How much will you pay for 6th street?!

The most reasonable hand of poker ever played: The specific details of this hand are a bit fuzzy. The hand is between myself and HalfBaked from boards.ie in the Grosvenor Lane Fundraiser tournament. Preflop, HalfBaked open raises (this is during the rebuy period and HalfBaked has done this in twelve of the last eleven hands without looking at his cards, he has the table covered as he is a luckbox), i see KQ and have to call. He shows 64, a pretty good hand for him. And by that I mean he SHOWS 64, and there is still betting. The board comes KJ8, and i being all for fairness show my KQ. He bets at it. I figure I have to call. The turn is a queen, giving me 2 pair. he checks, I check behind to trap him (bearing in mind we can both see eachothers cards.) The river is a 7. He bets out 1500 at it (pot is about 5k). This looks like a "please pay me" bet, so I'm tempted to fold. However, i use my cunning observation skills to skillfully reduce his hand range to 64. I know he is drawing to a 5... so I repop it to 3k, saying if he calls we'll see a 6th card. He calls, and 6th street is a blank... he checks it to me and I start worrying about bet sizing, how do i get paid here... there's 11k in the pot... hmmm.. what to do.. so after much debate he suggests I bet 1800 and he'll call, giving him some value to draw to his 5. I oblige and fire out 1800, he insta-calls... 7th street brings a Queen, and HalfBaked shows his impressive poker skills and lays down his straight draw to my full house despite my value bet of 100 into a 14,000 pot. I think it was a good fold...

The financials and the terrible plays of March: ugh... march was bad. march was FUCKING BAD!!! my main issue with march is that in the process of losing money i played so poorly. I threw good money after bad. Equally in March I had some pretty unusual poker experiences. When I played bad, I got punished for it. When I played well fate conspired against me. Some examples:

Hand 1: this is the worst hand of my life. Its the Irish Open Qualifier in the Emporium. I limp with AQ, flop is AKJ. A decent flop for me, i bet it, some fella who I have played against raises me, I reraise him (i dont know why) and he pushes. At this point i am 1,000,000,000% certain my one pair is beat but for some reason I cant stop my hands from pushing my chips in. Player gone (he had flopped the nuts) and I cant work out why i did it.

Hand 2: Its JP's monthly game, and I'm back to have a crack at reproducing my result the previous month. We're two levels in and I riase from early position with AK to about 500 (blinds 75-150). I have about 9k and some chap in mid position has 8,800. He looks at his first card and says "ah that will do, I'm all in". While I'm puzzled I know H ave to call, and call i do. He shows, K4, first card out is a 4 and out I go.

Hand 3: A second Irish Open Sat, down to the last 4 tables and I open push with AQ when i have 13 big blinds. For the second time in a week someone calls on the blind for all their chips. BB who has just shy of 10 big blinds calls and flips over 24... flop is a tasty 24x... bye bye Irish Open. I console myself with the fact that I am playing the Jackpot cash league final the next day.

Hand 4: Second hand of the cash league game I call a preflop raise with 7h8h. Flop is j95, giving me a nice draw. I check call my draw and hit a 10 on the turn filling my straught. The chips go in, villain shows QQ, and the river shows a K... player gone...

I also won a small tourney for a bit of profit but nothing major. Ultimately my march losses of close to 1k have brought my 2007 earnings to a much more modest +€2,000. ah well.. better than nothing i guess.

My plans of attack: its taken me the guts of up to two years of card playing to realise I play too tight in tournaments... I keep trying to survive rather than to accumulate chips. This is gonna change... oh yes... next update will have more on this as I have yet to formualte a plan. get back to me.