Academy Wrap Up and More Cash Games

After finishing up the cash games on Saturday evening I was close to even and was actually glad to not be going right back to the cash games on Sunday. There was the one day left of the poker academy and we had a dinner afterwards so it wouldn’t be until almost 10pm that I made my way back to the cash games.

Just as a wrap-up about the academy, it was really neat hearing ideas from people who were VERY successful at poker. They were all very approachable and friendly. There also were many participants that I got to know as well. One guy was at the academy because he won a poker tournament on a cruise that got him on to another cruise and in to a “champions” tournament with a pool of $100k, and he thought this would be a great help to that cause. People had come from all over. We had the 2008 Oklahoma Women’s Bowling Champion here, and plenty of people from both coasts and everywhere between. When we would break out in to groups for the live hand analysis portion of the academy we always had the same participants at each table, and at my table I had someone from Los Angeles that I was having a good time with while at the Academy. Her name is Renee, and she was kind enough to forward me some of her pics from the academy she had gotten for me to include in the blog. I’ve put together a small slideshow of my pics and some of Renee’s.

Once the academy wrapped up with the dinner Sunday evening, Adam and I made our way over to the Bellagio to get in the cash games. It was too late to get in to any of the tournaments we were interested in playing, and it was already 10pm. Once again, I bought in to the $2/$5 game at the Bellagio, and I found myself in the right seat to play for the evening. I had worked my way up from my $300 buy-in to about $450 without a showdown when I was able to get my whole stack in the middle with another player when I picked up pocket Kings and he picked up pocket 9s on an 8-high flop. That took me up to about $900. I then proceeded to work that stack all the way back down to about $175 when my pocket Aces got cracked by pocket 9s in a 5-way preflop pot that flopped the 9. Once again I worked my stack back up, eventually getting up to about $600 when the critical hand of the evening occurred.

I was in the small blind With QQ, and 5 players limped to me. Knowing that I had to thin out the field a little bit I put in a raise of $40. This proceeded to get me 4 callers, which was about 3 more than I was expecting. I was initially concerned, and the flop came:

Q-J-8 (two clubs)

Giving me top set. I also have to act first. I’ll admit it feels real good to hit that Queen, but the board was awfully draw heavy for a 5-player pot, so I decided to put out a bet of $125. I also guessed that no one would put me on QQ since often times top set might check a flop like that. I figured a board like this would have hit another player, and since I’m the preflop raiser I might get someone to put in a raise behind me if they hit this. Lucky for me, that player was the next person to act in the hand, who makes it $275 to go. Everyone else folds, and it’s back to me. Now, the guy in this seat has been riding a roller coaster with his stack (much like I have been), and he didn’t always have a hand, but he’s also the type of player that could have been playing T-9 here, too. Well, if I call, there’s almost no reason for me to not get the rest of my money in now, so without much hesitation I moved all in. This guy snap calls me, and I feared the worst. I showed the Queens, and he turned over and showed:

J-8

For bottom two pair!! He was drawing dead to runner runner for quads or runner runner to a chop. The turn was actually a nine, giving him outs to the chop/split but the river blanked and I raked in one heck of a pot.Once I got a stack like that I started playing very tight, and when I ended the session I was now up for the whole trip. I was up enough that I was looking forward to finally playing in a tournament and using some of the stuff I had learned over the past couple of days.