Enter the Matrix...

I was tempted back to Full Tilt by their new "Matrix" tournaments at the weekend. Basically it's a series of 4 sit and go's played at the same time against the same players. Basically 1/5th of the buy-in is allocated for each of the 4 games and the other 5th is for the top 3 performers in the game. This means that to play the equivalent of my usual $11 buyins I need to play $55 matrix tournaments ($11 per game (x4) and $11 for the matrix pool). The games seemed to take a while to fill up though and so I ended up playing a couple of $33 ones as these filled quicker. Promising results too:



My sit and go game has always been based around playing very tight in the early and middle stages and then loosening up when my stack gets to around 8-10BB's. This obviously means I rarely exit sit and go's before there are 5 players left which is very good for this format it would seem. To cash in 8 of the 10 I've played may well prove to be "beginner's luck" but hopefully it means that this sort of game is suited to my style and in the long run can be very profitable for me.

One of my biggest faults when playing these days is that I don't really pay attention to what people are doing at each table (I usually have 6 tables on the go) and don't make notes so when I come up against a marginal decision I have nothing to base making that decision on. By playing against the same 8 players on 4 different tables there is much more opportunity to get useful information as players will usually play the same way on each table rather than mixing it up so you can cross-reference notes and situations.

So my Full Tilt account is now back over $400 which is nice. On to Party.... took a bit of a hit the other night...when I went back to the dark side. Yes that's right I played some cash games. Oops. I was watching the Cannon destroy the field in a tournament (think it was the Super Thursday - he eventually took 2nd for over $3k) and it was quite late but I wanted to rail him for a bit more. I thought there was no point starting a sit and go as he might bust out in a couple of hands so I thought I'd just play a bit of $0.25/0.50 on a couple of table until he went out. About 20 minutes later and I'd lost $200...

Basically I played like a prat and the players on the tables cottoned on to that. The number of times I check-raised and then got reraised was unreal! Anyway, I had a stack of $75 on one of the tables and I finally got a break when I came up against someone who had been playing back at me a lot and had me covered. I raised pre UTG with JTs, BB calls. Flop comes Ace Ten 7, he checks I bet the pot, he flats. Turn comes Ten. Bingo! He's never going to believe me, he leads out...what? I raise, he reraises..."he must be playing back with something marginal" the voice says in my head, I make the call, he shows 77, goodnight Cheese.

Also - damn the weak pound! That little session would have only cost me £100 a month ago, it cost about £130 then though! So my roll shrunk by over 1/5th from £500 to £370. Managed to play a few more sit and gos over the weekend and get it back up to £400, so I'm going to take that as the price I pay for a lesson in sticking to the games I win at...until the next time that is...

Won't be playing much over the next week or so, got a lecture tonight, going round my parents on Wednesday for a meal and to watch the Arsenal-Spurs game and then I'm in Loughborough Thursday and Friday for a work course.

On the topic of Spurs, what a shock that was...got a text Saturday night about midnight from Marc saying Ramos was sacked and Harry was lined up for the job! Switched on Sky Sports News and they're talking to Mr Redknapp himself and he's confirming that he's the Spurs manager...then an even bigger shock....Tottenham won a game! So we must have turned a corner? Doubt it... Arsenal and Liverpool next up...

In all seriousness though I think he will do well for us. His teams all seem to have a great team spirit and he's a good man-manager which is something Spurs have been lacking since Martin Jol got shunted. On that note I would much rather have seen the headline "Ramos, Comolli and Poyet sacked...Jol back in." I miss the great man. So glad to see he's doing well at Hamburg. One thing that annoys me about virtually ever manager is the way they complain about every single little thing that goes against them (Southgate excluded). I never heard Jol have a go at a ref or bemoan the teams luck once, even when Mendes "scored" that goal from the half-way line against United that went about 2 yards over the goal-line but wasn't given he just laughed it off. He is my hero and I'll leave you with one of my favourite quotes from him:

On Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger: 'I did really well to hold myself back. I really don't think he realises how strong I am, otherwise he wouldn't approach me with headbutts and everything.'

