3ll3 loves blue chips....

Headed out to Viejas to play a bit of 1-2NL. I was pretty tired since I have not been going to bed before 1am most nights this week. I hit up the monster (not to be confused with monster the job site) so I could wake up a bit and get the mind working on reads before I even arrived. Well, I picked a good night. There was one table running and the list was about 5 deep. I put my name on, took a pager and headed back out to the car, since I left my phone in the Matrix. After I returned to the room we were still waiting for enough players to make a table. I went ahead and took an empty seat at the 3/6 game. I have not played limit in some time, but I wanted to see some cards and kill some time. I was utg with A7h and decided to limp and see a flop, I was looking over at the sign in desk and noticed that the 7 names listed were flashing....PERFECT and brand new table. I love starting a fresh table. I went to lock up seat 3 and came back to the 3/6 table. Someone had raised and it was 3 more to me. I went ahead and called to see a flop. It was 3 bricks so I check folded and move to the NL game, limit is just never that exciting. Especially 3/6. I do want to play some more limit though as I think it is a good game for practicing and playing a lot of hands.

Well, I ran pretty well, I caught several draws and the next thing I know my starting 3 stacks swelled up to 16. Ship! Ran $60 up to $311. Very nice night.

One notable hand was a family limp from the SB with KTo. Flop comes down KJT rainbow, BANG top and bottom pair! This was very nice, but could also be bad if someone was slow playing KJ, AQ TT or JJ. I can't put anyone on these hands since there as there was no PF raise. I was sure that I was ahead here, but lead out for about 40% of the pot to see if anyone was interested in tangling or if there was a straight draw with me. I was popped by a Laggy Asian Dude (we'll call him LAD) with a crooked hat. This guy had shown several random hands with money in and had some monsters as well, so it was tough to tell where he was at sometimes. He was NOT a good player, just tough to read for me because he overbet often and sometimes with air. His stack was like a buffet tray of food that would get eaten and then refilled from some suckout. He had earlier stacked my good friend that sat down next to me with AKo against his KK with a four card flush on the river. Anyways, I really wanted to play a big pot with this guy. He raised to $28 following my $6 poke. At this point I am thinking that I have two choices. Play for stacks or keep it small as possible, just in case of the MUB. In poker, you can't play scared though. You will be eaten alive by good players. As the article states, "Risk/reward is the name of the game. You cannot expect substantial rewards if you are unwilling to assume the risks." With that, I decide it ORANGE CHIP TIME! I grab the All In button and toss it in. At this point I have $104 total and he has me covered. There was a bit of silence.....I was relieved that he did not insta-call, but he did decide, "ok let's go". I knew I was leading now since he delayed a bit before calling. I was hoping for a draw that would not get there. The turn brings another T and now I am tens full of kings and I can safely turn over my cards and drag a pot. The river was a brick and he shows TJ for tens full of jacks. He had flopped bottom two and I had flopped top and bottom, so he was pretty much dead to 2 jacks. Whew, double me up to $200+...

peace