Apr 10th - 100+10 NL Hold'Em - Western Club

Getting A-A cracked is all part of the game. I accept that. What really pisses me off though is that the poker Gods deem in necessary to have them cracked within 15 hands of the start thereby giving me much pain and grief in the fact that I hadn't even started the game!

7 hands into the game and I'm moved tables as 'the next big blind'.

Seventy two runners tonight at the Western which is pretty good going and this event is probably the best weekly tournament, in terms of valuye (5k start stack - 30 minute blinds) there is in the London area. Anyway I digress.

I get put next to Mick Cook, on my immediate left, another stalwart from the 90's who's probably played all there is to play in terms of poker, and so am not eager to get involved unless I have some sort of goodie bag in my hand. I didn't have to wait long as 3 hands in I get A-K.

Now I'm not a great fan of the '3 * BB' rule when it comes to raising with ante's at 25-50. For a start the mediocre hands are always going to call and once one calls then half the table will usually join in 'for value'. Nope...I raise it to 400 and collect the blinds. Job done!

Three hands later I get A-A in MP. There's a flat call, to 50, from my immediate right, and again I choose to raise to 400. All pass back to the guy on my immediate right who decides to call. Fair enough. Flop is 9c-9d-5h.

My opponent checks and I fire out the obligatory continuation bet of 800. He immediately reraises me to 1600! WTF!!

I HATE situations like this. With no straight or flush draw probable he either hit a set of 5's (possible), a nine, (not likely) or has a pair in his hand (most probable) and is trying to get me off my A-Q/K or my pair.

He hadn't raised before the flop but WAS happy to call my 400. A pair in his hand was most likely here. I just had to hope it wasn't 5's as I went all-in!

Of course he called and flipped 9h-10h!! Just what can one do??

After that debacle I had 600 left which went in with Ah-8h and got two callers. Nothing hit and A-J picked up the pot. Early night for me then!!