressor. If he calls, I'll need to come over the top of him twice to get it, although if he bet/calls the turn and checks the river, I'll stick him in (face cards would slow me down, but not much, as would spades if he flat calls the flop).

If he folds here, that's ok. I don't plan on playing too much longer anyway, so I'm going to take his stack or I'm not, either way is cool (hmm... maybe this is one of my big-stack leaks...looks like). Since I'm out to stack him and I'm more than likely ahead right now, I think my raise is the correct play. Give me a stack or give me some new cards.

Here's hoping for some more sessions like this one.