General Musing

I got the train in to work today as I'm having a few drinks and a meal after work. I got a bus to the station (£1.70) and at the ticket office was informed my ticket was £29.70. It then took me 2 and a quarter hours to get in to the office...

Now... for a country that is promoting public transport and trying to reduce congestion on the roads, they sure aren't doing a good job in my opinion! I usually spend £40-45 a WEEK on petrol driving to work, yet to have the privilege of spending an extra hour and a quarter commuting I pay 2/3rds of that for ONE DAY!

So I for one shall be sticking to driving. Cheaper, quicker and more comfortable.

Howdy...

Not been much poker action recently, I think I've had 4 small sessions since my last post which ended +$3, -$44, +$4, -$8 so not too good. Hopefully get back on it tonight! I have noticed that the dollar has been getting stronger against the pound so my target of reaching $1100 seems to keep getting further away as the exchange rate keeps changing! (My account is in the Great British Pound) I think I have about £510 in Party at the moment, which a few months ago would have been good for at least $1020, now it's closer to $900 if not less!

My birthday was good, Jo threw a surprise party for me and I literally had no idea about it. I came back from golf with her brother and both our families were waiting for me! Was a good laugh, we had a 13 person table tennis tournament which I ended up finishing second in, losing to my dad in the final. Got some good presents as well. The new Tiger Woods for the PS3 and some golfing attire were the main highlights!

Return to the norm...

Well, what I hope will be the norm anyway. A winning evening that is!

Having failed to cash in any of the 6 STT's I played on Tuesday I was looking to get off to a good start last night...didn't happen...I failed to cash in the first 4 games that I played, bubbling two of them, and I was thinking "here we go again"...then came the rush though and I managed to cash in the remaining 5 that I had going! I managed to win 2, have two 2nd's and finished 3rd in the other for a return of $180 from my $99 outlay.

So in brief summary of my recent STT's I have played 34, cashing in 15, for a profit of $146 with an ROI of 72%.

My bankroll currently sits at $907.

My 5 sessions so far have been +$56, -$16, +$91, -$66, +$81... So hopefully tonight I can buck the trend that's appearing of winning one day and then losing the next. I probably won't be able to play too many though as I have to pick the missus up from shopping at 8pm so won't be able to start any before about 9ish. I haven't got too much planned for the weekend though so hopefully will be able to put in some decent hours then.

Even the best laid plans...

Seems like plans are easy to make but hard to implement. Played 6 SNG's last night, failed to cash in any... I found myself down to my last two SNG's needing to win at least one to recoup some pride/money and was well positioned in one and picked up Aces in the Big Blind, it went UTG raise, Button reraise, I shove, UTG fold, Button calls with QTs!!! Obviously the flop is KJ9 to give him the nuts and next hand I run AQ into AK and am out and very tilted which did not bode well for the other sit and go which I promptly also busted out of.

So I now need $266 to move up a level. Also I didn't get to try out Nash's Equilibrium Push/Fold table heads-up because I didn't make it that far!

Oh well...trying again tonight hopefully...

A man with a plan

I've got my drive back to play poker now that I've started grinding the Sit and Go's again. I'm currently still on the $11 games but have worked out a plan to move up the stakes.

Having played the last few nights I've managed to get my Party bankroll up to over £500 and about $900. In that time I've played 19 games, cashing in over half of them (10), winning 4, coming 2nd in 4 and 3rd twice. So over this small sample I've managed to win $171 with a ROI of 81%!!! Obviously I'm loving the fact that I seem to be running so good and hope that is in part down to playing good as well so long may it continue although I expect that ROI to drop when "variance/doomswitch" inevitably kicks in.

So to the plan...

Basically I'm going to focus on Party Poker again as it seems the softness of the games there far outweigh the fact that I can get bonuses elsewhere. My current bankroll is around $900 and my plan is to move up stakes when I have 50 buy-ins for the next level and if I move up and hit a bad patch move back down if I drop 40 buyins for that level.

