$1/$2 No Limit Hold'em with Ed and Laura!

With the family still out of town this week I was wondering what to do tonight and as I was doing some pruning of my email I came across this weeks invitation by Ed to join them tonight for hamburgers and hot dogs and 1/2 No Limit. With my recent bought of pancreatitis at least over for now, I can't seem to get enough burgers! So, I made a quick call to see if Rick wanted to join me but I'm guessing he was crashing from a late night/early morning with the Juice as they were still going strong Tuesday night when I cashed out.

Ed is using one of the tables from PKR and a very nice heavy set of poker chips. I like them! Especially when I get a lot of them... LOL. There were some guys that I recognized from the cash games and tournaments from PKR and some new faces. I knew that it was going to take me a little while to adjust to $1/$2 NL Hold'em after playing $5/$10 NL O8 almost exclusively for the past few weeks. And I did have to re-buy, but I soon caught on and got back in the groove in pretty short order. There were a couple of big hands for me, one against a guy named Stevie (I believe). It was kind of noisy and I couldn't quite make out his name when I asked. I flopped a small flush draw with a straight draw and the straight draw became an up and down straight draw on the turn. Unfortunately as Rick says, "if there is a card that will cost you money, it'll come!" I bet all the way to the river and Stevie smooth called the entire way and when the flush hit on the river, he quickly put his remaining chips in to take the pot with a queen high club flush.

The other big hand came a little later and it too included Stevie and a late-comer, a very nice oriental gentleman that sat right next to me. Mattrix was there and I believe that it was him that made a $10 or so raise pre-flop. There were several callers and since I was sitting a couple places to Mattrix's right, I could smooth call with almost anything getting about 7-8 to 1. Lo and behold, my down cards are 3s, 5s. I know, it doesn't seem like 2 cards is enough cards when I'm so used to getting 4 cards down in O8. At any rate, the flop comes 7s, 6s, 3d and I really like this flop so I lead out with a $40 bet and the oriental gentleman immediately pushes all-in for another $30 or so. There are about 4 callers and I smooth call, the turn is a 4h and Stevie immediately pushes all-in for something over $200 and I have him covered. I immediately call and everyone else folds. The river is a meaningless Ax. The oriental gentleman made Aces and sevens. The 4 on the turn had given Stevie two pairs, threes and fours. And my 7 high straight scooped the largest pot of the night... somewhere around $800ish. I like it! While he could have had a higher straight on the turn, my flush draw was still live and I knew that even if I was behind, I had outs. It might just be the 4 of spades, but it was an out. LOL

We did stir up the discussion again about Scott's blog from a week or so back when he pushed all-in and got 2 callers who immediately "verbally" agreed to check it down. It actually happened again tonight. There was a pretty heated discussion about it and I tried to make everyone understand that I wasn't looking to argue only to make the point that its perfectly OK to check it down, but I don't feel that it is right to verbally agree to do so once the other player is all-in. I'm fine with the check/check, check/check, just not the "Let's check it down!" While it may not be against any rules, from an etiquette perspective, I think that it is very wrong. It is very possible that an aggressive player who made the call may end up betting out a hand that would beat the guy who is all-in, but if it is just checked all the way down, that can't happen. I think that they were just fired up over the specific hand that Scott had blogged rather than the foundation of my feelings on the subject. But no one was hurt and play continued.

It was a group of fun guys and Laura did a great job dealing. I understand that Ed is moving his game to a better location a little farther south later this month/first of September. Sounds like it is going to be much better than the current facility which was very adequate. I think it only got up to about 95 degrees in there tonight! But the hamburgers and hot dogs were great!

So I would strongly recommend playing in the game, but you should arrive early as the table filled up pretty quickly.

Again, I had a great time and actually won (sucked out) on several players as always! As one of my famous poker quotes from back in June by Susie Isaacs, "Play good, and when all else fails --- suck out!"

Back to the felt!