My 5000 Poker Score

One of the biggest highlights of my poker career was scooping a $5, 000 pot in a live cash game. Of course, the money was nice, but it was effectively how I played the hand that I'll remember for a long time to come.

I was playing $5/$10 at my local casino, and usually a $5000 score at a $5/$10 level would not be that remarkable. But only at that casino, the max buy in is $100! In order you can imagine it requires a lot of grinding and winning coin flips to build up a stack in that game.

Funny thing is, I actually built a stack of nearly $1300 by playing pure Bingo, literally. I guess some high rollers at my table were bored so all volunteers pre-flop would push their stacks all in pre flop without taking a look at their cards. Out of 8 total games I managed to win 3, in order that got my stack going in the right direction for the night.

In the course of another 15 hours I built my chip stack up to a little under $2, 600, and that's when the most critical hand of the night took place.

I was 2nd chip stack on my table to a gentleman who I do my best to avoid, named Humberto. He previously about $3, 100 in chips and is an fantastic cash player and a person who I tried to outplay once, and only once, with disastrous results. Another guy, named Salvo, was a man I had played with a few times before. He's not that strong of a player and uber-aggressive and so i knew if I got in a good situation with him, I could possibly feel him out, or at least take a huge chunk of his chips. He had about the same chip stack as I did so.

One player limps in for $10. The rest of the table folds to Salvo and he makes it $70 in the CO. The little blind folds, I am in the big blind and peek at my hole cards (I never look at my hole cards before the action involves me, so I don't give away any tells). I have TT. Two thoughts immediately enter my mind. One is, I think I've the best hand right now therefore i should re-raise this maniac. But then my second thought was, if I re-raise, and he calls, which he surely will, I will be out of position for the rest of the hand. If I don't view a favorable flop, this hand can get quite expensive for me. I decided to just call. The early limper folded.

The flop was 10h9d6h. Obviously, that was a fantastic flop for me. Not really a MONSTER flop, as a result of the straightened out cards and the 2 hearts, but I thought a check by me might be the only path to see if I could get some chips out of him if he completely missed with AKo or a hand similar to that.

I meekly check.

Sure as gold, he straight away fires $150, while announcing loudly "$150! "

Ok, I'm thinking, so far, all of this action is pretty standard. An ultra aggressive player raised pre-flop in late position, with a strong hand or possibly garbage, I was not sure yet. A tight aggressive player (me) called out of position, the flop is turned over and I let him keep up the initiative and continuation bet (mind you, a pot sized bet, which didn't really surprise me). The only "problem" with my play here's that by playing the hand in this way, I gained no information on his hand at all. Exactly why I did not care should be obvious. I flopped the 2nd nuts.

I went in the tank for about 30 seconds, and called. Within my mind, I was hoping the board would not flush or look into any more than it already was, because then, my beautiful slow playing tactic could severely backfire on me.

The turn: 9h.

My money card! Now I have 10's full of 9's and could care less if he is on a flush draw or a straight draw. My main concern now's to try and decipher what hand he really has, therefore i can extract the most chips from his aggressiveness.

I check again.

He instantly bets $450, but this time he yelled it, almost screamed it... "$450! "

This bet, and the way he bet it, told me a few things.

He made yet another pot sized bet on the turn after I flat called his pot sized bet on the flop. Why would he do this? Is he even considering what I've? This said he either had absolutely nothing and was firing yet another (and almost certainly, his last) bluffing bullet at this growing pot, he previously some type of hand he was trying to guard, or he didn't care what I had at all and was shipping it in no matter what. The problem with playing with aggressive players like Salvo is its extremely hard to put them on a range of hands in these types of scenarios. But I did my best. These were the hands I thought he could have from my read on the turn: some type of flush, maybe AhKh and maybe even some suited connected cards that were smaller, like 8h7h. Some other possibilities were a made hand with a flush redraw, such as possibly A9 with the Ah, or maybe A10 with the Ah.

But his bet told me something else, and the most important information of the hand. I really felt in my gut that there clearly was a very very good possibility that he was not folding. No real matter what. And as soon as that summation crossed my mind, I stated, rather flatly...

"I'm all in. "

Right after I made this move, several red lights went off in my head. Did I move too fast? Could I have set one more trap on the river? I saw a look of shock and disbelief, almost horror in his face when I said that. I really was hoping, that by shoving right there on the turn, that there would be zero way he could be on such a solid hand. Why would I shove almost two grand in the middle with such a monster. I KNEW HE WOULD NOT THINK I HAD THAT STRONG OF A HAND. But the problem was getting him to call me. I knew I had to behave fast and use his aggressiveness against him.

Because there was about $3, 000 in the middle of the table, a crowd of about 20-25 people came over to watch in conclusion of the hand. I decided to use some tactics to try and show up Salvo, since he is an ultra aggressive player filled up with so much machismo! I looked him in the face area, and with as much of a smug face as I could muster up on short notice, told him:

"Hey Salvo, I bet you didn't are expecting that did you!? ALLLLL INNNN. "

And then, just like a final brushstroke of a masterpiece painting, I blew him a kiss. That's what achieved it.

Angrily, he threw his cards over and said "I CALL! "

To my utter disbelief, poor Salvo had domino qq with the Q of hearts, drawing to two lousy outs by the river, which he did not hit. He was so shaken up by the hand that he didn't even request a count of his chips, he just walked away.

Now multiple person at the table said he threw me a gift, and I admit, yes, he made a horrific call there taking into consideration the circumstances. He even tried to justify it by saying he put me on JJ (yeah right! ). But I will forever believe that on that glorious poker day for me, with help from the poker gods obviously, I MADE HIM CALL! SHIP IT!