Weird Day at the Beau Part One

So I've played at the Beau and at Harrahs in the last week or so. Heard the action at the Beau has been fast and furious in the cash games. Wish I had time to sit down for a spell. Considering how I run there maybe not. While at the Beau, I had a long conversation with Reid G. He alerted me to a thread on 2+2 peppered with a lot of Gulf Coasters. Think we need to try and recruit Gabe Costner to be a blogger. He gets people reading and talking that's for sure. I spent several hours reading every post in that thing, compelling stuff.

Back to the Beau, I thought their Sunday tournament would have a huge turnout and actually got there an hour early so I wouldn't have to wait in line. Mistake. I didn't take into account just how many people would be sitting it out to play the heads up tournament later in the day. The tournament on the whole was very strange, I picked up some decent hands in late position frequently in level one and basically bricked every time. But it would always check to me allowing me to steal pot after pot. I must have gotten some showdowns because at one point I started counting chips, and I realized my aggression had almost already doubled my stack. Very strange.

Then, I started hitting hands. Problem was so was everybody else. I kept finding folds and they kept showing me I was making the correct laydowns. I noticed keeping hold of my chips was like trying to catch water with a net. They just flowed to all corners of the table. **Sidebar, can't tell you how many gear shifts I saw in one table. Myself included, but if felt like people were playing drastically different a few levels in. The tight old guys became three betting maniacs. This one dude who almost passively call-call-folded his way to no chips suddenly started firing three bets with reckless abandon. The idiots because tight.

This made the game exhausting, especially when I tried to short stack my way out of trouble, My death blow almost came after I suffered an impact with a cranial impaired player that would have knocked me out if not due to his stupid play allowing me to stay. Here's the hand. In a multi-way pot I flop top two in late position K10 (other card was an 8). There is a flush draw and couple of guys gave me pause like they had hit something. I put out a pot sized go away bet and hoped the scrub at the end that was fiddling with his chips, and had checked from the blinds, but raised preflop would call me with AK.

He called. The others scattered despite probably some of their draws being price in. A brick 6 on the turn got another stiff bet from me. He promptly min-raised me. Really... Set of 8s? Set of 6s did you just call my flop bet with fourth pair and draw to your two outer. I went over my image, and yes possibly, I was in too many pots and he merely thought I was f.o.s. inducing a weird call with sixs. 8s might just pop me back on the flop. So it's really 6s. Or is it Ak putting me to a test?

Here's my belief when a guy like him, white guy who has the dour complexion of a man that has spent too much time in the once smokey poker rooms the aversion to exersize that I'm starting to adopt (ugh oh please don't be my future), who's not too creative and old enough in his 50s to never become creative check raises you or min raises or worse min-check raises you, you better start thinking about the best possible hands and if you aren't holding one of them get out.

Set of Kings didn't make too much sense, but possible, course I hold a K and a 10 so both sets are somewhat less likely. Set of 8s as mentioned above and sets of 10s and Ks probably bets the flop harder with people to act after him and some draws. So now, I'm putting this guy on one hand. I'm getting signals of immense strength from him. I need to find a fold here.

Then I got that nagging voice in the back of my head... It's like a pimply faced internet player inside me that's saying, "Only donkeys try to put people on one hand. Gotta be hand ranges."

"Alright, magic the gathering champion what else can be in his hand... air."

"So..."

"... he's polarized?"

The pimply faced internet player in my head picks his nose, rolls it and sticks it in my eye, "Don't say that. "Polarized" coming from you sounds like a Grandfather trying to say awesome, wicked, cool to relate to his 13 year old grandson as he's dragging him to an Elks lodge meeting in his 1989 Buick. Live players should just stick to body language not geek language." He went back to his nose, and said, "There's more where that come from especially if you try to say something like range merging."

So, the internal dialouge and the lure of the swelling pot gave me fodder to find reasons to call. The donkey inside of me suddenly weighs in with Eddie Muprhy's voice "Course, if you are wrong you got four outs and he probably checks the river anyway. Call him, Shrek!"

"Shut-up Donkey... wait a second Shrek?"

So, I call the min-check raise for over half of my remaining stack.