What a weekend

First off, the weather this weekend was fantastic. Sunny and in the 80's. Hit up Nautica Friday night, along with about 8 other CPMG'ers. Sat down and immediately got every hand crushed. I had 2-pr about 6 times and got them all beat. I played a couple of them badly, and the others there was no way to get the others to fold. So I finally get pocket 2's and raise it to $12 preflop and got a few callers, 1 of which was Brad Laidman. I flop a set of 2's on a board of K-10-2 with 2 clubs. There was a bet, a raise, then Laidman calls. I push over the top, get one caller, and Laidman calls as well. I was up against top 2 and Brad's nut flush draw, and I held up. That took me from down $300+ to up about $200. I built it to about a $350 profit, then got top 2 (AQ) cracked YET AGAIN, and dropped most of my profit. Somehow, in about an hour, I managed to build it back up to a $325 profit, and I got the hell outta there.

A couple of Nautica notes:
* The dealers are really hot or miss. The 2 dealers we had didn't know what day it was. These guys were awful. Several misdeals, a few times they turned a card before the betting was done, etc. The dealer asked the one volunteer to go fetch me some chips, and he just got that deer in the headlights look, and got totally confused. He did manage to make it back to the table with my stack and a half of low society.
* The charity hosts apparently supply the food that's for sale. This weekend, there wasn't much there, but there was a large roaster full of some really good rigatoni and meatballs. I had 2 orders.
* Parking is $6 on the weekends as opposed to $3 during the week.
* The seat fee really isn't that bad when you factor in tips, travel time, gas, etc.

So a few of us went over to Harbor Inn after the gambling. JC even showed up. Hadn't seen him in quite some time. Always a pleasure. TK was ogling the bartender's ample bosom. OK, I looked at them too. They were real, and they were spectacular.

So, Saturday at Dave's. First off, me and the wife went for a bike ride after running some errands. We had to go get her a new rim for her bike. The original had mysteriously become horribly warped, like it had been hit by a car, but we couldn't think of any explanation. Hmmm...

So, the tourney. I lost almost half my stack to Hip with 2 pr vs. his flopped set. I had top/top to start off and couldn't let it go even after Hip raised me. Rivered my 2nd pair and I bet into him. Luckily, he just called. Ouch.

So I manage to get a lot of it back and was sitting on around 7000 when I get pocket J's. Jack T-way is under the gun and leads out with a bet of 700 (blinds are at 100-200), Dave O (the chubby Harry Potter) calls, and I go all-in for like 6300 more. Jack is obviously INCAPABLE of folding pocket 10's, and flops a set of course. You have to figure, with a huge overbet like I made, I have to have a big pair or AK/AQ, right? At best, he's a coin flip, and it's WAY too early for coin flips. So he had a monster stack after that but still didn't even make the final table, then played cash for about a half hour until that was gone as well. Always a pleasure to see Jack walk through the door.

On to the cash game! I bought in for my first hundo and gave most of it to Ryan Sadd, another one who is incapable of folding after hitting the board. He cracked my AK with his K5 suited (called $12 preflop of course) after hitting his 2nd pair on the river. I have stopped bluffing Ryan. I will never bluff him again. He also MUST bet every street, regardless of his hand, if he raised preflop. TK made mention sometime during the evening that it's amazing he ever has chips.

Anyway...I started hitting hands and hitting them pretty hard. I was something like 6 for 8 on flush draws, and I played each a little differently to mix it up a bit. Lead out, check/call, check/raise, etc. Got max value for all of them. Once I was ahead about $400, I locked up my chips and got really conservative, but still kept hitting hands. It's great to have the image of a maniac that plays everything. When the cards hit, they pay handsomely.

Grayday was there and tilting, and he raised someone's $6 bet to $26, and I called out of spite with my J-10, and flopped a J. I knew he had just a big A, either AK or AQ, and raised him on the flop, then put him all-in on the river. He called me for his last $100+ with AK high and missed. That tilted him even worse, so he threw a party for Hip Hop, and gave Hip his entire stack. Twice. Holiday Inn Jim was there with his buddy,and they both gave away a bunch of money at the other table.

I managed to cash $1008 on 2 buy-ins of a hundo each. That puts me up almost $3200 in 2 weeks. Woo hoo.