Move up to $22's @ $1100 (Move back down @ $900)

Move up to $33's @ $1650 (Move back down @ $1320)

Move up to $55's @ $2750 (Move back down @ $2200)

I'm pretty sure that the games are going to get tougher as I move up the stakes so each jump will represent a new challenge. For the first time in my poker career I feel like I actually have something to work towards though as in the past I've been happy to just grind out at small stakes without any thought of moving up. I'm not setting any timescales to achieve this though as I do not know how regularly I'll actually be able to play and I don't want to force myself to play.

Looking at the first goal I need to make about $200 at the $11 tables to move up to the $22's so I did a few calculations to estimate how many games it may take me to achieve this goal.

At my current Party ROI of 80% - 23 games.
At 50% - 36 games
At 30% - 61 games
At 20% - 91 games
At 15% - 121 games
At 10% - 182 games

Hopefully I can consolidate somewhere in the region of 10-20% ROI minimum. I usually fire the games up in sets of 6 which would mean returning $80 from my buy-ins for a 20% ROI.

Wow...I love my stats...

On a related note I've been reading PokerPlayer magazine recently and found an interesting article from Jennifear on Heads-Up play in SNG's when the blinds are high, basically involving a chart based on pushing or folding every hand depending on the relative stack sizes compared to the blinds. The chart is devised from the "Nash Equilibrium" theory (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nash_equilibrium) and is basically a how to on perfect shoving heads-up. I'm going to try and find the chart and print it off so that I can refer to it tonight when I get heads up and see if that works for me! Often when I've got a lot of games going at once and a couple are heads-up things get a bit manic so hopefully this will allow me to calm things down by just refering to the chart as to whether I should push or fold!

Till next time...

15 months...50 posts...

I suppose this is a time for reflection. I have been blogging for 15 months now (on and off) and my initial feeling is that I have not achieved much in poker terms. In terms of money I'm probably up a little bit in this period from poker, although my overall poker bankroll has probably shrunk due to cashing out money and moving it about.

On 07 June 2007 I mention that:

1. I had a £5 bonus in Party - My Party account now sits at £430 having just cashed out £225 from it.

2. I had about $700 in Sun Poker - I recently cashed out $701 having been informed by their customer services that I was soon going to be charged a "dormant fee" if I did not use the site soon.

3. I had £700 in Noble Poker - I withdrew £400 later that month and currently have just over £200 in there I think.

Further to that I have around $350 in Full Tilt poker. In fact I'm going to side-track a bit and talk about my roller-coaster at Full Tilt as I played briefly last night there. Last time I blogged my Full Tilt balance was at $520 (from an initial $400 and high of $650, well since then it's been a bit of a disaster. My roll went down to a low of about $290 but last night I sat down for the first time in a while and played a bit to get it back up to $350.

Basically I haven't been able to play much due to a lack of internet in the new flat but now that is all sorted so I should be able to play a bit more now. Last night was my first chance at a session, although I only had about an hour and a half, so I fired up 6 $11 sit and go's and managed to win 3 of them! I played solid and ran good too. In 2 of the 3 I didn't win I busted out OK, (a flip when short and 66 vs JJ when I was short for 5th place both times) although the other one I made a stupid play to finish 4th where I had 8BB's in the BB and button raised to 2.5xBB and I shoved with A9, he called with 99 and the board didn't help. That wouldn't have annoyed me too much except for the fact that the guy to my left only had 6BB's and I hadn't realised when I shoved so I really could have waited for a better spot I think. It does feel good to run good for once as well, after I lost the first flip I was involved in I won the next 4 I got in and even managed to come from behind a couple of times when all-in preflop. I was very confident when it got heads-up as well, even though I had a chip deficit in 2 out of the 3 games, I always felt as though I was in control and it was nice to close out all 3 games.

