Well, it's been awhile since I wrote in this blog. I kinda missed it.
Friday night our poker league finally got back together after about a month and a half layoff. We had 7 of our 10 members there and a couple of subs. Unfortunately, a couple of our members are dropping at the end of the season and are basically unavailable during the rest of this season making organizing these events difficult. One is moving to KY, which sucks cause he's as good a friend as I have and the other plays in a band that keeps him busy every weekend for the most part.
Anyway, first tournament. Relatively early in the game (4th level I believe: 100/200). I am either the chip leader or pretty much right there. I have raised relatively frequently, enough so that one of the subs has even commented on it. Anyway, I believe I was in the cutoff. There are 2 calls to me, one from the sub (let's call him Karl) that commented on my raises and has proven to be pretty aggressive to this point and one from a member (let's call him Toby) who is a relatively aggressive player that could have called with just about anything. I look down at AA. I would like to get down to just one player, so I raise to 700. Karl insta-calls and Toby thinks for a minute and then calls as well. (pot is 2400)
Flop: 8 5 2 (rainbow)
Dream flop for me it seems, right? Karl checks. Toby starts counting chips, which makes me happy initially and then he does something different than normal. He says, "I'm all-in." He's not short stacked in the least. I rub my hand through my hair and ask for a count. "5700." Really? I go into the tank. Normally, it wouldn't be surprising for Toby to try to steal here but he would usually make a large bet just under the size of the pot. This is different. Everything about this seems different. Now, I've played in this league with Toby for 2 1/2 years, so we have probably played 45 tournaments against each other, easily 160+ hours of play...after a few minutes, which is long for me as I usually don't take more than 30 seconds even on hard decisions. Seriously, other than having an A hit the flop, what could be better than that flop? But, I gotta quit thinking about that and think about what just happened and how it happened. Something tells me I am way behind here: 8-5? surely not. It's gotta be 22 or 88, right? All this time and Karl still has to act behind me. I imagine all my gyrations made his decision pretty easy. It just kinda dawned on me that somehow Toby knew I had a huge hand and he figured with that flop I couldn't lay it down. So, I asked if he would show if I folded and showed him after the hand was over. He said he would. I show a lot more than I should and sometimes it pays off in situations like this.
So, I say "fold" and drop my cards by my chips and Karl quickly folds. I flip over AA. He shakes his head and says something like he can't believe I folded that and shows 55. The whole thing is weird. I had him covered by a couple of thousand maybe but with that flop, I don't know how I convinced myself to fold. I somehow knew I was beat. Maybe it was a betting pattern or maybe he made some facial expression or gesture or something that I picked up. But I got to wonder what I did to tip off how big a hand that I had that he was that confident to make that bet, cause you don't make that bet with that hand unless you are confident your opponent is calling. I mean I had raised previously with Q8, K4, A5, etc, so it wasn't like I had sat there and done nothing and suddenly jumped out of my skin. I will have to think about this one for awhile and attempt to fix whatever I did. This isn't the first time that I have felt that Toby had a read on me. He will probably read this and laugh but somehow I think I tipped my hand a bit.
On a side-note, I ended up winning the first tournament and then took 5th in the 2nd. I know there were other interesting hands and such but this one I just haven't been able to get out of my mind.
Outside of poker: the Reds are kicking buttocks which is awesome. They have been doing so without Votto. Dusty said "nobody is better than Rolen at 3B." Uh...Todd Frazier is!
