My Journey to the WSOP – Still trying to add new things.

Hello again. Midterms are over so I can get back to blogging on schedule. It sucks that I play poker on Sundays and then I have a class on Monday night but that is only for 2 more months…

Anyways, again since I have already qualified for state and double qualifying doesn’t do me any good, during the second session, I am testing out new parts of my game. Mainly, semi-bluffing, bluffing and playing different types of hands. Here is a brief synopsis of the hands that I played this weekend.

4 PM – blinds 25/50. Dealt AKs…two seats to the right of me pushed all in, I had her covered. She has pocket A’s. Lose 1200. Now, with this hand, since I know that the player is somewhat of a bluffer and will over bet her hands, especially when she is trying to steal blinds but this time, I was wrong. The community didn’t help at all, I lost 1200 and was down to 700 in chips, but I’ve come back from worse.

Blinds 100/200. Down to 500. K8s. 5 players at the table at this point and I love playing shorthanded poker. I push all in. Two callers. 885. I quad up to 2000. Now, I normally wouldn’t push all in with K8s but I was down to 500 in chips, the shortest stack at the table and both blinds are players that will call bets to protect their blinds.

Tried playing suited connectors a couple times…never hit but I’ll keep trying to put them in my game. I don’t know if that is a timing thing or what. One time, I played it from the BB and called the min bet on the flop. I had the chips and wasn’t worried about losing cause if a bigger bet would have came, I would have folded. The other time, I was out of position but thought J 10d was a better one to work with than the previous hand, which I believe was 78s.

7PM – blinds @ 50-100. Dealt AQc, raise to 300. I raise 600. Two seats to my left (Matt – A notorious bluffer) all in. I call. He has JJ, I catch Q’s on flop and river. I dbl up. Now, again, a lot of people would say that AQ is not the hand to call an all in bet because it can be beat by pocket pairs and AK and I was behind percentage wise but the reason I called it was because Matt is known to bluff with an all in push and AQ happens to be my favorite hand.

A9h blinds 100/200 – pushed bets. hhs dealt. (I meant to note the cards but because I was in the hand and forgot to but they were all lower cards) Club in river, check check. Heart on river, I catch a Ace high flush so I’m sure I’m golden because there was no straight flush possibility and I push with 2400, call and he shows a King high flush and I’m up to 9000.

The rest of the night was unremarkable…I lost the majority of my chips on bluffs that didn’t work and the last hand, I just gave up on and tossed my chips in because I wanted to get a little reading done for my last midterm test.

I’m currently in 23rd place being that I’m only getting points for showing up. I think I am going to switch my game back to my normal game because I have to start prepping for state. I know that it’s going to be a whole new type of scenario then what I’m normally used to playing so I have to start working on the mental part of my game…my patience and my watching the players more intently.

I have been trying to read more and more about mentally noting players during play because I’ll admit that I’m not that great at it. I know the players at the bar, mainly because I play with them once a week but I’m sure I’ll not have played with the people that I’m playing with at state.

Thanks for reading and I’ll see you at the tables.

Michael Hughes has been married for 12 years, is a father of two boys ages 5 and 3. He works as an IT professional and is currently working on his B.A. degree in Philosophy with a double minor in Morals and Ethics and Urban Education. He is relatively new to poker, but his goal is to eventually win a seat or qualify for the WSOP. You can find him primarily at Cooper's Bar in Eagan, playing in the Free Poker Network bar league. Contact Michael at MichaelLHughes@gmail.com