My Full Tilt SNG stats are pretty impressive thus far:

I've played 2 x $6 games and came 1st and 6th for $11 profit.

I've played 12 x $11 games, finishing 1st x 4, 3rd x 2, 4th x 2, 5th x 3 and 6th x 1 for $84 profit.

So $95 profit from 14 games so far with a ROI of 66% is very encouraging (although unsustainable I think).

A further side-note on my Full Tilt games, here are a few figures to illustrate how bad I have been at cash games recently:

Starting balance: $400
Rakeback Received: +$45
Bonus Received: +$80
SNG Games: +$95
End Balance: $350

So that means my cash game figure is -$270 which isn't too bad...until I factor in that I was sitting on $250 profit in cash games when I first started so recently have actually been down over $500!

This is why I am now going to make a conscious effort to stick to SNG's, and try to fit in some MTT's at the weekends when I have a bit more time.

So that's poker out of the way... now on to other stuff.

First of all the flat is still awesome, with the internet now set up and Sky coming this weekend to install the Sky box everything is falling into place. The new pool table and table tennis table are amazing and have been well used in the 2 weeks we've had them so far, and long may that continue.

Secondly, and much more importantly, the 4G's Annual Okehampton Invitational occurred last weekend so I thought I'd write a little trip report for it.

Nine of us travelled down there, Cashy drove me the 4 or so hours it took which I am very thankful for (we were of course last to get there). First bit of gambling I took part in was a putting contest with the Cannon, won the first round for £5, won the second round for £5 and was in the process of destroying him in the 3rd match having even given him a headstart when we decided to stop as it was too crowded on the putting green.

So, after a bite to eat and the placing of a few wagers we went out for our first round. Everyone agreed to put in £10 for the main competition with £60 to first and £30 to second, whilst myself, Cashpoint, Dog and Cannon had a £10 sidebet just on the first round. We played stableford from these handicaps:

Brenty: 16
Dog: 16
Cashy: 16
Cheese: 18
Liam: 19
Cannon: 20
Reevesy: 24
Brad: 28
Big Tone: 28

After the each round a few calculations were made to adjust people's handicaps whereby for every point you shot below your handicap 0.4 of a shot was taken away and for every point above your handicap 0.2 of a shot was added to your handicap.

At this point I should probably mention that I thought I had done myself some serious damage the night before when lifting the table tennis table and was in pain just swinging the golf club. My first tee shot did not help as I smashed it out of bounds. My second ball from the tee ended up a few feet short of the green (it was a short par 4) but I still got zero points for that hole. Things picked up for me though and I strung together 9 holes of bogeys or better and was feeling a lot looser than when I started and ended up picking up 34 points. This left me in 4th position after the first round, although already 8 shots behind Brenty (42) in the lead, with Reevesy (41) and Cashy (36) between us. Brad and Big Tone both shot low 30's to keep in touch whilst Liam, Dog and Cannon (21) had pretty much thrown their chances away early on. We played a bit of snooker that night, although the "tournament" turned into a bit of a shambles and I don't think it was completed in the end.

On to round 2 and a very solid performance saw me card 38 points and included only one blob on my card. I managed to birdie 2 of the holes as well which made a huge difference. Cashy shot a 30 to fall 6 behind me in 3rd place whilst Brenty card a 36 (now playing off 14) to lead me by 6 going in to the last round.

A good start to the last round was essential to try and close the gap to Brenty early, and I got it with a bogey and birdie giving me 6 points from the opening 2 holes. Combine this with Brenty blobbing these 2 holes and we were tying for the lead already! He blobbed the next as well, I parred it and all of a sudden had a 3 shot lead!!! Some exceptional golf follow and I had 22 points at the turn despite blobbing one of the holes. After 11 holes my lead stood at 2 points but then Brenty completely blew up and ended up with just 18 points for the round. I parred the last hole to finish with 37 points for my round to beat him by 13 points and it was Cashy and Big Tone who finished joint second, 7 points behind me.

