My run continued last week. I won a little over four hundred dollars between Thursday and Friday night. Before Friday night's game I was told by one player that I was going to be taken down. Indeed, he and another player had a side bet going on who was going to take away my stack first. Anthony won, but more on that in a moment. Fortunately with my second stack of chips I was more successful. With thirty dollars left I was forced to call Anthony's all-in bluff. I did and I never looked back.

There were a few interesting scenarios throughout the night. Let me say to begin I was intentionally put in the bad position of being directly to Anthony's right. This means I had to mentally stiffen my play a bit, and be very careful with marginal hands, especially from the small blind and no other callers. Anthony knows that I will call with almost anything in that situation. He was happy to take my loose calls with a raise. Finally, I caught ace-jack in the small and limped in hoping to trap him, even though there was another player left in the pot, and sure enough, he raised ten dollars. The player to my right was a little slow in deciding what he wanted to do. Also, there was some story being told while everyone was looking at their cards. Anthony had been speaking as he looked at his cards, and his tempo and his coherence never changed the smallest bit. I put him on nothing special. I took the delay as an opportunity to grab a Diet Pepsi out of the refrigerator, and then returning to the table, made it a point to have one more look at my cards. I then raise all-in. I had over thirty dollars left. I worry about what he has, but having what I think is dead read on his hand as nothing particularly great, I'm not sweating it. Imagine my surprise when he flips over ace-ace. I did manage to get a gut-shot straight draw on the flop, but the final card never came and I found myself reaching for more cash. It was the first time I ever remember being so incredibly sure about the strength of an opponent's hand and yet being so incredibly wrong.

The above hand has been altered to fit memories of the hand that Anthony is apparently sure of, by his comments, but that I am not entirely sure of. Still, I admit, he could have been right. To respond to this new information, I embellished a bit of the rest, and it's based partly on what I must have been thinking, rather than what I actually remember thinking. The basic point is still the same.

I didn't make it back to finish this on Tuesday, so I'll put the rest in a new post.