Ok, so it's just past 9am here in Vegas, and I'm yawning as I watch the Germany-Argentina match, mainly because I got about 3 hours sleep due to playing my first ever live cash game. Craig and I went out to Rain at the Palms with it's crazy flamethrowing setup above the dancefloor and stupidly overpriced drinks and when we got back at to the Wynn at about 2am, I wa shocked to find that there was no waitng list for the $1-$3 NL cash game, I sat down with $300 in $3 chips, yes, probably the most number of chips I'll ever see. The table I was at was nine-handed and was full of young americans who all played loose aggressive, but certainly knew when to laydown a hand. I lost a chunk early on when I ran a straight into a flush, before the deck hit me in the face.
I was playing fairly tightly when I picked up kings in the small blind, made a solid raise and the two limpers wouldn't leave, the flop came
and I led out for $30, the first limper folded but the guy on the button who was calling a lot of raises, pushed in for $40 more, I made a quick call only to find he held
but I caught a king on the river to bust him out. I managed to pick up aces twice, kings once more and jacks, and have them hit none threatening flops and take more good pots. Getting so many premium hands was a bonus on such an aggressive table as someone always seemed to want to take a shot.
The biggest pot I took was with pockets queens where after a couple of limpers, I raised on the button to $15 with
.
Blinds folded and both limpers called,
flop:
Early limper bets $24, late limper folds, I raised to $60 and EL called.
turn:
(ouch, I don't really like that card)
EL checks, I decided to check too.
river:
EL bets $120 and I called pretty quickly. He had
. Would you check the turn there? He told me after that he had thought if I had bet then he might have check/raised all-in making a call for me very difficult, (He had me outstacked, I had roughly $340 at this point and he had about $450), he has 17 outs on the turn and was playing well. Is it worth sometimes giving a free card to someone if you knew they had a big draw and would call you anyway if you bet, but that also they would most of the time make a big bluff on the river if they missed their draw? I don't know, mainly because I don't play hold 'em cash much at all. (The omaha was a $10-$25 game and a little pricey for me
)
Anyway I left the session at about 5am roughly $200 up which I was chuffed with for a first live session. As I left I swear I saw riverdave head over to the $2-$5 NL game, well I think it might have been him, I'm not sure. Mabe he saw the two or three players who were sitting with about $10k each and raising each hand to $50-$60 preflop and decided to clear them out.
Laters.
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