I must say I probably played the most consistent golf for a long time in those three rounds, and was the only person who was correctly handicapped in the end as my handicap didn't deviate from 18 all weekend. My overall score was equivalent to one under par for my handicap! So I pocketed the £60 for first as well as taking home the outstanding trophy that the Dog had provided! It is now sitting proudly above the TV in my flat.

On the Saturday evening I teamed up with the Dog to take on Cashy and Big Tone in a greensomes/£2 skins/£5 matchplay competition that proved to be a brilliant format. Things were looking bright when we won the 4th hole to capture 4 skins and move one up in the match play, they then won 2 holes out of three to take the lead in the match play whilst they still trailed by a skin. I then sunk a huge putt on the 10th hole to move 7-3 up in skins and level the matchplay before we halved the next 2 holes and were forced by the light to call it a day with an £8 profit. We then raced back to the clubhouse with Cashy and Big Tone taking a short cut, imagine my surprise when I stop at the top of a steep hill to suddenly hear Cashy shout "Big Tone"... cue me rolling forward a bit to see a buggy overturned at the bottom of the hill and Cashy shouting for us to get down there quick. Turns out Big Tone was trapped underneath it with the buggy digging in to his ankle. Dog turned out to be the hero, sprinting down the hill and single-handedly lifting the buggy off Tone... who's ankle was very swollen for a while but was fit enough to play the rest of the weekend's golf.

That wasn't the end of the excitement for the weekend. Myself, Cashy, Dog and Cannon also played 2 lots of 9 holes in a "World Series of Golf" format (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Series_of_Golf), stumping up £25 each for the pleasure. In my rich vein of form I thoroughly trounced the opposition and by the time I had won on the 17th green I must have won or split around 11-12 of the holes! The highlights included Cannon and Dog fighting it out around the 9th green having gone all-in after their tee shots on a par 3. The hole was eventually won in 5 by the Cannon which crippled the dog. I sank a huge bending pressure put on the 13th to avoid doubling Cashy up and then knocked him out a couple of holes later sinking another 8 footer before finishing off the Cannon having got it all-in pre on the par 3 17th for all the tea in China, allowing me to take the £100 first prize!

Overall the place and the trip was amazing and we are making it an annual event. The rooms were nothing special but literally all we did was sleep and shower in them so they didn't need to be. The food was ok and plentiful, not gourmet but I'm not one to complain and we never went hungry! The courses were top-notch considering the amount of use they must get throughout the year. The evening activities were abundant and more importantly free too, we played snooker and darts but also one afternoon we managed to fit in a game of bowls! Which myself and Big Tone excelled at although did not get to play our final in the end.

Wow, this has been a lot longer than expected...over 2,000 words...should probably do some work now...

49 not out...

Yep, this is the 49th post of this blog, just a quick one to make sure I don't go a whole month without posting (made it just in time), and to let you know how things have been going for me recently.

Well...where to start? Job-wise things are going good, been at Atkins just over a year now and still enjoying it. Got to get out the office the other week to go on a 3-day expenses paid trip to Bournemouth to look at a few junctions! Was a good laugh, managed to wangle it so Terry and I drove round together so it was a lot more fun than it would have been with one of the other guys. The bad thing about it was that we still had to get up and out by about 8:30am, but on 2 of the days we were finished by just after lunchtime and the hotel had a snooker table (albeit with pool cues) so we spent quite a bit of time in there. Also had an impromptu heads-up poker game one evening which I completely dominated before getting it all-in pre with AA versus his 33. I hadn't even finished my sentence "A three had better not..." when the first card out was a 3 and I ended up a loser in the game...

