POKER LATELY

I played over at Mike's house Monday night and it looked like summer recesss in congress compared to recent games. The last three times we fielded 13 players, but last night we could gather but 6. We played it rebuy and add-on, but I picked up KK just before the rebuy period ended and collected a lot of chips against 77 and didn't have to dig to stay competitive. In fact, I knocked out three players with a pair of kings of some sort.

The luckiest player in the game is Jack. He always seems to get all-in with the worst of it, suck out, and then act like it was the greatest play of the night. He did just that to me in the Spring in the first game at Mike's. We were all in with my AQ v his AJ and he did his thing to me. I don't remember a night since that he didn't put some awful beat on someone when he was no better than 30%. Last night I got my first measure of restitution. He raised me in the small blind and I woke up with KK and smooth called. The flop came T high and he checked. I bet the amount of the big blind and he pushed all-in and turned over trash J6o. When he saw the Kings he said, "Ah, I couldn't figure out why you bet $600." Although he had no part of the flop, he immediately hit a J on the turn and I got that sinking feeling that was gratefully for nothing when a blank hit the river.

Later I called a raise from Robert with KQ. The flop brought babies and I was surprised when Robert checked behind me. The turn brought a K and I checked again and he pushed in his last $2000 which was an automatic call with my 8000 in chips. Unfortunately for Robert he had K7 and the turn brought the only card he couldn't escape from.

The long and the short of it is I got heads up with about $14000 chips v $5000 from Mike the host. We made a deal so that we could play game 2. Without any rebuys the action went much more quickly. My best opportunity came when I hit a baby flush on the turn in the big blind, and although I made a 3/4 pot sized bet I was called by the straight draw that beat me on the river when a 4th spade hit. After that I had to push with a face card that didn't win.

There was talk about going to Tampa tonight and play at the Hard Rock. I've been wanting to go, but Trish is out of town and I needed to take care of Sham. I've been trying to talk them into going on Thursday where they have a $200 multi-table. They usually play sitNgo tourneys when they go.