Fucking gutshots

I believe I was either the 4th or 5th person eliminated from the main event today. I played some really crazy hands in level 1 today, most involving someone hitting a gutshot. Gutshots have really been killing me lately. Rewind back to Niagara last week I lost a $22K pot to a gutshot.

I was playing 25/50 NL cash again and was up like $3K just playing aggressively and winning a lot of small pots by following up preflop raises with flop bets most of the time whether I hit or not. Standard stuff (but not to the live nits). So I raise QJo in MP to 200 and get called on the button by some guy who likes to call my raises and then fold when he misses. Effective stacks $11Kish. The flop comes Q95r, I bet 400 and he instacalls which I'm pretty confident is a sign of weakness. Turn is a J, I bet $1000 and he quickly makes it $4000. In retrospect this is probably the easiest fold ever but I had top two pair and kind of thought he might be making a move getting sick of me running him over (hint: live players will never adjust they just try to "trap" you) so I shipped it in and lost lots of money to his obvious KT.

OK so back to Foxwoods main event:

Hand 1: 50/100 30K starting chips. CO limps, button limps, SB completes I check K8o in the BB. Flop K84 2 hearts, I bet 300 and button calls. Turn 3c, I bet 750 button calls. River 6h, I decide to go for thin value and bet 1500, he calls with 75o. OK wtf...

Hand 2: I've been pretty aggressive so far, raising a lot of hands and firing on the flop most of the time. Unfortunately I've been getting called a lot and having to give up so people aren't giving me much credit anymore. I'm down to 25K now and raise KQo to 400 in EP. 2 players call in MP, the latter being David Pham. Flop AJ8r, I bet 800 and Pham calls. Turn T, I bet 2K and Pham calls. River is a low diamond completing a backdoor flush draw, I bet 5K he calls and mucks. These gutshots are a lot more fun when you're the one hitting them.

Hand 3: So Im up to 33K and lose a little randomly raising and missing some more when I find KK in EP and raise to 400. An older guy calls in MP, he doesn't look like a huge nit but I have to assume he's prboably on the solid side and not going to mess around too much without a big hand postflop. Pham now reraises to 1500. He's since lost another big pot and only had 12.5K to start the hand (our table is crazy), and there's a good chance he's just steaming at this point. I decide to just call to trap since I'm not sure how often he'll get all-in preflop with a hand like AK or QQ/JJ even if he's tilting a little and the old guy also calls in the middle. Flop 89T, and it surprisingly checks around. Turn is a 3, I lead for 3K, old guy calls, and Pham now shoves for around 8500 more. I have no idea what to put him on here, I can't imagine he would ever check that flop with a big hand so something like QQ/JJ seems fairly likely, I guess maybe AA but a set should be unlikely. However I'm very concerned about the old guy in the middle it seems like he could very easily have a set and be willing to risk a bad river card to try to trap Pham. I end up folding and old guy instacalls with a set of 3s, Pham has QQ and busts out. It was pretty sick that this hand went the only way it possibly could go where I don't get his stack.

Hand 4: Guy limps UTG, UTG+1 who seems fairly decent makes it 350, I call next to act with QQ, we get one more caller and the limper calls. Flop QT6 rainbow, check to me I bet 1K (should bet a little more), folds to the original raiser who calls which is pretty weird. Turn is a J and he now bombs into me for 3K. I really didn't think he'd call the flop with AK, and he wouldn't have raised a limper with 89, so I figure he prboably has JJ or TT and decide to valuestack myself by raising and getting another 18K in against his AK. I definitely should have just called down here it was a pretty clear mistake in retrospect. So I have 2K left now.

Hand 5: Down to 1200 now at 100/200, loose asian guy limps UTG, folds to me on the button I shove 66 and he calls with A5s. I manage to hold and double to 2700. I then shove over a raise with AJ to get to 3600 when he folds.

Hand 6: I raise in EP with QQ, asian guy calls, guy after him makes it 2500, I move in and he calls with TT. 4 bricks and a river T later I'm the 4th or 5th bustout of the tournament :-(.


So Steve plays tomorrow. I finally got my wire transfer money today so I have enough cash to play some big cash games, so I think I'm gonna take another shot at them, I've heard a lot of stories about the games being pretty good. I also had a nice session playing 5/10 NL yesterday where I made $7200 basically just running over the table and hitting every flop. I got AA against KK twice and stacked the guy both times as well which was pretty insane. As long as I remember that they're never bluffing and and get back to making ridiculous hero folds I should do well.

Mike