I fought AA and won

Yeah, I was supposed to finally get some sleep last night but what is an addict supposed to do when he's running bad? Play more!

My plan was to hit up Noble Poker and continue to assault that big deposit bonus (100% up to $500, see Sound of a Suckout for details). It is a smaller site with light traffic, but the bonus is too much to ignore, plus there have been good reviews. Granted the cards have not been in my favor there (minus the cash in the tourney last week), but the single screen/multi-tabling set up is great.

I cracked AA with QJ while in the BB on a $1/$2 NL and the aces only min-raised, flopped a queen (pot bet, he called), turned a J (pot bet, he called), rivered a Q for the nuts (value bet for 3/4 of the pot, and he called again). A nice $200+ pot to bring me back to even from last night's sorry attempts to play limit poker. I know I'm playing a little above my bankroll on this site, but the bonus clears faster at the higher limits. Plus, this is a perfect opportunity to get out of my comfortable shell and take some shots at the higher limits. Last night the play was very passive, minus one other player who was aggressive in his steals and value betting.

I hopped on Full Tilt to chip away at the 10,000 point requirement for the World Series of Poker freeroll. I was up $10, but ended up down $6 on my second to last hand when AK didn't catch anything and after a pot-size flop bet was called, I had to give it up on the river. I spied in on a heads-up match between Mike "The Mouth" and Paul Wolfe. Both with big stacks, Mike with $20K and Wolfe with $6K. They had a pot that was almost as big as my entire bankroll on one hand! If you haven't signed up yet, this site is definitely going places with tons of action, railbirding the pros (or in some cases playing with them), and many different WSOP/WPT promotions. Click on the banner above to check them out.

After I shut down Full Tilt, I made a boo-boo by firing up PartyPoker. Sigh. Shoulda, woulda, coulda went to bed but something nagged at me to earn some points towards getting rated Silver there so I could turn my points into cash during the next rating period. They have a new promotional tables with a high hand requirement. Any straight flush or above on these tables and you receive 70% of the jackpot (which was locked at $1000 last night), the rest of the table splits the other 30%. Yes, these tables proved to be just as loose as the Bad Beat Jackpot tables but that didn't help my TPTK and Aces too much. I finished down 15BBs in a hour GO TO BED NEXT TIME DAVE!

The Poker Geek was crusing along in the $25K guarentee tourney at Party, but had a bit of a dilemma. Two players stalled continuously to "make it into the money" when they weren't very close to it. It appeared to be borderline collusion, and the one guy spouting "let's make it a team effort" in chat wasn't helping. His table had all the excitement of a Chris Elliot movie. Blinds were esclating and although the Geek was the chip leader at the table, his table had 4X LESS chips then any other table. And the chip leaders at the other tables were around T25K range (Geek had about T7000 when I left). Play for 3 hours to make the $6 minimum doesn't seem worth it, especially when you're putting up $22 to play the tournament in the first place. The question he posted "is it cheating?". My thoughts were when staller #1 typed in "lets make it a group effort", this is where he crossed the line in efforts to collude together to "make the money". I'm sure more experienced players like Felicia and Iggy would know the rule book on this.

Watched a little of the WPT Foxwoods. Gotta feel bad for the Minnesota-born Bradley Berman, KK vs. AK and the Ace spikes on the river. Unreal. Especially after playing that long to go out 4th place on a three outer. I didn't get to see the rest of it, but damn that kid was catching everything. CALLING an all-in bet from JC Tran with 66? Granted it turned out that Tran only had pocket 3s, but the way he called I think he WANTED the coin-flip. With the chip lead he had, why go after coin-flips instead of waiting for a better spot to bust the table? Maybe its the reason why I play for $20 buy-ins instead of $10,000 :D

Definitely some poker tournaments will be on tap tonight, if any bloggers know of an Omaha 8 or better tourney or a decent WSOP qualifier IM me tonight. Good luck everyone!!