Two Not Monies in a Row

I monied for the second week in a row in the WWdN: Not The. Third this time instead of second. Not sure I like the direction this is headed, but I'll take the money.

Congratulations to hacker59 for the win and to surflexus for getting next week's tournament named after him. Extremely welled play, both of you. Helluva laydown, surf.

Turnout was down this week. Probably a combination of darval still being without internet and not doing any blogging and Joanne not pimping us on Card Squad this week. Still, we had a few new faces and the competition was extremely tough, as always.

Hoyazo has been doing in depth hand analyses recently. I'd like to have a go at a similar thing with a few hands from last night. Sadly, I do not have a hair trigger on my screen capture, so there will not be pictures of the hands at each step along the way. You'll have to make due with my descriptions.

My first big hand came in level 3. Let's call this hand #1, just in case anyone wants to refer to it in comments. We're six-handed. I get ATo in the CO. Not normally a hand I get overly excited about, but I've been doing nothing but folding (and timing out -- again. Damn you Extended Stay Deluxe!) for a very long time and it's a hand I don't mind seeing a flop with. I raise to 150. (Blinds are 25/50.) The button calls and the blinds fold. Two of us see a flop of 43T, two of them spades. TPTK on a flop that's unlikely to have helped my opponent more than it did me. The spades are obviously a concern. I bet 300 into a 375 pot. In retrospect, I should have bet a bit more than the pot, say 450, to cut off odds on the flush draw. My opponent raises to 800. I've got 915 left. What do I do?

Hand #2. We're at level 7, blinds at 100/200, ante 25, down to four players. I get a rather lackluster K3s in the BB. UTG folds, button puts in a rather weak raise to 500. SB calls. I'm in the chip lead by a narrow margin, but have both of the players in this pot covered by quite a bit. I decide I can afford to make the call. If I hit the flop big I might be able to stack one of these guys and get us off the bubble. If I don't hit the flop big, I'm probably gone.

The flop comes 6KK, rainbow. I think that qualifies as big, though I'm really hating my 3. Check, check, check. Turn brings a 5 of the only suit not already represented. SB min-bets. 200 into a 1600 pot. I have no clue what this means. I suppose the safer route, being concerned about my kicker, would have been to just call, but then I'm still confused about the min-bet and I've learned nothing. I raise it to 800. Still a pretty weak bet given the size of the pot, but it's just a feeler. Button folds, SB calls.

Now comes the card of which poker dreams are made. The case king floats in on the river. I'm no longer concerned about my weak kicker. The SB bets 600 into a 3200 pot. He has 3121 remaining. Obviously I'm going to raise. How much?

Finally, hand #3. This is very late in the tournament. We're down to three. I have a very narrow chip lead. We're all close enough that one hand could swing it in any direction. Blinds are 200/400 with antes of 25. I get 88 on the button. Decent starters for three-handed, so I go with the standard 3BB raise, making it 1200 to go. SB raises 2000 to 3200. BB folds. What's your move?

Again, congratulations to hacker59 on the win. Please join us next week for the WWdN: Not The surflexus Invitational, 26 October, PokerStars, 22:30 ET, password monkey.