I finished studying for a test tomorrow at about 12:30AM. I was bored, but tired of studying. Naturally, I loaded up Party Poker and decided to play some. "You have a 20% deposit bonus available. Add funds now!" Sweet. I deposited an extra $500 into my account to get the max $100 bonus. I have to play 10 raked hands for every $1 of bonus, so I have to play 1000 raked hands to get my bonus of $100. That's not too bad, considering I play about 35 hands an hour per table, and I play 4 tables at a time. So 35 * 4 = 140 hands an hour.... 1000 / 140 = roughly 7 hours of playing. Hey, play poker for 7 hours and get paid $100 no matter what. Sounds good to me!
Anyway, my session started off very rocky. I was in mid position with 44. There were a couple limpers so I decided to limp as well. Small blind makes it $14 to go, BB flat calls (ooook) one of the limpers calls, as do I (naturally wanting to hit a 4). Flop comes 46A two hearts. Bingo. Pot is about $56 right now. SB (original raiser) bets out 35 into 56. BB just calls (ok, this was my mistake. I did not have much information on the BB, who just flat calls that bet right there. Maybe the AX of hearts?) Limper folds and I reraise to 90. Purpose of this raise is to make the draws pay. SB folds (probably weak ace, maybe QQ or KK). This is where it gets fun. BB goes all in for another $100 to me. So, 56 in preflop, 35 from SB, 90 from other guy, and 90 from me. That's about $270 in the pot right now and it is $100 more to me. Even if he has AX of hearts I am still in command of the hand. I actually said in chat, "I guess I have to pay off aces." and then I called the all in. blank on turn and heart on river. Crap. Turns out he had the dreaded AA.
Looking back on it, I do not see how I could have gotten away from this hand. I think my only mistake was MAYBE calling preflop? I think after the flop I am pretty much committed to it all. That smooth call from the BB preflop and on the flop should have set off lightbulbs in my head. I guess I am still not good enough to make these kinds of lay downs.
Anyway, so after about ten minutes I was down $200. That's no good. I slowly crept back up to even, and eventually put together a rather nice session through a combination of semi bluffs on the turn and flopping the nuts. Naturally, it's not hard to win money when you flop the nuts. In any case, I ended up about $340 in about an hour and a half time. Very solid session and let us hope I can keep up this pace.
In a side note, I will, hopefully, be going to Vegas for the first part of 2007. If I keep up with $1/$2 on Party I might actually have a bank roll to play with in Vegas! Wish me luck.
