Poker League - Week 4: The State Tournament Hang Over

Dimitri Nobles, not the real one stupid, but someone playing his style made an appearance last night at poker league. This caused quite a stir. He was hitting his junk hands verses made hands quite regularly and building a huge chips stack. Lucky for me, he didn't start at my table.

My first table had all regulars at it. The cast included Well Manicured Man (WMM), Comic Book Guy, Louis, Virginia, Cal, and Elija Wood. WMM, Comic Book Guy, Elija and Louis were all my left. Yummy!

I started early picking on Louis. Calling him a luckbox and reminding him how many times he's sucked out on people. For him, this seems to bother him. He seemed to want to want to prove me wrong. I took this as an invitation to change my game against him. More on that later.

I started out tight, there was lots of family pots the first few orbits. This seems to be the trend at league lately. Lots of weak action early with people calling everything. I stayed out of this unless I was in position. There is just too much risk.

After the love fest ended, I started raising pots into Louis and Comic Book Guy. These guys like to try and trap, unfortunately for them, I either hit my hand or knew they missed there's. The best part was Comic Book Guy kept calling my continuation bet and then bluffing the river. Louis got flustered with my continuation bets. He's used to my Rock of Gibraltar style and was assuming I had something. I won one hand with pocket 3s. It was an underpair to the entire board. Louis had folded the winning hand to me. Hehehehe.

I kept driving this truck right up to first break, building a stack of about 5000 chips by break. I had amassed this stack one small pot at a time. After break, the wheels came off. Dimitri sat down at the table and I didn't see a hand better than 93o for about a hour.

Dimitri kept goading the table to play more hands. That's his style, he gets people to commit weak hands to the pot and then raises them out. With a reputation to put people all in with complete crap, he gets everyone scared to call a raise, but a lot of people kept limping. I avoided putting any money into the pot. You can't bluff him, you need to actually show down a better hand. I figured saving money now, would pay dividends if I ever got cards again.

Our table got broke up and I got moved to a table with another group of regulars, but I had got blinded down to 2000 chips. I held my own until the blinds were at 300/600. I still only had 2000 in chips. Chris raised it to 2000 from UTG. I knew he was calling me out. I let out a sigh before looking at my hand. A♠8♠. Chris is someone that doesn't really understand the odds that well, so I figured there was a good chance I'd be ahead + I've only got 1400 chips after this and the small blind is next. How low can I go? I called. He tables K♣J♣. Yeah, I'm ahead, but I stood anyway. I don't win these. The J on the flop sealed my fate. And as Chris pointed out...it was coin flip right? One over is a coin flip...right? Plus he was suited...so he might be a little ahead...right? Someday I'll win "a coin flip."

Sigh