Vegas Day 1 Cash Game Hands
Hand 1: It was seriously my 3rd hand at the table so I have no reads on anyone. I’m dealt JJ in MP on a 10 handed table and UTG+1 makes it $15 to-go at 1/2 blinds (a very big open raise). Right now I have no idea what kind of player he is but i did notice that A) he didn’t have a full stack so he probably wasn’t that great and B) I had previously seen him open limp/fold A5o from UTG+2 the hand before so I know for a fact he plays too many hands and has no value for position.
Even still I decide to call it and not re-raise it as I give myself an opportunity for post-flop play. I get a real good flop: T82r I believe and he bets out fairly strong–probably $25 into the $30 pot. I call, the pot become $80 and the turn brings in a backdoor diamond draw. My opponent rather quickly over-shoves the pot for his remaining $110 and I couldn’t think of a reason to fold, especially with no read so I call. He flips over AA and I get it in pretty bad. I later find out he’s very passive and had I had this read I would have folded the turn so with that I consider it a cooler. Not bad, 3 hands played already down $150.
Hand 2: I fold for pretty much 30 minutes trying to build reads. There is an aggressive guy wearing an FTP hat to my left, halvsame across from me and 2 stations to my right; in all I think I have a fairly decent seat. I didn’t know how aggressive this guy was to my left but I opened once in my MP to $7 and he 3bet me when I held JTs. I wanted to call but being OOP here pretty much forced me to fold; if I’m in position I have no problem peeling one and playing 3-bet pots (something that playing a lot of HU gives me confidence to do). The next rotation around I’m dealt Q6s on the button and I think we are 5 handed so i open it to 7. I already have it in my head that I will 4bet bluff the aggressive player if he does decide to 3bet as he’s been getting out of line. I make it 7, he re-raises me to 25 now that he’s OOP and I think for a moment and make it $60 total. Its a rather large size but I couldn’t think of making it too much smaller but right now I would have preferred to make it $55. Either way it didn’t matter as he shipped me in 100 bb deep and I folded; he showed ATo and I still am confused at his play. I can’t decide if he was doing it as a bluff or for value, both in the 3bet and the 5bet. Obviously ATo is a pretty big underdog to my 5bet calling range let alone my 4betting range including bluffs and I know my ratios; given he showed the ATo I think he was just a maniac and I’m leveling myself. However, with perfect information I like my 4bet bluff in that spot even if it was a bit on the large size; but I should probably get out of this mindset if I’m playing 1/2 live.
Hand 3: Unfortunately I wasn’t able to take advantage of any meta-game with the maniac on my left as it seems like I folded every hand for the next 90 minutes. I did win a coin flip for 30 BB while 6 handed with 88 vs AQs and that helped somewhat (that was actually before Hand 2 above). An old guy from Texas sits down wearing a cowboy hat and a bunch of bling; he was pretty bad and he seemed like he just wanted to gamble. The first hand he plays he shoves all-in 100 BB deep with 44 vs an UTG reraise and a bunch of cold callers and gets called by the manic’s ATo and holds. That set the tone for one of several of his 100, 200 and even 300 BB Allin pre-flops in minuscule pots. He was also straddling and would limp in every time he had the opportunity. This set the tone for me as I folded myself down to 65 BB or so (I was all out of cash I only brought $400 with me) and I opened 77 from MP. The hand before, the cowboy shoved Allin and showed Kx, although he said he had KT and they were well over 200 bb deep. So I open my 77 and get 3 callers and cowboy says ‘why not I’ll do it again’ and I pretty much insta-call for my remaining 60 bb. Unfortunately for me he had QQ and I don’t hit and I’m forced to take a loan from Halvsame because the table is just that good.
Hand 4: This hand happened before hand 3: I get AQo and open it like normal and get 4 callers, including halvsame. The flop comes Q92 all diamonds and I don’t have a diamond; Halvsame leads $25 into the $35 pot and I figure him for either A) a strong draw or B) a made hand as it doesn’t make much sense for him to just plain bluff into the 4 of us, especially when the other 3 were pretty horrible. To be honest, I really wanted to fold TPTK vs him there but I felt like that would have been too exploitable as I can see myself leading Qx with the x of diamonds a ton in that spot (probably the easiest way to play it). So I call and the others fold and its HU between me and Halvsame with a pot of around $80. The turn brings the Ad so its 4-flush to the board and he bets $60 into the main pot. At this point I couldn’t think of a single hand I beat even though I have 2 pair so I just fold my hand, feeling very dirty about it. Thinking about it though even if he was semibluffing the flop the only hand that DIDN’T get there was JT with no diamond, and it doesn’t make much sense for him to play it that way. He later said he flopped the gutshot+FD+overcard and led it; not a bad play and I don’t fault either of our plays there.
That was pretty much my day though in terms of 5.5 hours. I did finish down about $440 but I feel like I didn’t have too much of an excuse to not play the way I did even if I could have done a better job of isolating + continuation betting.