May Private Game Results

Congratulations to Seabreeze for winning our May private game! As you will quickly notice, there were only 4 registered players in the tourney and that includes yours truly who sat out the whole game. I apologize to seabreeze, Janemarie and MrEMC2 for the lack of competition, but hope you had an enjoyable game nonetheless. Bad planning on my part is the main reason for all the no shows. Monday was holiday in Norway. As a result, most of the Norwegain players made use of the long weekend by travelling to their summer places where they either had guests, poor internet connection or simply got their days mixed up. In an attempt to avoid such poor turnout in the future, I'll be posting the date for the June game later today.

Here are the updated leaderboard standings with all the adjustments to the points system :) MrSmith and I are actually tied for first now thanks to my valueable 1 point for sitting out on Sunday. It is purely a random act of chance that Roland GTX is listed above you MrSmith, almost... The same goes for JaneMaria and Barbapaps with 4 points each. JaneMaria has played in more games, and therefore is listed above Barbapaps. MrEMC2 has taken 3rd place in every tourney this year!

Finally, here is seabreeze's hand history from the game. Part 1 runs from the start to where the game gets heads up. Part II is only heads up play. I haven't looked at it yet and am quite curious to see how things went down.

Part I



Part II


Once again congratulations seabreeze - Good Game!

Roland GTX

Turning top two pair with AK (continued)

Here's my AK top two pair hand from yesterday...but with a happier ending!

Another AK Question

What do you think the villian is holding and what is your suggested line? Here is the situation and my thoughts:

$82 Step 3 single table regular speed sng. 1st and 2nd win Step 4 ticket, 3rd-5th win repeat of Step 3. There are 8 players remaining and the blinds are 25/50. The villian has bout 1900 chips and I have just over 1600 chips. The villian, UTG +1, limps as he has done several times already. He seems ok, but plays more loose-passive than I play. It folds to me in btn +1 and I am holding AKo. I raise 200 (4x) and it folds back around to the villian who flat calls.  I estimate his most likely holding to be a medium pocket pair, maybe sc like KQ and at worst AQs. He seems too passive and out of postion to be playing a premium hand. The is now 475 in the pot.

The flop comes KJ5 rainbow and he checks to me. I have TPTK and make a standard 300 raise. He flat calls again. I'm not too sure what to think now. He could have a set of Js, but why not check-raise with the non-nut set? KQ or AQ still seem possible giving him a drawing hand or top pair with second best kicker. Or something like a middle pair (10s) if he thinks that I have and A, missed the flop and am making a standard C-bet. There is now 1075 in the pot.

The turn is an A giving me top two pair. His line thus far makes him holding Q10 seem unlikely. So, I'm not worried about a straight. The villian checks to me again. I have about 1100 chips remaining. What is my best line?

Roland

May Private Game Details

The May private tourney is now set up at Pokerstars. Go and get registered :)

Roland

Live Poker Update

None of us has managed to post much lately so I thought I would give as short update on our last home game. Several of the regulars weren't able to make it, but we did get two newcomers at the table. They both had poker experience and seemed like good guys. Thus, I hope they will make the transition from being guests to being regulars... We had only 6 players, but it was a good evening with one regular tourney and one turbo shove fest afterward. NOR69 played smart aggressive poker and got good cards resulting in his winning both events! Congrats on your first live win(s) - well played!

I was pretty much card dead all evening except for a few pocket pairs, including 3 AAs - LOL! They didn't help as much as one would think though. I shoved my first AA on a K104 rainbow flop. TL had flopped a well timed set of 10s and stacked me 5 minutes after the one hour rebuy period had ended- ouch! Luckily all the players convinced me to extend the rebuy period for another 30 minutes. I don't like breaking my own rules, but this did allow me to rebuy back into the game. two more rebuys from other players, including MrSmith, follwed shortly thereafter. By the time we were ITM, NOR69 had most of the chips in play. While MrSmith and I with our short stacks ended up slugging it out for 2nd place. I won the cointoss vs MrSmith but lost the cointoss vs NOR69.
(Tourney Results: 1st NOR69, 2nd Roland, 3rd MrSmith)

The turbo tourney (no rebuys, top 2 payout) was crazy with the 10 minute blinds quickly making everyone short stacked. By the time we were on the bubble, all three players were blinded out with the btn forced to shove ATC pretty much every hand. Not much skill was involved, but it was a lot of fun. The results were a repeat of the first tourney.

On a side note, I can happily report that the number of visitors to our site is higher than I expected! I have had to expand the number of countries shown in the counter three times now. If any of you unknowns are reading this, then feel free to drop a comment. Furthermore, feel free to play in our next Private game over at PokerStars.

Speaking of Private Games, we are due for our May installment. It is a bit short notice to run it this Sunday, so I'll set it up for sunday 23 May. I'll post the details later tonight :)

Roland