My 5000 Poker Score

One of the primary highlights of my poker career was scooping a $5, 000 pot in a live cash game. Of course, the cash was nice, but it was effectively how I played the hand that I will 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! Whilst you can imagine it requires a lot of grinding and winning coin flips to produce 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 time.

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 really do my better to avoid, named Humberto. He had about $3, 100 in chips and is an good cash player and somebody who I tried to outplay once, and only once, with disastrous results. Another guy, named Salvo, was a man I had played with several times before. He's not that strong of a player and uber-aggressive and so i knew basically 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 a comparable chip stack as Used to do.

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

The flop was 10h9d6h. Obviously, that was an incredible flop for me. Not really a MONSTER flop, as a result of the straightened out cards and the two hearts, but I thought a check by me might be the only path to see if I might 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 instantly fires $150, while announcing loudly "$150! "

Ok, I'm thinking, so far, 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 is that by playing the hand in this manner, I gained no information on his hand at all. The reason why I didn't care must 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 straighten out 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 is to try and decipher what hand he really has, and so i can extract the most chips from his aggressiveness.

I check again.

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

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

He made 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 have? This said he either had nothing at all and was firing yet another (and most likely, his last) bluffing bullet at this growing pot, he had some type of hand he was trying to safeguard, 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 place them on a range of hands in these types of scenarios. But I did so my most readily useful. 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 crucial information of the hand. I really felt in my gut that there is a very very good possibility that he wasn't 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, a couple of red lights went off in my head. Did I move too fast? May i have set one more trap on the river? I saw a look of shock and disbelief, nearly horror in his face when I said that. I was really hoping, that by shoving right there on the turn, that there would be simply no way he could be on such a strong hand. Why would I shove almost two grand in the middle with such a monster. I KNEW HE'D NOT THINK I HAD THAT STRONG OF A HAND. However the problem was getting him to call me. I knew I had to do something 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 the conclusion of the hand. I decided to use some tactics to try and appear Salvo, since he is an ultra aggressive player filled with so much machismo! I looked him in the face, 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, like a final brushstroke of a masterpiece painting, I blew him a kiss. That's what did it.

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

To my utter disbelief, poor Salvo had 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 more than one 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 dewa gods obviously, I MADE HIM CALL! SHIP IT!