Professional Poker Awaits

I handed my notice in at work on Friday, I've become increasingly convinced that I want and need to give this a go. If for any reason I can't make it work for me I can always return to working in Universities in a year or so as I'll have good references and a suitable amount of work experience to hopefully go for a managerial role. However that is very much plan B as I don't tend to mess things up when I dccide I want something. Haven't suddenly had a change of heart and I feel very comfortable with my decision as it's not something I've just lept into and I've thought everything through. Very Exciting...

Still I shall be at work for another 3 months or so as we've got some busy times coming up and I'm not going to leave until everything is sorted. As you can imagine my mother is delighted and could not contain her enthusiasm for my decision (spot the sarcasm)

Getting back to evens at the tables, I've had a slow few days where I've won a bit but nothing worth getting excited about. this is going to happen from time to time as I'm going to have periods where I play badly or get sucked out on a lot so although it has been frustrating as I love seeing my profits rise it, I'm quite comfortable with how it's going.

As I keep getting stuck early for between 500 - 1000 I've been playing a little more aggressively and it's interesting to see how differently you get treated at a table when you consistently raise and reraise. The below hand is a prime example of this and I'll explain why this somewhat strange pot has developed.

***** Hand History for Game 6068297278 *****
$1,000 USD NL Texas Hold'em - Saturday, June 16, 15:31:14 ET 2007
Table Table 125489 (Real Money)
Seat 1 is the button
Total number of players : 10
Seat 1: NOMURAM ( $1,028 USD )
Seat 2: CLICK_888 ( $1,343 USD )
Seat 3: one_for_seb ( $543.75 USD )
Seat 4: rightnutgone ( $1,032 USD )
Seat 5: webers81 ( $846.50 USD )
Seat 6: oxionoixo ( $1,135 USD )
Seat 7: sterio007 ( $235 USD )
Seat 8: gonzalouc ( $1,364.25 USD )
Seat 9: harrypoker77 ( $1,264.24 USD )
Seat 10: WnkJimmy83 ( $485 USD )
CLICK_888 posts small blind [$5 USD].
one_for_seb posts big blind [$10 USD].
** Dealing down cards **
Dealt to webers81 [ Ks As ]
rightnutgone folds
webers81 calls [$10 USD]
oxionoixo folds
sterio007 folds
gonzalouc raises [$35 USD]
harrypoker77 folds
WnkJimmy83 folds
NOMURAM folds
CLICK_888 calls [$30 USD]
one_for_seb folds
webers81 raises [$90 USD]
gonzalouc calls [$65 USD]
CLICK_888 calls [$65 USD]
** Dealing Flop ** [ Kd, Ad, 3h ]
CLICK_888 checks
webers81 bets [$210 USD]
gonzalouc folds
CLICK_888 is all-In [$1,243 USD]
webers81 is all-In [$536.50 USD]
** Dealing Turn ** [ 2h ]
** Dealing River ** [ 4c ]
webers81 shows [ Ks, As ]two pairs, Aces and Kings.
CLICK_888 shows [ Tc, Ac ]a pair of Aces.
CLICK_888 wins $496.50 USD from side pot #1 with a pair of Aces.
webers81 wins $1,800 USD from the main pot with two pairs, Aces and Kings.
rightnutgone has left the table.

Now on the face of it this pot seems like CLICK has horribly overestimated the strength of his hand and has paid the price for being a fish. However it's abit more complex than that. CLICK is a good player who I play with regularly and I have won about $3000 off him in the last couple of days. I had been reraising in late position and had got caught with Q,10 suited a couple of hands earlier where I reraised to $100 preflop and got called down by AJ. Now in this hand I limped in early position and then reraised to $100 looking like I may be trying to steal given my recent aggression. I flop top 2 pair andbet aggresively at it praying someone has an A as I know they'll raise. The only way that my opponent can play this with any strength is to raise me and because I have bet $210 with only $600 behind he opts to go all into force me off the hand. Sadly for him I actually have something this time and absolutely crush him for an $1800 pot.

Usually CLICK wouldn't call with that hand to my preflop raise but due to my aggression in previous hands he felt in good shape. I was very aware of my table image and had reloaded to take advantage of a situation exactly like this. Worked out nice and got me back level from a horribly misplayed KK from an earlier pot.

Still a slow and frustrating day and it's around 9pm and I'm probably $50 up for the day having played about 6hrs as Nat is away! not briliant but I think a big session is due now so maybe late onthis evening will see something of a breakthrough.

Steve

June Profits - $17,172 (not bad but I really want to keep it above $1k a day for the month)