I like the Ladies

Today was rememberance day and both Pam and I had the day off. We planned to clean up the apartment - her the kitchen and surrounding, me the living room. We would them combine our efforts to clean the bedroom. Suffice to say, this ideal situation did not happen (though I did put laundry away and the dishes and cooked supper and put my comics away). The reason this didn't happen was because of a suggestion Pam made:

Pam: "You know what we should do?"

John: "What?"

Pam: "We should go to the casino."

At this point I say "Sure, awesome, sounds good." Then after lunch she gets lazy and says she doesn't want to go anymore. I'm kind of annoyed because I was looking forward to trying my first cash game in poker (for the ill-informed: a cash game is where your chips represent real money ie. I sit down with $100 in chips and if I leave with $50 in chips I've lost $50. This is not the same in a tournament, where you pay a fixed amount for a certain number of chips which DO NOT represent the initial investment).

Eventually I convince her to go and she does her girly thing for 30 minutes trying to get ready. We get there around 2 o' clock or so and I put my name down for the $1/$2 no-limit hold'em tables. The guy tells me it will be a half hour wait at least so Pam and I walk around the casino and she plays some slots. It amazes me how much she seems to win playing those. I was with her when she was up to $15 from $10 and I told her to stop while she was ahead. She did, but then lost it all while I was playing poker (eventually).

At 3:00 a table opens and a busy looking gentleman tells me what table I'm at and to give my money to the dealer for chips. I buy in for $100 and I'm good to go.

I play pretty tight for a while but throw in a few bluffs for good measure. There a few (somewhat) agressive players at the table and I manage to win a few pots till I'm at around $250 (which is frigging awesome on it's own right). Then this situation comes up:

I'm second last to act before the flop in seat G above and I've been dealt pocket Queens (hence the title of the post). Player A folds and B - F all call for $2. Pot now $13. I raise to $15 total (this is the typical sort of thing at this table, rather than standard raises of multiples of the Big Blind). Players H-E all fold and then player F comes over the top making it $50 to go. Pot is now $63 and it costs me $35 to call. I do. Pot now $110 or so. Flop is

As 6c Qs

This is good because I've hit my set of queens and I have position on player F (meaning I act after him). He leads out for $100. If I call and lose I'm right back where I started at $100 not to mention the betting to take place on subsequant rounds. This is a hard call for me (I'm not too experienced yet) because he may have AA. However I take my time with this and think it through carefully. AA is the only hand beating me right now so what does his betting tell me that his chances are of having it? Well he only called the BB pre-flop after seeing many people limp in. Although AA is good you typically don't want to be up against a whole whack of people with ANY hand (unless you have suited connectors and want to see a cheap flop with the potential to win a big pot). Usually with AA you'd want to make a small raise to get some more money into the pot and drive it down to only one or two opponents.

Now after I put in my $15 raise, he re-raised to $50. Thats a big bet. By this time (around 5:00 pm) I think I was projecting a pretty tight image although I did pick up 3 pots in a row about 30 min before without showing cards, so he might think this is one of my bluffs. If he thinks I'm tight then it looks like he wants to scare me out of the pot.

I'm also taking a really long time to make a decision, so he probably puts me on a pair other than Aces or Queens, maybe 10s or Jacks. Ultimately though, I decide that his bet of $50 preflop is too big to have AA and expect a call so I go all in, calling his $100 and raising another $135ish. I see him start to finger his chips and he calls. I wince because I think I'm beat. In retrospect I probably SHOULDN'T have gone all in because if he thinks I'm tight, then I'm screaming that I have trips. However, if he thinks I have a small pair or am bluffing he might think I'm trying to scare him. The re-raise is a good play if I thought he was on a drawing hand like K J. However, this is only good if I had more money such that he wasn't getting good enough odds to call. As it was he needed to put in about $130 for the chance at a $450ish pot so I was giving him about 3.5 - 1 odds, not enough to justify a call with just the straight draw, but he might think that the remaining kings (if he has KK) or the aces/queens (if he has AQ) were outs.

However, with two cards to come, he doesn't flip over his cards and I ask him "Do you have the bullets (Aces)? He looks away and says "Maybe..." At this point I'm pretty sure I'm going to win and after the turn comes K and river 4, he flips over K9 off-suit! He was trying to bully me around! His call was a mistake if he thought I was tight because he had to put me on a good hand. Even if those three pots in a row were stuck in his mind, K9 is NOT a great hand.

The best part was that Pam had come back from slots while I was deciding what to do and saw me win! I tell the dealer I'm done and cash out for a whopping $568 - 5.5 times my initial investment.