Hammer time
I managed to cash in the Wil Wheaton tournament on Stars last night for the third time in the last four (or is it five?) tries. How I got to the final table and my eventual exit were mildly entertaining.
I'm not sure if it's the small buy-in ($11) or the nature of the blogerati beast, but many of the players in the WWdN exhibit unbridled aggression. And it's a longstanding tradition to play 7-2 unsuited (The Hammer) hard and fast and, of course, waving them as if they were Molly Ringwald's panties when they go uncracked.
The deck treated me kindly from the start, flopping a set of 10s on the second hand and doubling up-plus with aces within the first hour. In the second hour with blinds at 75/150, I found the hammer in early position and raised 3x the BB. Got one caller from the blinds. The flop came 7-7-Q. Nice. He bet 450 and I called. Turn came ... the case 7. Whooooooo. He pushed (pocket nines), I called and The Hammer put me among the chip leaders. (Strangely, my chip count after the hand was 7,220.)
The player two to my left continually re-raised me when I was on mild steals with hands like A-8 and I wondered for a minute if he was targeting me until I saw him bullying other players. Yet somehow I knew(?) that patience would be rewarded. With blinds at 100/200, I limped with pocket 5s, he raised to 800 and I called. The precious 5 appeared on the flop, I checked, he pushed (pocket jacks) and Aggro-Boy rode off into the sunset.
That hand made me the chip leader and allowed me to slip comfortably into a seat at the final table where nothing much happened. Down to around 7,000 chips, I found 7-2 in the small blind, raised and was called by the smaller-stacked big blind. I pushed the rest of my chips on the 10-high flop, hoping I had some fold equity, and she called with Q-10. The Hammer giveth, The Hammer taketh away. Not long after, my pocket queens were crushed by a rivered flush and I was gone in seventh place.
Ryan of Absinthetics -- who took down a $100K payday earlier this year at the LA Poker Classic -- won the thing after bringing a huge stack to the final table.
Otherwise, poker has been sparse. A few hours of unproductive, card-dead .50/1 NL on Stars and Titan and, gasp, a final table Sunday night in a 368-person stud tournament on Stars. Four and a half hours of play netted me a whopping $12 profit. Guess I'll have to venture higher than $1.10 buy-ins in the future. Then again, maybe not.
I'm not sure if it's the small buy-in ($11) or the nature of the blogerati beast, but many of the players in the WWdN exhibit unbridled aggression. And it's a longstanding tradition to play 7-2 unsuited (The Hammer) hard and fast and, of course, waving them as if they were Molly Ringwald's panties when they go uncracked.
The deck treated me kindly from the start, flopping a set of 10s on the second hand and doubling up-plus with aces within the first hour. In the second hour with blinds at 75/150, I found the hammer in early position and raised 3x the BB. Got one caller from the blinds. The flop came 7-7-Q. Nice. He bet 450 and I called. Turn came ... the case 7. Whooooooo. He pushed (pocket nines), I called and The Hammer put me among the chip leaders. (Strangely, my chip count after the hand was 7,220.)
The player two to my left continually re-raised me when I was on mild steals with hands like A-8 and I wondered for a minute if he was targeting me until I saw him bullying other players. Yet somehow I knew(?) that patience would be rewarded. With blinds at 100/200, I limped with pocket 5s, he raised to 800 and I called. The precious 5 appeared on the flop, I checked, he pushed (pocket jacks) and Aggro-Boy rode off into the sunset.
That hand made me the chip leader and allowed me to slip comfortably into a seat at the final table where nothing much happened. Down to around 7,000 chips, I found 7-2 in the small blind, raised and was called by the smaller-stacked big blind. I pushed the rest of my chips on the 10-high flop, hoping I had some fold equity, and she called with Q-10. The Hammer giveth, The Hammer taketh away. Not long after, my pocket queens were crushed by a rivered flush and I was gone in seventh place.
Ryan of Absinthetics -- who took down a $100K payday earlier this year at the LA Poker Classic -- won the thing after bringing a huge stack to the final table.
Otherwise, poker has been sparse. A few hours of unproductive, card-dead .50/1 NL on Stars and Titan and, gasp, a final table Sunday night in a 368-person stud tournament on Stars. Four and a half hours of play netted me a whopping $12 profit. Guess I'll have to venture higher than $1.10 buy-ins in the future. Then again, maybe not.
posted by Poker Jones at 7:37 PM
2 Comments:
Thanks for playing last night, hope you had fun. Still in awe of that Hammer drop on Tuesday !
"waving them as if they were Molly Ringwald's panties when they go uncracked"...lmao..that was funny!
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