Last night was another interesting night of poker action. Sat down at my table and looked around to see all good players on the table. It made me feel sorry for the other two tables. I won a couple of hands early to get up a little over 500 chips. I look down to KK. Pot is raised by player under the gun and then called by player to my right. I raise to 1000 more to try and take it down pre flop. Raiser then reraises me. Now he is a player that would play just about any two cards and also raise and reraise with them. I am sure at this point that he has either AA, KK or QQ. I know that I am supposed to fold here and even my little inter voice is telling me he has aces. I get a count of the rest of his chips and realize that if I move all in and lose I will still have 525 chips left. With the blinds at 25-50 and the table I am playing on I am confident that if I need to I can come back from this amount. I move all in. He calls and shows his aces. I lose. Next time I will listen to that inter voice! LOL! I was right about one thing 525 chips was enough. I was able to come back and get 3rd place and actually should have won but couldn't win a race in the end with 3 players left. I am using the term players loosely here as both were terrible players that were running hot. The young kid that ended up winning with the blinds at 4000-8000 limited into almost every pot with any two cards and then called just about any raise that was made and then would hit some part of the flop and call all the way to river. I should have been more patient but have always had better luck being aggressive at the end of a tournament. Maybe next time! It's good to know that I am able to come back after making a mistake early in the tournament.
As a side note thanks to the server and bartender that finally start waiting on the poker players after my weeks of bitching about no service. Hopefully it keeps up. I would hate to lose a location due to no sales because of lack of service.

CMPPA Team Tournament

Yesterday was the 1st annual Team tournament. It was a very fun experience. There were 15 teams of 3 players. Three tournaments were run No-limit, Limit & Omaha Split were played. At each blind level each team member switched to a different game. Congrats to Team Monstars on the overall win with the No-limit win and Omaha runner up. For more results go to www.cmppa.com. My team won the Omaha split tournament and was 4th in limit. We will not talk about the No-limit game. LOL!

I was very happy with my overall play. I was able to build a chip stack every time on the omaha game and won the heads up against Team Monstars. My toughest game was No-Limit as I was on a table with many great players and one guy that had never played before. He played every hand and won most of his hands. It was incredible. It got to the point where you couldn't raise because he would call and outdraw you.

After the Team Tournament, I ran my regular Saturday game. I ended up doubling up early by making a great call with pocket 8's against an aggressive bettor that turned up pocket 5's. I then was able to use my big stack by aggressive play topping out at about 40,000. Then the hand of the day happended. I looked down to see pocket 10's. Player under the gun raises to 4 times the big blind. I put them on big cards like AK. I moved all-in to get to heads up. Players behinds pushes all-in for much less. Raiser calls for all thier chips. Raiser has QQ and other player has AA. OK so it was a bad place to move in. Flop is A-10-Q. LOL! We all flop a set. Wow! What are the odds of that. Needless to say I didn't hit my quads and lost 2/3's of my stack. I was able to rebuild much of my stack and managed 6th place.

It was a fun day!

Bad Bar Poker Play

I have been receiving lots of comments on the quality of play at some of the local bar games. Yes, that's right bad play at a bar poker game! LOL! I have made this statement before but will post it again.

Bar Poker - a promotion run by an establish to improve food and beverage sales.
The goal of any promotion is to make more then you spend. If not you stop running that promotion.

Unfortunately in MN we are only allowed to give up to $200 away in a given tournament and there must be no entry fee. It does open these promotions up to many that play for various reasons. Here are a few. Do you fall into any of these categories?

#1 Improve their poker game. There is a wide range of players that play for this reason. The only true way to improve your poker game is to play as many hands as possible and try and learn though experience. These people are students of the game and enjoy all the new challenges every tournament brings.

#2 Social. These people use bar poker as their socialization outlet. It is there way to go out and meet and associate with others. to many this may be there only outlet. Playing or learning to play poker is only a small part of the experience.

#3 Spouses or significant others. These players only play because of someone else. They may not even like the game of poker, but don't want to be left out. Many times these players are the first ones out because they don't care, but want to show their other half that they are least trying.

Now, your goal as a bar poker player is to look around your table and figure out which of these are you playing with. It will tell you if you need to adjust your game to their reasons to play. There is a difference to call with a race with some one from each of the categories. There is also always the chance that your best hand will not win. The key is to risk as little of your stack as possible until you know that you have the best hand.

Remember, have fun, patronize the establishment and say nice hand sir when you get sucked out on.

Wait a minute, and don't forget to tell your bad beat story to the tournament director. Who knows it may get blogged about!