Session 4

James and I made our second Thursday night trip to Choctaw Casino last night and both came away winners.
I sat down with my initial $200 and in about an hour I was adding on another $140. After that add-on, which put me at about $175 I was again on the ropes with only about $110 when the glorious hand came along that changed everything.
I was three after the big blind but a younger guy (probably my age), who said he only straddled when he had enough one-dollar chips to do it with, had initiated a live straddle. He wouldn’t break a five-dollar chip to straddle. Fair enough.
The first person to act, the person on my right who was a regular named Tommy that I had never seen before but everyone else knew him well, raised it up to $20. I look down and see a beautiful pair of Aces. In about 15 seconds I come up with this mentality. I had seen Tommy bet on the river with nothing before this hand, but I had also seen his raising hands and they weren’t anything to scoff. He had a fair concept of the game but was one of those guys who never blamed a loss for his mistakes. It was always someone else’s fault.
I felt somewhat confident that he had a decent hand and might be intrigued by the move I was about to make. So what I did was pushed all my chips in for a $90 raise. It folded around back to him and he began to think out loud. He asked (not necessarily to me) why I would do that and said he thought it was going to be a race situation. Sweet! Finally he called and flipped over pocket fours. I won that hand and was now sitting on $220 (after rake and tip).
About 20 minutes later I received pocket eights and raked in a $400 pot when I rivered quads against a guy who didn’t show his hand. The flop was very ugly for me when it was 8-9-10 all diamonds. I led out with a bet and he called. The turn was nothing. I bet again and he called. The river was my final 8. I led out again and he called. It was a nice score that put me at a little more than $600.
Nothing of great importance happened after that. The last five hands I played for the night, in about a 15-hand period, were all winners when I either turned or rivered a straight or flush on each hand. The sad part was the pots were never more than $70, with a portion of that being my own money.
I walked out with $716, a $376 profit, putting my bankroll at $1,748.75.
So far so good.