Online poker-wise I have not played very much recently, mainly because of BT, who not only want us to pay £125 for them to most probably flick a switch and "connect" our phone line, but also gave me a date of the 17th Sept for when an engineer was available to do what is likely to be a 5-minute job. Which means that I currently have no home internet connection so my poker exploits have been limited to brief forrays round the missus's parents house. My Full Tilt bankroll is down to about $520 from its high of $650, of which $80 is bonuses/rakeback which shows it's importance. I've had a few sick beats dealt on me the last couple of days which have hurt, AA cracked by TT all-pre, My 6 9 off splitting with my opponents 9 4 suited (blind battle) getting it all-in on the turn with the board reading T 8 7 5, that was a $100 pot that should have all been shipped my way. Also had an $80 pot all-in on the turn on a board of 7 7 7 Q, I had 5 5, he had K 3, obviously K on the river ships the pot to him...ah well, at least it shows there's money to be made from complete morons out there...

Finally, the flat is looking really good (mainly due to Jo keeping everything neat,clean and tidy) and we're settling in wonderfully. It's nice to be able to come home from a tough days work to your own house and just relax. The new pool table with table tennis top is being delivered next week as well so I'll have that to look forward to as the current pool table rolls all over the place as its about 10 years old and very unstable. That being said I did go on a 14 match winning streak when we first set it up...

Quick Update

Been a while since I last updated, been very busy sorting out stuff for my new flat so no real time for poker. What I have played has been a mixture of the good, bad and ugly. Hit a new peak for the graph the other day, but that seems to have gone to my head and since then I've steadily leaked money (although I suppose it's a positive that I haven't had a major blowup for a while.)

I withdrew £225 from Party and dumped $400 into Full Tilt the a couple of days ago. After 1k hands i'd managed to grind that up to $600, even outdrawing a couple of people, but in the last 1k hands I've lost about $100 of that profit, although things could have been very different if I'd hit a couple of HUGE drawing hands that I had. Twice I've had a flush draw with a double belly buster all-in on the flop only to come up against sets both times (pretty much the only hand I'm not a favourite against) and both times I haven't managed to hit (which put paid to my theory that I might actually have a boomswitched account for once.)

Going down to Bournemouth for a few days with work to look at some junctions, so won't be able to play for a while, especially as we're moving in to the flat either Friday or Monday! Got the whole of next week off to spend some time settling into the flat with the missus and sorting out the loose ends that need tying up so may have a few sessions then (providing I can get the internet set up in time.)

Graph time I suppose:



Just over 12k hands played since May for a $512 profit at apparently $8.79 per hour so I'm not even making minimum wage! Stick to the day job me thinks...

Stakes and Swings

Just a brief update as it's been a while on what I've been up to the last few weeks. Went on holiday to La Manga in Spain, played two rounds of golf on Championship courses and one was my best ever round, an 82! Could have been better if I hadn't four putted one green as well! Don't think I will play a better round for a long long time, pretty much everything went right.

Aside from the golf the holiday was brilliant all round, good food, good weather, good banter = happiness. Plus got to spend some quality time with the missus which was nice.

Came back and played my first game of cricket for the year. Took two wickets and hit 30-odd runs but was a bit rusty. Should be playing again in early September so have that to look forward to.

Now onto the poker... A HUGE CONGRATULATIONS TO ED ROGER AND WILL BREWIN! They finished 191st and 118th respectively in the World Series of Poker Main Event for about $38k and $41k. I managed to get a slice of their action as well (2% in each of them) so returned around $1600 for my $450 outlay. It was great to see them go so deep, made it very interesting reading the updates knowing that I had an interest in 2 of the runners for so long! Ed has written a few blogs of his time out there which you can see from the link on the right of this page, hopefully he'll do a more thorough report at some stage as well!

In terms of my poker it's been all about the swings baby...the end of the graph shows it all really, up and down like a yo-yo:



When I break it down into hands played at $0.25/$0.50 and hands played at $0.50/$1 it isn't hard to figure out where I have a problem.

Here is the $50nl graph:



As you can see, a fairly even upward curve.

Now here is the $100nl graph:



Hmmmm... maybe I should steer clear of moving up for a little bit. I would love to blame it on luck and being coolered but, quite frankly, I've just played terribly and moving up has had the opposite effect that I thought it would in that it has made me gamble more rather than play tighter with the higher stakes.

