NICE HOURLY RATE

I took it easy this morning and watched some poker on TV and did some online Christmas shopping. I gave myself an hour to play before I had to pick up Mason. I wound up in a $5/10 NL game on Full Tilt where I played for only half an hour yet made $969 before I quit.

Here's how it went down: I bought in for $400 and folded my first hand in the big blind. On my second hand, there was a min-raise to $20 and two calls in front of me, making for a $75 pot. I bumped to $100 with AK. Immediately the big blind raised to $180 - he must have had RAISE ANY checked, that most useless of options. It folded back to me and I pushed in the remainder of my $390. He thought a bit, then cussed his misclick, and finally made the call with A4. Personally, I think he should have just cut his losses and folded that nonsense. I had the good fortune of seeing my hand hold up and my stack grow to $885 within 90 seconds of sitting down.

The guy was obviously on tilt for the next twenty minutes. Three times I raised preflop only for him to go all in, forcing me to fold. Once he went all in on the flop which priced me off my hand. He was playing aggressively against everyone but I could tell that he had mentally targeted my chip stack as his main target since he felt those were his chips out on loan. I had just finished making a note on him - "likes to play big pots" - when his downfall arrived.

Against someone who likes to play huge pots, it becomes a game of patience - you've gotta invest a lot of money in speculative cards and wait until you flop big so you can manipulate the pot while he does all the pushing. My moment arrived when he put in a raise to $40 UTG and I called with 87 from the big blind. The flop came 775 with two spades. I checked and he bet $75 into the $85 pot. I couldn't just cold call that huge bet so I bumped to $175 as if on a steal. He saw right through my steal attempt and min-raised me to $350. I simply called since I knew exactly what he had - an overpair - which took away any reasonable threat of losing to a draw. He was playing with two outs and I had designs on his entire stack. The turn was a red deuce which couldn't have helped anyone. I made a half-hearted 'steal attempt' by betting out $200 which got him to push all in. The river bricked, he showed QQ and disappeared immediately. I'd hate to be that guy's dog.