Tonight is going to be my first live game of No-Limit Hold-Em.
Last week one of the guys from work who regularly has a home game found out that I had started playing and asked if I wanted to join them.

My online game is getting better but how much of that is going to translate into live action poker? It’s only a home game so it’s all going to be really relaxed, but I still don’t want to make an ass of myself. I suppose the main thing I’ll have to do is play my normal game but make sure I don’t give any tells away when I get a good or bad hand.
I’m really looking forward to tonight it should be fun!

To warm up for tonight’s game I played a $5 + $0.50 SNG on PokerStars last night. It was an eventful SNG but I played a pretty solid game throughout.

When I got to the final table I became one of the shortest stacks, (since my AA was cracked by trip T’s first hand of the table for a big loss), and was in real danger of being blinded away. After a couple of orbits, I was dealt A8o. These were the best two cards I had seen in a while and I was pretty much a goner unless I bet, I threw my chips all-in. Thankfully they held up and I doubled up. The blinds and antes then went up and a couple of orbits later I found myself in a little bit of a tight situation again. I was dealt A8o again and thought well why the hell not. There’s only 6 players, I’m in a good position, there hasn’t been any raises in front of me, ”All-In”. They held up again, (A, 8, x on the flop). I went on a little bit of a run at this point, getting some good cards, and more importantly I think, making correct decisions with the bad cards.

Eventually I managed to get into the final two and go Heads-Up with the big stack. I was walking away with decent money whatever happened, and he had about 6 times my stack so I thought it would be over pretty quickly. The heads-up swayed back and forth with me winning big hands and nearly busting him out, to him winning big hands and nearly busting me out. This went on for a while, and at one point when we were relatively close in stack sizes, I was dealt K9o. Not a great hand but at heads up it might be enough. I was the BB so I checked to see a flop. The flop came out (x, 9, x) I had top pair plus a good kicker.

He checked

I thought about it and decided to go for it. (Plus it was 1.30am and I was shattered)

All-In

He turns over KQo

Oh crap! I’m still in the lead but this could get ugly.

K comes out on the turn giving me 2 pair and him a pair.

I’m sitting there chanting “No Queen, No Queen” again and again

River comes.

It’s a fucking Queen!!

Bang SNG over I finished in second place.

I can’t complain about it really since I had to really work the trenches to even get heads up. Plus I had really badly rivered someone earlier in the table.

**about 30 minutes earlier**

It was an all-in play for me. I was short stacked after taking a beating the hand before and I only had about 4 orbits till I was done.

I had suited connectors, 78h.

He turns over AA.

I though my time here is over.

The flop brought out 6, 5, x.

The turn was a blank.

The river was a 9 and I had doubled up again.

**********

I was happy with the way I played last night, especially since I was short stacked for almost all the final table. I was glad I was able to rough it out and go from almost being the first off the table to coming so close to actually winning the thing.

I was so please with the way I played that instead of being annoyed at the river Q that finally beat me. I just shrugged and thought that I was glad I’d managed to do so well to get into the chance where I could win it.

You win some, you lose some!