Almost

It was a rough month of February. And after all of that whining about the bad beats i've taken in SnG's, I came out ahead and it made up for the beating I took on the triple draw tables. Hopefully March won't be so painful. Unfortunately, today, the first day of the month I took a nasty couple of beats that just don't happen that often. Yesterday, I had two ties in some big pots where I had the best hand way early in the drawing rounds, and after my opponents draw 2 both times, they hit my exact hand. The first was with a #5 and the second with #1. Then, tonight it happens one more time with a wheel. It's painful to have to split up even the blinds and limpers small change.

Since I was running so bad at the TD tables, I decided to play some other other games, and still didn't do well at all. In the Razz and Stud High games I played pretty poorly and a little too long. Since I don't play those games that often, I am extremely rusty, and way out of experience. But, I played a nice session of NLH that was extremely profitable. It was a 6 max table and I had pretty good reads on my opponents, well, one in particular. I would've been dusted off about mid-way through the session when I got trapped in a huge all-in hand. It went something like this. I am in the bb with JJ. Button raises 3-4x, which was pretty standard for him to do fairly light. I re-raise to 11x and he smooth calls. I then put him on a range of two big cards, most likely a suited ace - AK -> AT/A9, KQs, and possibly some smaller pairs up to TT. The flop came T high with 2 spades. I bet out 2/3rds the pot, and he min-raises me. I for some reason did not put him on a set maybe because I thought the raise would be higher, and the first thing that came to my mind was the suited ace which I put him on to begin the hand. So I pushed, and he called, the turn came my third J and the river was a blank, the pot was pushed to me and I look and sure enough he had QQ. I get trapped with JJ all the time and if I'm in his position, I push harder pre-flop. But I got outplayed regardless, and was lucky to double up.

At that point I had a nice size stack and considered calling it a night. But, after a couple of hands that had me going up and down like a yo-yo, I decided to stay since I liked my reads on everyone else, especially the player immediately to my left. In one hand early before the big JJ hand he got me to lay down AA on a KK9 flop. It was an awful laydown, but I was actually quite content with it in the end, and didn't really tilt about it at all. I just figured the way I played it afforded me the ability to get it in at a better time. Sure enough, that time came later in the session when we both had the biggest stacks at the table. I am utg+1 w/ KhJh and make a standard 3x/bb raise, my opponent than makes it 6x more to go, and since he had been crushing me with these re-raises over and over again, I decided to stand up to his what seemed like bullying, and at least call and see a flop. Plus, I was getting about 2-1 on the call. The flop brought out the beautiful Qd Th 9d. Bingo! I decide to see if I can get a nice bet out of him, and maybe check raise him or slow play the nut-straight. He bets out 2/3rds the pot, and I check-raise him making it 3x more. Then he goes and min. raises me, I move all in for just a bit less than he has in front of himm and he calls, the turn bricks, and the river hits an A. The pot moves to my seat and I look to see his AQo. I can't understand how he can't lay this down. We were so deep, that I am pretty sure I could do it, or at the very least slow down.

Anyway, the session of NLH inspired me to play better despite my obvious wins. I got pretty lucky on both hands, and played bad when I had good hands, if that makes any sense...

I made silver star on Pokerstars, so that's pretty cool. I can't decide if I want to use it for anything or not. I might go for the bonus $$, since I think it's fairly easy to clear, plus since the month was so awful, it can't really hurt.