Michele's Worst Nightmare

My wife, Michele, admitted to me before I left for the casino last night that part of her hoped I would win money, but another part of her wanted me to lose so I would not get too excited about the prospects of playing poker for a living.

I am sure that I do not want to play poker for a living. I would not have the ability to affect others lives and it would not allow me to create anything tangible. However, I do like the idea of playing part-time and earning extra money.

Yesterday during my "Pro Poker Player" experiment, I won $850. Only $40 of it was from online play and the rest was from playing 1-2 No Limit at Casino Arizona.

I only squeezed in 11 sit and gos and I won 7 of them. It should have been 8, except for a mysterious hand on the bubble. There were 6 players left and 5 get paid. I picked up two aces and there was only one player who had more chips than me at the table. Everyone else was short stacked and I could probably squeak into the money if I lost the hand to them. I pushed all in and was immediately called by the chip leader. If he loses, he is crippled. The correct strategy is for him to fold every single hand, even Aces because he can comfortably fold into the money.

Since he called, I was expecting to see KK or maybe even the weird AA. Instead it was ten-eight offsuit! Before I could even process that, the flop came out with two tens! It felt really weird and like I had been scammed. Did he know what the flop was going to be? I took my tin foil hat off and came to the conclusion that it was a gigantic misclick error. My opponent was playing a lot of tables at once and could easily make that mistake. Oh well, I got pretty lucky in some other spots, so overall I can't complain.

At Casino Arizona, I ran exceptionally well. It wasn't the kind of luck where I get money in behind and then suck out. It was the kind of luck where I kept making the nuts and having idiots pay me off with hopeless hands.

I made two raises on the river against the same opponent. One time I had the King high flush for 2nd nuts, and another time I had the Broadway straight for the nuts. Each time he called me with two pair.

In my biggest hand of the night, everyone limped for $2 including me on the button with 7-9 offsuit. The small blind made it $12 and 6 players called. The flop was 5-6-8 rainbow. The raiser bet $20 and three others called! I decided to raise to $100 figuring maybe someone had a set and I want to charge them in case the board pairs. I got one caller who still had $350 left.

The turn was a 2. He checked and I bet $150. He calls again. The river is a ten. No flush and only one higher straight. He checks and I put him all in for his last $220. He is agonizing over a call. I figure he must have a set. Finally he calls and rolls over QQ. How dumb can you be? At the very least he has to put me on a set right? I raise almost every time I come into the pot, but this time I limp and call a raise behind me with a ton of people in the pot. There is no way I show up with JJ?

I kept looking for spots to get aggressively creative, but there were so many calling stations, that I just played snug and waited to get paid off. For once it worked to perfection.