A night at Seneca...

So, me and a close friend of mine Griffin decided to head down to Seneca last night and play some poker.

So we get down to the poker room and we get onto a 2/5 NL table, 500 max buyin.

Basically, these are the kinds of nights that make you hate live poker after playing lots of online poker. No bad beats really, just basically nothing. We played for over 12 hours, and neither of us really saw any hands or any real spots to put money in good here. I'll skip to my side of the story...but the both of us were similar nights. Really marginal situations that either play makes sense, or just victims of circumstance.

The first big hand I played was about 3 hours into the session probably, I'm still sitting at roughly 500, winning small pots here and there and missing tons of flops.

So, I decide to vary it up a bit, and raise with Js/10s from UTG to 20. I end up with 2 callers. Pot is 70. The flop is alright for me, 10d/6s/3s. So, I lead out 35, and I get 2 callers again. Pot is 175. The turn is a 6h. I led out 80, and got raised to 200, and re-raised all in for 217. So now there's 670 in the pot, and I have to call 137 into it, still drawing very live with spades(I'm fairly certain). So I call knowing the guy behind me is blocked into just calling, he calls. River bricks a 4c, I check and the other guy shoves into the dry side, and I fold. They both roll over 6's. That's the kind of night it was, over 300 deep on the hand and purely because of a victim of circumstance. Interestingly enough, Griff and I discussed this hand ALOT. So I open it up to the J7 floor. Griff suggested that I could have checked that turn and then folded to the action had it of gone that deep. I kind of agree with him to a point the more I thought about it, so to the J7 crew? Check fold that turn?

Anyway, after that hand Garrett showed up so we ran out to grab some food. After we got back to the room, kindly enough, the same 2 seats were open at the same table for me and Griff, so we sat back down and got back to action.

I want to say, this table had some pretty rediculous hands. Here's a couple true highlights.

UTG raise to 30, call, call, call, call, re-raise all in for 255 total. Fold's around to one of those callers who says "It's either KK or QQ....I call". Not only is he way wrong, this other guy's shoved in 250 preflop with 44. But he called that with A/6 offsuit thinking he was against KK or QQ. Magical.

Later, we saw a 2/4/5 flop with 2 diamonds. Fair amount of action. Turn was a 6c. Putting 2 clubs and 2 diamonds on a 2/4/5/6 board. One guy leads out 200 bucks, the other guy raises to 600 bucks, and the first guy finally calls all in for about 550. The hands? Pocket 7's and pocket 8's. Wow.

Anyway. There was one guy at our table who was kind of hard to figure out. He would always make rediculously sick overbets. But he had rarely not shown down a bad hand. Pots 30, he'll fire 100 with a flopped set. No problem.

So, this hand caught me alot of flack at the table and I'm not really sure why. I raised early position with KK to 25. He re-raised me to 80 total. I re-raised him back to 180 total. And he shoved me all in. At this point, I took a minute to think. I don't think it was overly long, probably 30-35 seconds, I just took a minute to think because of the classic phrase "the 4th bet is always AA", I understand that's at a higher game, but he was playing awkward yet always showing down good hands(at this point). So I took 30 seconds before calling and someone got smart with me, "What the hell are you afraid of?", to which I just simply answered him, no need for sarcasm here, the true answer is basically all the sarcasm I need : "Oh, I don't know? AA maybe?". Anyway, he had AK suited and I held.

After that I moved over to a 1/2 table because 2/5 broke. There I played one real interesting hand. I opened with 77 at a tight table from EP to 10, and got 2 callers. Flop was 2/3/5 rainbow. I led out 25. He called after a minute, and right then I thought he had a mid-pair also and didn't buy my bet on the flop here. So on the turn of a 9 I decided to lead weak, I led out 30. He raised me all in. I went into the tank for a moment now trying to decide where I was. I was sure he had a midpair also, I was just trying to decide if he had 66, 44 or 88. I had him down to that as his range, and eventually called. He showed 44. River bricked a Q and I took down that pot.

That's literally almost all the interesting hands I played, basically broke even for the day when all was said and done. Nothing fancy...just a really long boring day of being card dead and then facing really awkward situations. I didn't write out alot of weird spots where I'd be folding AK preflop in marginal spots where I could honestly have shoved in if I felt like it...but I try and keep poker simple and avoid marginal spots and coin flips against players I know I'm better than. It was just one of those days where the game wouldn't let me win.