Anyway, even with only nine it turned out to be a pretty hard fought battle. My first big hand occurred after xkm1245 had been moaning about how he couldn't win a race to save his life. So I put him out of his misery... on less than a race. I flopped top pair aces, queen kicker, and four to the second nut flush. I did a hoy and put him all-in minus one on the turn. He tossed in the last chip and turned over JT of hearts for a flopped flush. But the river brought another heart, giving me the higher flush, and xkm went home a bit early. Xkm, at least I carried through on my promise to put your chips to good use.
Nomad1539 pulled out to a decent lead when his pocket queens held up against skeash's pocket sevens. He pulled way into the lead when he flopped quad tens and sent 23skidoo to the rail.
Caspernene took the lead from nomad1539 when he flopped a set of deuces and rivered a full house. He took advantage of his big stack and continued to accumulate chips, at one point having more than five times as many chips as the next closest stack.
Skeash was the next to go when caspernene outkicked him with a two-pair board.
I almost knocked myself out when I fell into the blogger coolness trap and put in a big raise with the hammer. Nomad, for reasons I still can't quite grasp, went all-in with JTo for 121 more than my bet. Getting about 20-to-1 from the pot, I had to make the call. I'm sure nomad was sweating a bit when the flop came 865, but his jack held on, pairing at the river.
That left darval and me competing for who would be the next to the rail. He won. Or lost, depending on your point of view. Down practically to the felt, darval called caspernene's all-in. His J2o inexplicably didn't hold up, and we were down to three: caspernene with 8792, nomad1539 with 1472, and me with 3236.
I dodged a huge bullet when, after raising pre-flop with junk, I luckily hit nothing on the board and was left with no real decision when caspernene bet the river, eventually showing quad fives.
Caspernene took a big hit when we both flopped four to a straight and I caught mine on the turn. I doubled up to 7569 and took the chip lead, at least for a while.
Nomad1539 took a bit from me on the next hand and the chips stacks were more even than they'd been in quite some time. We jockeyed back and forth for quite a while, with the chip lead changing hands several times. Nomad finally put a big hit on caspernene when his AQs all-in vs caspernene's pocket eights flopped a queen.
Caspernene tried to make a comeback, but nomad finally sent him home when he rivered a pair of aces.
So we entered heads-up play, nomad1539 with 12484, me with 1016, blinds/antes at 200/400/25. This figured to be a short heads-up session. But I doubled up on the first hand and won a few more small ones so I got to the point where my ass wasn't hanging out the back of the endzone.
This is already so long I'm sure there's nobody still reading, so I'll just say I managed to combine aggression with decent, not great, but decent, luck with the cards to finally swing things my way. On the final hand, I got pocket aces and decided to play it cagey, checking my blind. The flop came all diamonds and nomad pushed all-in. I had him covered better than 2-to-1 at this point so I made the call. He didn't have the diamonds, but he did have two pair. But the turn brought that sweet, sweet third ace and that was that.
While we didn't get a huge turnout this time, it was a very well-played game with a lot of scrappy comebacks. Thanks to everyone for playing. Congratulations to nomad1539 and caspernene for finishing in the money, and to me for winning!Please join us next week for the WWdNot the Nomad1539 Invitational.
No comments:
Post a Comment