Hey all,

I haven't played a whole lot of hands this month. It's June 12th and I've only got roughly 8700 hands in. Because of work (yes, not all of us can be internet poker pros), I've been so beat on the weekends that I haven't played much at all. Also, I've split time between Empire and Full Tilt. On FT, I generally play less than 4 tables at once usually because there aren't 4 good games at once (at least, in 400 level). I've actually dabbled in some of the higher stakes games. I played a few hundred hands at the FT nl600 game and ran well. Played less than 100 hands at the $1000nl game on FT but nothing exciting happened.

I'm still doing the coaching thing with jkrantz. It's going well, even though I run terribly on Party/Empire - even during the coaching sessions. As he put it last week "This session is one big BBV thread". I just got my new PP account set up yesterday, but I'm still working out some of the kinks with neteller. Hopefully that will get resolved soon. Until then I'll still be playing under Empire primarily.

So far the breakdown of hands has been: Empire = 6900 hands, $667 profit. FT = 1800 hands, $3200 profit. On Empire I started off the month with a nice -7 buyin downswing, although it's somewhat washed out in my graph because of the concurrent FT hands where I ran quite a bit better.


So as you can see in the graph, the sharp upward turn at the end was mostly as a result of the following hand. Many of you read about the "Biggest Pot I've ever Lost", now you can read about the biggest pot I've won. The game is $600nl on Full Tilt. There are 2 marks at the table. I've already busted one of them, and he rebought. The other one is getting sick of my antics. Whenever I bluffed he layed down, and whenver I had a hand he paid off (usually it's the opposite, lol). But things are going right. On to the hand:

Effective stacks in this hand: $975.90

Donk (53/4) open limps in MP, another guy calls, I raise the pot ($30) with A A in the SB. BB mucks, Donk calls, other guy folds.

Flop ($72) A T Q

I've got top set, but it's far from a lock. This guy's range is any two sooted, any broadways, any pair (probably not JJ+ though, even this guy would raise those). We're both semi deep and I've been real active, so no reason to slow down. I lead right out for $70. Donk insta-raises me to $270 to go. WTF? Of course the doomsayer in me thinks great he's flopped the straight or the flush. He could certainly do this with 2pair...but he's so passive, which is what worries me. He's been in check/call or bet weak mode all day, now he wakes up with a big bet. I decide that before I get my $ in as a 2:1 dog (he's got the straight or flush) or a 3:2 favorite (he's got a big draw, like K + pair), I'll wait to play a big pot on a safe turn card where my equity is much greater. I call.

Turn ($612) Q

Most beautiful card in the deck. I couldn't have asked for better. Not only does it negate his draws, it very well could have hit a made hand of his. Might as well give him the rope so he can hang himself. I check, he bets very quickly $630. I do a double take to make sure it's $630 and not $63. Yep, sure enough, my eyes are not deceiving me. I push obviously, and he starts running down his timer. What's he doing? It's $45.90 more for him to call in a $1900 pot. What's taking him so long? Finally his timer runs down to like 5 seconds and he calls. You'll never guess what he turns over....

9 7 for nine high, no pair, no draw ... CHA-CHING.

The river blanks off and I scoop the $1,960.80 pot. So the biggest pot I ever won was against a donk who just wanted to take a stand against my aggressiveness. I happen to wake up with a hand and a lock turn card. Boy, the poker gods were smiling down on me this night!

I've got another coaching session tonight and I'm going to try to make an effort to put more strategy posts up on my blog soon. I've been slacking a lot in that department.

Good luck,
Aaron