Our Friend the Randomizer

Back to live poker. Planet Hollywood, $1-2 NL.

I go on a good run and am kinda in the zone. I am insta-calling with AQ-high for $150 preflop because I know it is good. My hands are holding up. I am up to $800 off my $200 buy-in within a couple hours.

The main action in the game is a kid from Oklahoma. A $2-5 NL game is starting and Oklahoma is going to it, along with a local player who just got to the room, a textbook calling station, a European who resembles a poor man's Pancho Villa. I don't want to play $2-5 cause my bankroll isn't there yet, but Todd says the game is too good to pass up and offers to go halves with me in the game to decrease the variance. I agree to this but my instincts tell me it's a mistake.

As suspected I play weak-tight in the $2-5 NL because I'm sceered to lose a big chunk of my bankroll. Fortunately this is a game where playing weak-tight is no disaster. Nobody except Oklahoma is being aggressive, and most of the time you can just call preflop for cheap and get paid off when you hit. I am up a couple hundred when the following hand comes up.

I limp with JJ in early position, Oklahoma makes it $30, Pancho Villa calls the $30, then a guy who just does weird random stuff makes it $60. I am considering what to do when I see Oklahoma sitting behind me, $1K deep at this point, taking a couple more stacks out to reraise. I muck my hand. Oklahoma makes it like $250, Pancho Villa mucks, Randomizer2000 pushes for $400 and gets called. Randomizer2000 has A2, Oklahoma has AK.

I would have flopped quad jacks and won a huge pot if I'd stayed.

But that's just part of the story. See, if Randomizer2000 hadn't decided to reraise with A2 and reopen the betting, I actually would have lost almost my entire stack because Pancho Villa would have made a straight flush with the 78 of hearts.

I love live poker.