How You Play, How They Play

Straight off the top, Party is having another reload bonus. Typical Party reload: 20% bonus, up to a max of $200, 7x raked hands in 7 days to clear it. The bonus code is BONUSMAR and is good until midnight on Wednesday (11:59 Tuesday night).

With that out of the way... I played a few hours of 3/6 this weekend in the monumental effort at working off my $500 bonus. At the rate it's going, I estimate that I will need about 125 table hours to do it. No wonder they give you four months to work it off.

So far, I'm in for a total of about two hours, and up (yes, up!) 11 big bets. My table yesterday was super soft, and I hit a bunch of hands in a row to build up a nice little stack. I moved between two tables today, but couldn't get much going. One big loss was with J8s in the SB against UTG and the BB. The flop was K-8-8 and wouldn't you know, the UTG player had A8s. Didn't see that one coming.

For me, that's one of the most difficult aspects of poker. I can put people on hands, and I can also decently deduce what hands people put me on. The thing is, I always forget that not everybody plays the way I do. Here's a great example:

Player to my right open-raises. With AKs, I make it three. Folds back to him, and he calls.

Flop is K-7-3, two clubs (not my suit). He check-calls.
Turn is a brick. He check-calls.
River is a third club, I check it through. He turns over AJo, no clubs.

I was very thankful that he called the turn bet drawing dead, but what on earth was he thinking? This is my problem. I can't get into the head of this kind of player. During the WPBT HORSE tournament, I watched someone call a bet on fourth street in seven-card stud with 3d 5h / 7d Th. Against a board showing two overcards to his ten, that had led the betting on third street and again on fourth. It had me scratching my head.

In other news, I may be reviewing a brand new room in NYC real soon.