So I'm about $750 up from $50nl in the last couple of months and down about $475 at $100nl.

Tonight was a very good night, made about $240 in about 250 hands so I am content at the moment. Will hopefully post some time soon with a few of the hands that have been involved in my swings over the last couple of weeks, had some quite interesting ones and in fac I'll leave you with a couple that just show why I love Party poker at these stakes. People literally want to give you their money:

***** Hand History for Game 7222185777 *****
$50 USD NL Texas Hold'em - Tuesday, July 15, 16:31:35 ET 2008
Table Table 164946 (Real Money)
Seat 6 is the button
Total number of players : 6
Seat 6: tornado1974 ( $112.13 USD )
Seat 1: mmiguelena ( $86.50 USD )
Seat 3: ben_w_2004 ( $103.26 USD )
Seat 2: rodiplby78 ( $50 USD )
Seat 4: pjferr ( $73.75 USD )
Seat 5: clabbesbulle ( $50 USD )
mmiguelena posts small blind [$0.25 USD].
rodiplby78 posts big blind [$0.50 USD].
** Dealing down cards **
Dealt to ben_w_2004 [ As Ah ]
ben_w_2004 raises [$2 USD]
pjferr folds.
clabbesbulle folds.
tornado1974 calls [$2 USD]
mmiguelena folds.
rodiplby78 folds.
** Dealing Flop ** [ Jh, 6h, 8s ]
ben_w_2004 checks.
tornado1974 bets [$5 USD]
ben_w_2004 calls [$5 USD]
** Dealing Turn ** [ Qd ]
ben_w_2004 checks.
tornado1974 bets [$15 USD]
ben_w_2004 calls [$15 USD]
** Dealing River ** [ 9d ]
ben_w_2004 checks.
tornado1974 bets [$18 USD]
ben_w_2004 calls [$18 USD]
tornado1974 shows [ Ac, 4s ]high card Ace.
ben_w_2004 shows [ As, Ah ]a pair of Aces.
ben_w_2004 wins $77.75 USD from the main pot with a pair of Aces.
#Game No : 7222190139

And his beauty. Can't believe he called the extra $18 on the end with no pair no draw:

***** Hand History for Game 7201441301 *****
$50 USD NL Texas Hold'em - Monday, July 07, 16:45:50 ET 2008
Table Table 164767 (Real Money)
Seat 1 is the button
Total number of players : 5
Seat 3: maurov79 ( $80.10 USD )
Seat 1: ronnie6017 ( $30.37 USD )
Seat 6: BottonAnna ( $50.50 USD )
Seat 2: ben_w_2004 ( $55.27 USD )
Seat 5: ddrogue ( $50.25 USD )
ben_w_2004 posts small blind [$0.25 USD].
maurov79 posts big blind [$0.50 USD].
** Dealing down cards **
Dealt to ben_w_2004 [ Ad Ah ]
ddrogue folds.
BottonAnna raises [$2 USD]
ronnie6017 folds.
ben_w_2004 calls [$1.75 USD]
maurov79 folds.
** Dealing Flop ** [ 5s, 8c, Ac ]
ben_w_2004 checks.
BONER_LOL has joined the table.
BottonAnna bets [$4 USD]
ben_w_2004 raises [$8 USD]
BottonAnna raises [$8 USD]
ben_w_2004 calls [$4 USD]
** Dealing Turn ** [ 9s ]
ben_w_2004 checks.
BottonAnna bets [$17 USD]
>You have options at Table 165557 Table!.
ben_w_2004 raises [$36.50 USD]
lol
BottonAnna is all-In.
** Dealing River ** [ 7h ]
ben_w_2004 shows [ Ad, Ah ]three of a kind, Aces.
BottonAnna doesn't show [ Jd, Qs ]high card Ace.
ben_w_2004 wins $99.50 USD from the main pot with three of a kind, Aces.
#Game No : 7201445997