MATH Win??

Well kinda. At that last minute Monday night, I allowed Snuffy to convince me to play the MATH , despite the awful pay structure. More on that later. Hoy has moved the format to 6 handed shootout which is a nice little change of pace and I had a token lying in the coffers, so I thought why the hell not. 17 peeps came out, I did end up with a 6 handed table, however not the easiest of draws. At my table I had Columbo , Bayne , and TripJax. Sweet. So this was good and bad. It was bad because I had people that know what they are doing and make you make difficult decisions. It was good, however, in that they can also make laydowns and for the most part play small pot poker. This meant not having to gamble with my entire stack early with chips flying in every direction. For the most part I played like a nit for the first 30-40 mins. It wasn't really hard when you get no hands to speak of. I had chipped up a fair amount from another player on my left who seemed to want to spew, so I helped him.

I was sitting at about 5K or so when the big hand comes up. Now on the previous hand Columbo raised my BB for about the 180th time, pretty standard 6 handed, so I got frisky and 3 bet him to make him go away. And he did. Next hand I get AhAd in the SB. Blinds I believe were 60/120 at this point, Bayne has about 7500 Columbo about 4000. Bayne raises to 420 from UTG and Columbo, next to act, calls. Button folds, I decide to go to 1200 and hop to get one call or a push. Plan works well as Bayne calls and Columbo folds. At this point we about 2800 in the pot. Now my instictive read on Bayne is that this is AK for him. 6 handed I think he would rejam QQ or KK there, maybe just call with 1010 or JJ, "most likely" fold any pair under that, but I did just three bet the last hand. Flop comes king high all diamonds, I believe there was a 10 out there as well which was a little scary in the set department. Now I check, hoping to induce a bet. Bayne obliges by betting the pot. I think for half a second but realize there is no way I can fold with the Ad and push my last 3500ish in and Bayne calls with AK no diamond. That hand got me up just over 10K and was able to get to 3 handed then HU with a little more then that.

Now commences one of the longest HU battles I've had in a while. I had Bayne outchipped about 11K to 8k when we started. Both of us were playing pretty careful, not alot if any big 3 bets preflop. The stacks were deep and we played them pretty carefully. I got him down to about 4500 when I ran my 1010 into his AA to get him to even. Then he pulled ahead a little and I got it back when I made a nut flush on a four flush board and he had 3rd nuts. After that he got it back when I 3bet with shit and he came over the top all in. A little bit later I called a pot bet on the river, that was half steaming half a fishy bet with bottom pair and it was good. Finally I bet a middle pair on the turn that turned into trips on the river but also got the flush there. I checked and Bayne shoved in, this seemed to big of a bet to be a flush, although it could have been, but I called and the trips were good.

Final table saw me, Snuffy and Corron make the final 3. The payout was only for the top 2, so we made a deal to pay 3rd between the 3 of us. I proceed to lose 1/3 of my stack in the first 10 minutes this time, through just some bad play/loose calls on my part. After a bit I start to grind it back. Then after about 40 mins we are all still completely even. Right at the starting stack number, plus or minus 50 chips. Snuffy suggested a 3 way chop as I was starting to doze at close to 1AM this sounded great to me. Corron agreed and we all went home happy.

Felt like I played pretty well last night. I needed the break I took from Thursday. I really hadn't played at all since Riverchasers on Thursday. It was nice break and now I feel ready to play. Tonight is multi-table CHIMPS. Should be interesting. Hopefully I should be there.