Bad Reads and Aggressive Play

Played a little bit last night at a home game and it was a bit of a roller coaster. I stayed pretty steady most of the night until the following hand. I limp in mid-ish position with KQ, the player to my left, a fairly novice player opened for $12. One call behind and I call. Flop comes out Q94 with 2 hearts. I check, preflop raiser bets 25, the limper folds and I call. Turn is a T. I check, and am met with a $50 bet. River is a K, I check and raiser bets $75. At this point in the hand, feel like I have repped either a monster or a flush draw. In either case, I expected my check to be met with a check back. Unfortunately, the river bet now looks to me like the guy either had QJ and got there (which I didnt think because he wasnt the type to raise those types of hands pre-flop) or a bluff, like AK of hearts which missed but backed into top pair, or AQ trying to just take the pot away. I made the crying call, and was surprised when the raiser tabled 99. I tilted a bit, mainly because I know that he wasnt betting the river for thin value, but had actually just looked at his hand and decided that since he had a set he had to bet. So that was pretty blah.

Shortly after that, I played a 4 way all in pot with AK on an AT9 board with 2 hearts. Amazingly my pair held against a worse ace and 2 flush draws. With that pot, I was up a little from what I started with at about $310.

At this point my table broke and I changed to the table where Tyler was dealing. At this point I opened up my game a bit more since I was much more familiar with my competition at this table. After raising 3 pots in a row, and taking them all down either pre flop or on the flop, I picked up AQ. I made my standard raise, and my friend Will called on the button, one of the blinds called and an early limper called. Flop was K35 with a suit. The 2 early players check, I bet 3/4 pot, and Will calls, while the blind snap calls. The turn was a K pairing the board, and the early position player checked, and I paused a moment to think. From what I knew of the players, Will plays pretty straight forward, and if something on the board had hit him I would have heard from him on the flop for sure. Looking at him, he didnt look overly interested in the pot either so I didnt rule him as a big threat. The early limper was another story however. His snap call on the flop and check on the turn when top pair paired made me believe that he either was on a big flush draw, or some type of middle pocket pair. I mean, if he had turned trips he probably would need to bet to stop flush draws from getting there. I decided given this information, I would check behind, because I didnt want to play a huge pot at this point with just ace high. Will checked behind and we went to the river. An off suited ace rolls off, and the player out of the blinds bet $30. It was a pretty small bet in propotion to the pot, and I was pretty skeptical of the bet. I thought that it was somewhat likely that our blind player had a hand like Ax on the flush draw and backed into top pair and was now block betting to get to the river. Figuring I could get some value, I pop him back $100. Will groans about how unfair it is and folds, then the blind tanks. He starts asking me questions like "Do you have AK here buddy?" Now Im scared becuase I realize I just made a pretty big mis-read and this guy actually did get cute with a K here. I banter back with him saying "Do I need AK? I think KQ is probably good enough right?" Dude keeps tanking for another 30 seconds and finally shows a K and mucks it face up. I breath a huge sigh of relief that my spew didnt turn into something really bad and scoop the pot. Hurrah for bad reads and aggressive play.

From then on the night played pretty standard, and I left making over $200.

Ashley, Tyler and I will be going up to play at Viejas tonight. There is a satelite to their $100K first place tourny, and since I dont want to fork over the buy in I got to try to satelite in or simply not play, which just doesnt sound like a fun option. So hopefully I will have good news by the end of tonight.