Good one hour tonight, one very dumb hand

The dumb hand first.

Get AKo in LP. EP limps. MP raises to $1. I call. EP raises to $3.00. MP folds. I call again! Why? I guess I didn't believe the AA or KK he was repping. Stupid mistake #1.

Flop comes AKx. Great flop for me, but DING DING DING alarm bells should have been going off here! He was repping AA or KK preflop, now he checks on the flop. An obvious slowplay of a set if I think about it. But I didn't think about it. I just thought about how fast I could go all-in and try to get him to think I was on a steal and call me with a worse hand -- maybe even QQ. No, of course he had KK and called and beat me. Sigh.

So, I was down one buy-in on that table. Other tables weren't terrible, I was down about $13 overall at that point. Kept working, and kept finding idiots to feed me their cash. Finished up $22.30 in 1 hour. Nice finish. I think I was basically playing smart. It's a lot easier to do on 4 tables, I find it easier to fold Axs type hands and suited connectors out of position and so on. Jeffm on bet-the-pot.com got me playing more tables & it has definitely helped my hand selection, patience, and results. Thanks, Jeff.

What other hands were there? I had A5o in the BB, check in with everybody else, probably 6 to the flop. Flop is 55x. I check, LP bets about 2/3 of pot size, I call, everybody else folds. Turn is an A. I check again, LP is all-in -- short stacked, but still, wow, OK fine I'll take your money. He was on A4o if you can believe it. Sheesh.

Another short-stack insisted on calling my PF $1.00 bet with QJ. He then bet out on the flop hitting his Q. I raised, he re-raised all-in, and of course I was happy to take his money with my AA. But come on, dude, even if I only had AQ or KQ you're behind! You don't even have TPTK and you're willing to re-raise my raise? Thanks, man!

Toward the end of the hour, I did a really nice job playing two hands against a decent opponent. I was seated directly behind him so I was in position on both hands. First hand, I get AKo, raise, get a few calls. Flop is like JTx, it's checked to me, I bet about 2/3 of the pot, everybody folds, he thinks and thinks and calls. Turn is a blank, he checks, I check. River pairs the board, he checks, I check still with nothing. He wins with QJ or something. OK fine, he wins a small pot when he hit on the flop and I didn't.

But then just a few hands later I get KK. Raise about the same amount, he's the only caller. Flop is again undercards, something like QT6, I bet out, he thinks and calls. Turn is a 5, he checks, I bet, he calls. Turn is a 4, he checks, I bet, he calls. I did a nice job measuring my bets, I think -- about .5 to .6 of the pot each time on the turn & river. I knew he would call because he thought I might be on AKo again. And he did, and I wasn't, and I took a much bigger pot than the first one. Nice conclusion there. I didn't get greedy and make him fold. On the other hand, maybe he would have called a bigger bet. I'm not sure. If he hadn't called, I wouldn't have had to show him my KK and he might be kicking himself still wondering if he should have called. But I was reaching the end of my playing time anyway, so I wouldn't have been able to take much advantage of that.

Playing smart, mostly. Taking notes & remembering which opponents know what about me, and what I know about them. Basically happy with myself. Week so far is +$75 in less than 2.5 hours, for more than $30 / hour. Crazy stuff. Gotta love it.