Gotta make this a quick one as I’m pretty tired…

Football training kicked off today (that’s soccer for the americans), time to get in shape for the rest of the season (the season is currently on winter break) as the challengers will come out and try to take the lead from us (we’re currently ranked 1st in our division). Funny how 6 weeks of doing nothing but sitting on your ass can take away your breath…was pretty short of breath after the first 15 minutes…ouch. Let’s see if my bones hurt tomorrow from all the running…

But back to poker, had the chance to jump into the 5 Card Draw MTT which I final-tabled yesterday, but just didn’t feel like it. After all it would have taken around 3h if I made it deep again…and I wasn’t really into “long poker night” mode after eating a nice whopper menu with onion rings at BKs after training…*lol*…nothing better to get the pounds right back on your hips after you worked out 😉

So I just played some HU SnGs at Stars…won 4 out of 5 by using a simple strategy…be patient, let them come to you, make good decisions. They handed me there chips close to drawing dead practically every time. The best one was a dude that min-raised every hand preflop and bet out pot-sized every time. Not a bad strategy – you’re not giving away anything and it’s hard to put him on a hand. Then again, this strategy will only work if he’s able to get away from a hand himself once his opponent, me, plays back. Obviously he couldn’t. He’s on the button and min-raises, no surprise there. I repop him 4x with KK…he repops me to 8x….I repop him to 16x…he repops me to 32x…I’m convinced he has some sort of hand, hoping that it’s not aces, so I push…he calls after 10 seconds of deliberation…showing J3o…errm…very well played sir…*lol*…flop 7-8-9 rainbow and I’m thinking…are you serious?…turn 7…river 2…thank you very much sir.
The only match I lost came down to one tough hand…opponent min-raises preflop…this could be anything, after all it’s headsup and I don’t have any infos about my opponent yet (no this wasn’t the first hand, but the first few hands didn’t give away much)…flop comes down 8-9-10 rainbow…not a bad flop for my Q2o…*lol*…my opponent checks…I check behind…turn brings a 2…opponent bets the minimum…well…for all I know my deuces could be good here (maybe he has AK?), or they’re a (huge) dog…but for a min bet…I’ll see the river…the river is a beautiful J…giving me the Q-high straight…my opponent insta-pushes…now I’m faced with a tough decision…what could he have:

1. Small-medium pair…flopped trips – possible, but wouldn’t he bet to find out if it’s good/to get money into the pot?

2. AK/AQ…flopped nothing but a gutshot…now made his straight (AQ) or has two napkins (AK)

3. QJ…flopped the stone-cold nuts and wanted me to take the lead, I didn’t comply

4. KQ…maybe sooted…that’s the only hand I’m really worried about…preflop raise – yes…cbet – yes…check on the turn – yes…push the river – yes

Hmm…so I’m thinking…in 3 out of 4 cases we’re chopping or he loses…he has got to have exactly the KQ to beat me…I call…he flips KQ…bingo! Well, the only thing I did wrong there is that I could/should have gotten away from the hand, after all there wasn’t that much money in the pot…I would have still been in the game virtually even with the chance to wait for a better spot…then again…if I’m right…we chop, I retain my lead, or he loses…I win…sometimes it pays off to be greedy, sometimes it doesn’t…bad decision…noted…moving on…