New Furniture, Cantebury Park, Rookies Win...

Moving sucks. Actually, it wasn't too bad, but I've been spending a lot of time buying stuff for my new place leaving very little time for poker. However....I was able to play a few times. I was in St. Paul, MN a few weeks ago to visit a friend and I got a chance to play some $8/$16 at Cantebury Park, a race track / poker room, the only of its kind in Minnesota. It had a pretty decent sized poker room with about 40-50 tables, of which only about half were being used on that particular Sunday morning. My total session lasted about 2.5 hours. I've never seen a looser $8/$16 table ever before (maybe that's because I've never played in a live action $8/$16 game?). Anyways, my biggest hand of the 2.5 hours I was there came when I had 9 5 offsuit in the big blind. EIGHT players called the pot before me. Yes....I did say "EIGHT". The flop came 9 7 5 rainbow giving me two pair. I quickly decided to check raise to get as many people out of the pot as possible. In hindsight, I probably should have bet out and hoped for an early raiser...but hoping is never good. So, a middle position player bet out and got three other late position callers...I raised when it came back to me. That left a total of 4 players in the pot. The turn came a 6 possibly making someone a straight. I bet out...I had to. Suprisely, I got three callers and no raisers. What'd that mean??? Someone is slow playing their straight?? I had no clue. The river brought a 2. No help to anyone, but I couldn't bet out again, especially since I got three callers on the turn, so I checked. It checked around the table and I won with two pair. A nice sized pot for a hand that I never would've played if I weren't in the big blind. I ended up leaving Cantebury Park with a nice $207 win.

Another weekend, another tourney. I played in a $10 buy-in freeze out tournament last weekend. Just a bunch of friends looking to have a few drinks and socialize a little bit while of course, playing some good old hold'em. Unfortunately, I didn't come back with any good stories to tell. We started with 10 players and I busted out 6th or 7th. I played a pair of eights in middle position a little too aggressively against the big stack and he bought the pot from under me. Even though the flop came K 7 6, he check raised me putting me all-in. I still had enough chips to win the thing, so I didn't want to risk it. Definitely a bad play on my part, from the beginning because I raised it three times the big blind, putting more than half of my chips in play, before the flop. Then I folded after a big check-raise post flop! Oops. Why do I always have a trouble playing against rookies? I need to reevaluate my play against the "amateurs". Maybe I'm the amateur?

Till next time. Boogster OUT.