+105 @ The Commerce Casino

The night didn't start off well. Decent hands were few and far between and when I did pay to see the flop, I got nuthin'. The table was pretty loose, some of the pots were pretty big, and they were often taken with a mid level pair. I tried to be patient, and didn't always do a very good job. After an hour I was down nearly 90 dollars, but I decided to buy another $40 in chips. This was in marked contrast to most of the rest of the table. They must have had an aversion to chips and it seemed like someone was pulling another $20 out of his pocket every other hand. This made for some slow play and was starting to get annoying. I am glad I stuck around as my very next hand was A,6H. I was the small blind and on the flop a couple more hearts came out. I bet strong, and made my nut flush on the turn and about $80 in the pot. This started me back onto the road of playable hands: Pocket 9s, A,3 suited, A,7 offsuit...you know, stuff like that. I didn't play many hands, but won nearly all the ones I played and they turned out to be decent pots.

During the night I had to fold A,K a couple times. Just too much money for me to stay in after the flop missed me badly. However, it was quite annoying to fold only to have one of the pots won by a pair of queens (one of which was on the flop), when an ace turned up on the river. The betting lead me to believe a much better hand hidden somewhere. Maybe that was the point.

I almost made a serious mistake during one hand. I had A,5 suited, and the flop came A,7,7. I bet, as did others. Another A followed on the turn, and I kept betting strong. The final card was a 2. The fellow to my right showed an A with a 9 kicker. At that point I almost mucked my hand since I only h and a 5, but thank goodness I showed my hand to the table and the dealer said chop. In the heat of the moment I missed the fact that the 7s played and the kickers didn't matter.