The Trash Talk Tuesday game at Hard Rock was sick.  Stacks were megadeep, button straddles are required and can range from $10-$100.  Many elected for $30-$40.  I played two orbits and ran my $300 up to $1500 and left.  A winning session.  A winning day.  My first in over a month.  Here’s how it happened.

My plan was to buy in short, and limp/shove any great  hand.  It took just a couple hands and I found 99 in middle position.  Two limpers to me, I limp and somebody behind popped it to $50.  3 callers, I pop it to $300.  I get two callers.  Board runs out K,8,4,2,K and I win.

A couple hands later, I’m on the button with QQ and it gets raised to $30 then to $70.  A guy calls.  I look down at QQ.  Fearing I’d get 3-4 callers if I didn’t make it enough, I decided to just shove all in for $1000.  My stack size REALLY hurt me here, as I could have made it $350 or $400 to go, and then tried to dodge whatever my insane opponents were holding.  I just figured the money would get in against any other good hand (better than mine or not) so I might as well just throw it in.  Everybody folded.

Alan Boston is at my table and extremely loose.  A button straddler puts out $30.  Boston raises to $90, I call with AK, another guy calls, too.  Flop is KK3 rainbow.  Boston leads for $150.  I shove all in for $1200.  The point of this is to sell a bluff.  Alan is too smart to fall for a flat call or a small raise.  A big raise commits me, too.  So I figured the only way to get his money in here (hoping he has a hand) is to make it look like a bluff and/or pray somebody has the case king.  No such luck.  All fold.  Oh well.  I leave up big.

I go celebrate my win by drinking it up quite heavily at a friends’ place.  They are great hosts.  So great, that I wasn’t able to drive and crashed until the morning came and I headed home to finish sleeping.  I got up a few hours later and headed to the TI HH.  This was just as short, but not as sweet.  I got there late and entered in level 2.  By level 3, I had two buy-ins and zero pots were pushed my direction.  I had a guy limp with Q,3 offsuit and turn trip 3s against my top pair kings and he finished me off on the last hand of the rebuy period when he limped with Kings and my QT found a ten high flop and I shipped it in.  I got moved a little later to a new table and on the first hand found A,7 in the cutoff.  I raised the unopened pot 3x to 600 and only the SB called.  Flop came 7,3,2 with two clubs (I held ace of clubs.)  He lead for 1200.  I called.  Turn was 8 of clubs.  He lead for 2000, I shoved my 3100 in and he called with his JJ.  I don’t improve and I’m gone in less than an hour.

I head to the Golden Nugget and it takes a mere 3 hands and I’m gone.  The hand was actually quite tough for me and lead to a very long conversation with a friend.  We start with 12k in chips, and it was level 2 at this point.  Nearly every person limps in and I limp from the button with T,7.  The BB is absent from the table.  The SB jacks it up to 850 and two call in front of me.  I take the odds and run with it and call.  The flop comes T,4,3 rainbow.  Now some info on the hand that really influenced my action was the preflop raiser started talking after the first two guys called.  He talked… a LOT.  Why is he talking so much?  90% of the time it indicates a bluff that has gone sour and he’s just going to give up or take a stab and give up.

He then looks into the pot, verbally counts the number of pink (500) chips and bets 2100.  Both of the other guys insta-fold and I shove all-in for about 11k total.  Now one can view this as a bit crazy.  But after thinking about it, what other move did I really have?  I can’t fold.  No way am I calling preflop with this hand to fold top pair on the flop.  I could call, but risk letting overcards catch up.  Calling also saves me from stacking off if I’m beat.  Any raise commits me to the pot, so if I’m raising, it should just be all in.  I took the most logical decision in my mind and shoved and was snap called by KK.  I don’t improve and I’m gone in three hands.

A summary of today.  Flopped top pair 4 times and all the money went in each time with me losing all 4 (3 of them running into over pairs.)  All of this happening in about 70 minutes of play.

I think I’m done with tournaments.