Three Items of Personal Poker News

1) Veered off from my usual Pokerroom.com site and deposited some cash into FullTiltPoker.com gotta say I'm liking it. I'm sticking with SnGs ($5.50 buyins) and micro limit cash game ($.05/$0.10 NL) until I can beat those on a consistent basis. After a few days I turned $100 into $120, majority of that from a 2nd and 1st in SNGs.

2) To assist, I downloaded PokerTracker.com and while I'm not quite ready to give it a review, I will say that just messing with the basics, it is AWESOME. Great stats. And if you download that, you MUST get the Gametime+ add-on.

3) And finally, went to see my in-laws this weekend, and as per usual, my brother-in-law set up a home game.

As usual, my brother-in-law (BIL here on out) calls me to tell me he has a game going saturday night after work (11pm). So I ask the buy-in, he says $30. I know, it won't be $30 so I hit the ATM and pull out $50. Sure enough, it's $50 (In my BILs defense, he always offers to put in the extra if it goes more than he says, but as usual, I decline). So...

9 players, $50 eachPayout: $250/$150/$50
Starting: $10,000 in chips
Blinds start at $50-$100 and raise every 30 minutes. (At first I was thinking that they need to change it as the typical 9 player game will last 3+ hours, but it allows for play)

Of course my daughter slept poorly the night before so I was awake @ 5:30am that morning. But hey, it's poker. I fell asleep before he called, and was going to decline but knew i had to go out anyway and get some milk, so figured I might as well play.

I've played with a couple of them before. No one is particularly great, including myself. There were a few new people I didn't recognize, including a 16 yo who was HYPER-aggressive (and that coming from me), but he was very lucky. I put the first guy out (forgot what I had) and had a significant chip leader, unfortunately a few hands later I was dealt AK. I raised $1k, and was surprised to find a number of callers then was hit with a re-raise all-in (which was about 5K, while I had close to 15K). I figured, if I called everyone would fold, so I called. Had one other guy call, but then the rest folded, and we checked down to the end. Unfortunately the all-in showed JJs that held up and he tripled up. So I was back down to the average chip stack. Few more folks got knocked out (when 4 folks were knocked out they started a second game @ $50).

I'll admit, I tightened up a bit when we got to 4 handed. I didn't fold good hands, but I didn't press if someone showed strength. The 4th person went out and it was left to 3 of us: myself, the super aggressive 16yo, and the guy who went all-in with JJs (Kyle) earlier and tripled up. Now that I was guaranteed not to lose any money, the gloves came off and I was playing to win. We all had relatively the same chip stack. Kyle hit the 16yo pretty hard on a hand, taking about half his stack. A few hands later, I had A8, and flopped A8x. A well placed bet, followed by a check at the right time and I got him all-in. And took him down. I don't know what he said, but he mucked as soon as I said Aces, didn't even get to say my Eights.

Heads up with Kyle, this is where I normally shine. (Side note: Last time I was in my BIL's home game, I went heads up against Kyle. At heads up he had about $90,000 in chips to my $7000- we started with $9700 each... and I won) This time we were about even in chips. I played an aggressive game and slowly started to wear him down. I looked down at Q8o, raise, he called. Flop came 3-6-8. He bet, I just called. Turn came a J. he checked, I bet, he made a raise of about 1/3 of his chips. I thought for a second and re-raised all-in. He called and flipped over 10-6. A blank of the river and I was $250 dollars richer.

Meanwhile they were just about ot start ANOTHER game. Damn, people putting in $150 in the night. I need to get into the restuarant business. By that time it was 2am and I was done for the night.