After finishing my Friday night bowling league I headed down the back way to the Charles Town races for some late night 1/2 NL poker. I was a little bit apprehensive after my previous session, wondering if the good variance had finally caught up to me and I was due for some run bad. Things started off on bad side when I encountered a stopped train just below Shepherdstown, WV. After seeing no movement for 20 minutes I decided to take another back road and hope that it eventually led me back to the desired location.
When I arrived a was seated at a short game of six people. (I guess this is good because one normally has a 30+ minute wait for the time and day of week). A few hands later in early position I raise to $11 with pocket Kings. One person calls. The flop comes up Q 9 8 and I lead out $25. The other player calls. A 3 comes on the turn and I lead out $25. Call. A 7 falls on the river, and intending a check/fold, the villain surprisingly checks back allowing me to see what he had. It was J 10.
A few hands later I whiff with AQ, only to be beaten by AK.
Still within the first 15 minutes of being seated I limp in with pocket 5s. The flop yields a set. Yeah!! The river results in the villain hitting their open ended straight.
After about another hour and a half I see my stack dwindle down to around $120. I know that one should be topping off their stack to get back to near the maximum buy-in, but I just didn't feel like doing so. Sure enough it looks like I am headed to another lost $300 buy-in.
So in the BB I get AKo. Someone in mid-position raises to $10, and I think there was one other call until the CO, who has been somewhat aggressive, especially in late position. He makes it $50. I shove my $120 remaining stack. The original raiser calls, and the CO ends up folding. The flop yields a King and the rest appears to run out safely. The villain unhappily turns over QQ. I decided I had beat the odds and headed for home before I was to be BB again.
At the time I made the shove I for some dumb reason thought it was significantly +EV because of a coin flop plus the extra money in the pot from the CO raiser. Turns out I was only 43% plus the extra money, so probably very close to =EV. Sometimes it pays to be lucky rather than good!
