Thursday Night Live Play

Had another opportunity to play live tonight. Cash games and the Ameristar tournament.

First I started with some NL, won a few hundred. Then in the tournament, I came out of the gates firing. I played 3 of the first 4 pots. On the fourth hand, I hit a flush on the turn with Qd-7d, we got all the chips in the middle in a very large pot with lots of dead money, and one guy called my all-in bet with 2 pair. He hit a 4-outer for a boat on the river, and I was out in about 5 minutes of play.

The was actually fortunate. Next I sat in the $15/30 limit game, waiting for a NL seat. Won about a hundred. Then moved to a NL table with a bunch of old farts and one younger guy. I stacked the younger guy, then requested to move to the action table with lots of young guns.

I mopped up at that table. I started by played relatively loose pre-flop, tight on the flop, and just punished one guy mercilessly. He's a yappity guy that plays all the time, and acts very cocky. I initially took his stack of about $400, then he rebought out of frustration to come after me. I took some more of that. He eventually crapped out to someone else.

I'm not sure how much I won for the night -- I'll count tomorrow. The funny thing at this last table was that after I built up a stack of about $1400, I got junk for a really long time and didn't play anything. During one stretch, I think I folded for 3 straight orbits, while everyone else kept limping and calling standard raises. I was playing the tightest at the table with the biggest stack. There's just nothing good about playing T-2, J-5, 9-4, etc. There was so much limping with junk and calling that bluffing would have been useless.

When I did play a hand, it was relatively good, but still players kept calling when they were beat. One guy finally called out that I was playing pretty tight, and I was able to use his perception of my image to bluff him out of a good pot on the river. Paying attention to how others perceive you at the table is always important.