The first sesh...

My first session of poker since I started the blog was not what I planned. I had planned to see what tournies were on offer on Sun and Noble poker and choose to play the best ones whilst playing a couple of cash games and SNG's on the side (i generally like to 4-table when i'm playing). However, I logged into Party Poker to see if a couple of my uni mates: Cashy and the Cannon (Ed "Wendyx25" Roger-see links for his blog) and saw I had a £5 bonus offer waiting for me. Now this was just free money with cashout restrictions and to my horror I discovered that I couldnt use it on poker until I'd met the restrictions in Party Casino. So i basically loaded up a slot machine, put the money in on the lowest stakes and ran autospin until I had wagered the £30 required. After that I had £6.32 which I was then allowed to deposit on the poker site. So i sat down on a 6-max $0.10/$0.25 table with what turned out to be $12.83 thinking I'll have a bit of fun and gamble the money trying to double up quickly and was not too worried about busting as it was free money after all.

It soon became clear that there was an absolute nutter at the table called Recessive who was playing pretty much every pot so I looked to target him as he kept showing his cards and never having hands. I looked to call his preflop raises when in position and then play flops rather than making moves preflop. An example is:

http://www.pokerhand.org/?1155248

Here I thought I was probably winning on the flop as he most likely had air but wanted to play it like a draw so that I could take it down when a scare card came...it duly arrived on the turn and the plan was executed suprisingly easily.

I think the fact that I wasnt afraid to go bust helped me make some brave calls against him like this one:

http://www.pokerhand.org/?1155263

In the end I decided that my top pair was good and that he probably had some sort of draw and in my gambling mood made the call. Also added into the equation was the fact that this guy could literally have had anything although this is the first time he had re-re-raised me so I was a little worried.

Then came my favourite hand of the day:

http://www.pokerhand.org/?1155280

That's a hand played about as far out of my character as I could have got, but it got through and that's all that matters. I showed my cards at the end of this hand because the GriggLFC guy was on major tilt and i wanted to just push him that little bit further...by this time pretty much the whole table was steaming because of Recessive playing like a madman and also chatting a load of bs in the text and I was taking advantage. One guy even called me down with pocket 2's after i cheekily checked trips on the flop for a $35 pot:

http://www.pokerhand.org/?1155300

And then he called me down with bottom pair in a $27 pot a few hands later:

http://www.pokerhand.org/?1155309

To make things worse I then busted him again a few hands later when he had a double belly buster with a flush draw which he hit on the turn only for me to make my house on the river:

http://www.pokerhand.org/?1155317

Things then slowed down as Recessive left and I ground my way to a finishing stack of $110 as the table broke.

All in all a pretty good evening's work. i think by only playing one table I was able to fully concentrate on the people I was playing against and play alot more pots and that helped me alot. Plus the fact that a few of the people I was playing with were absolute donkeys...