June Bourbonators

Friday night, I hosted the monthly meeting of the whiskey club. After coming off the week before of not cashing in an event I hosted, the streak of cashing at everyone I'd ever hosted was over. I just really wanted to make that an aborition.

We got started late, as usual. We had 6 people to begin with, but a 7th we were pretty sure was coming, so we gave him chips and were blinding him out. He did show up about 15 minutes in, so all was well.

My plan for the evening was to concentrate on using betting patterns and previous experience of betting patterns only. No verbal tells were out for me that night. I find myself relying too much on these and while they are useful, I think that when I find nothing useful there, I panic and don't think the problems through.

Well all I can say is...this was very successful. In the first of 3 games, I took everyone out of the tournament minus one guy. By the time we were heads up, I was easily a 5 to 1 lead in chips.

Since my focus was on betting patterns, I really didn't have any hands that stood out. I played the whole game as a series of situations. Each moment there were cards in front of me, there was a decision about how to proceed. I stole a lot of pots situationaly and I let everyone make mistakes that I could profit from when I had cards. I bet into the calling stations and slow played the maniacs. This is something I forget to do with great regularity.

The second game started with a flurry of people making crazy moves. And sticking with my plan, I played the situation as it arose. There were no cards in the hole, so I just sat back and watched as the field just kept splashing chips around. This particular game I could have won somee massive pots if I knew what cards were coming, but let's be honest, no one bets their entire stack that 9 4 off suit will flop a full house. I ended 5th out of 7 when Ross hit the miracle 8 on the river to complete a 4 card straight on the river. I had him dominated, but all you can do is make sure you put your money in when you know you have the best hand. I wasn't really upset by this, I was hungry and we were guananteed a game 3.

Bodie25 and a friend and Lowell showed up for game 3. We had a full table now, with 10 people in the game. This one again started pretty loose and the chips were flying. Bodie's recap was realy good this month for a few key hands to examine. I generally stayed out of Bodie's way and focus my attention on being in pots with people I can profit from easily. Bodie ended up in 2nd. Since we now had 10 people, we paid to 3 spots...I got my money back on that one. Bodie and Cam were heads up and when we were done to 3...I was still at about par. Oops.