Round Two

I went out 7th in the second round of the 2k Shootout. The third hand I lost half my stack to Vanessa Selbst aka fslexcduck, who extracted revenge on me for dissing her skills in my blog six months ago. She raised to 1200 in the cutoff, the button called, the SB called, and I made it 4400 in the BB with AhQc. She called and everyone else folded. The flop came a horrifying Ts9s7s and I elected to bet out 5300. This flop was so ugly for my hand, especially considering the preflop action, that my best course of action may have just been to check and fold. Of course that would be a horrible play if she held a red AK or a red pair of sixes or something, but I think I was going to get played back at by most hands and blowing 5300 on a continuation bet may not have been the wisest play in a freezeout.

I got down to around 8500 with 7 left with the blinds at 300-500. Everyone folded to me in the SB and I looked down at 88, Mike Sexton with a 10k stack in the big blind. I decided to just limp, hoping he would raise so I could move all in. I could have raised but that would have put me in an undesirable spot if he chose to move all in or call. To my surprise he just moved all-in. I immediately told him that he was supposed to raise so I could move in, and that I was certain I had the best hand. With a short stack I always try to avoid calling bets for my whole stack so I was very disappointed that he had moved in. But his hand in this spot will usually be a smaller pair or an ace with a crappy kicker, and he will almost never have a big pair (although 99 and TT are possible). So I called, he had A4 of hearts, and he won. He went on to get heads up with David Pham and the Dragon demolished him.

The MasterJ33 also got off to a rough start, but he caught fire and came back to win his table. Tomorrow he represents the House of Pain at the final table.