I heard about this poker game, that was going on last Saturday. A buddy of mine at work told me about his friends putting on a 50 dollar buy in game, at this hall 1 minute from my house. Friday night, Steve called me to tell me about the same tourney going on. So I decided to play. For 50 bucks, it was worth it.

Well, I didn’t do all that well in the tourney. I was knocked out about half way through it. So I was wandering around, watching some of the other games going on, and Dan came up to me to tell me that they had a side game going on. It was a 25 dollar buy in. So I went over there, and played. 9 people, 25 bucks a piece. Minus 50 for the guy putting the game on, and the winner gets 200 bucks. I ended up winning that one, so it was worth it for me to head down there.

I played heads up beautifully. The guy I went headsup against, had a 2.5 to 1 chip lead over me when we started. I started battling back, and took some pots from him. I realized quickly that I was a better player than him, and it didn’t take me long to take advantage of that. I ended up taking the chip lead from him, really just by out betting him. The last hand played like this:
I’m in the big blind. I get J, Q off suit. He calls the blinds, and I let him limp in by checking my option to raise. The flop was Q, Q, 8. I checked quickly, to try to make him think I didn’t like that flop. He checked, and the turn card was a J. I checked again quickly. He says “let’s go 50 bucks”. I go all in over the top. He calls, and I show the nut full house. He’s drawing dead. The crowd exploded, it was great.

I set him up for that. A few times prior to that hand, I had checked raised him all in. He never had cards enough to call. The very first hand heads-up, I went all in on him, and he didn’t call. He did say to me “just keep doing that”. To which I replied “keep dealing me pocket pairs, and I will”. Oddly enough, I actually DID have a pocket pair on the first hand. Pocket 9’s. He was getting frustrated at his lack of good cards, and it was easy to spot. Once I saw that, it didn’t matter what my cards were, I was going to play every hand like I have the nuts. That’s what I did, and I took him down.

Fun weekend. I would have rather won the $750.00 first prize in the big tourney, but the $200.00 pot that I won was good enough.