Thursday is my one regular day off from work, so Thursday late-night is the one time during the week when I have 3-4 uninterrupted hours to play poker. Sometimes I will play in a tourney with a small field, but generally I'll play one or two sit & go's and maybe a cash game for an hour or so. Last night, after saw the Boston Bruins get their asses whupped by the Toronto Maple Leafs at the Gahden, I came home and played a $20 9-player sit & go on Pokerstars. I hadn't played a sit & go in several days (I had been playing mostly cash games because of the Pokerstars anniversary celebration) but I played well and cashed in third for $36.00. I actually got lucky to cash as when we were 4-handed there was one player who had the majority of the chips while the other 3 had basically their starting stacks and I made a donkey call vs. the big stack with Q4 vs. his Q 10 but hit a 4 on the river to double up.
After that I decided to play a 25/50 cent NL cash game. I have not really played NL cash games until recently but have found that my game is well-suited for low-limit NL. I think the reason for this is my betting style. I am a standard-raise, continuation bet type of player. I will make the same 3x the BB raise the vast majority of the time when entering a pot, and will make a half to 2/3 of the pot bet post-flop no matter what I have. This strategy works for me in several ways. First, it is very hard to put me on a hand when I make the same raise with AA or JJ as I would make with KQ suited or even 75. If I get reraised and my hand isn't that good I can easily toss it, but by massaging the size of the pot I can also call small reraises if I feel that my hand is playable. Post-flop, consistently betting 1/2 to 2/3 of the pot allows me to take down pots when I don't have much of a hand with minimal risk but also allows me to bet flops when I have hit them big and frequently get paid off. An example from last night - I was in the BB with KK and 4 limpers. I reraised to $2.00, trying to build a good pot with my strong hand and also blow out the weak aces that a lot of people will play for a minimum bet. We went to the flop 3-handed and it came K J 9. MOST players who are first to act in this spot would check their trip kings, and this is where my consistent betting style works for me. The pot was about 7 bucks so I made a standard continuation bet of $4.00. I got a call and a fold. The turn was garbage, so I lead out again for about $5, which was only about 1/3 of the pot, but again the size of the bet made it manditory for my opponent to call with any kind of hand or draw, and of course I was hoping he had trips jacks or nines. On the river, which was more trash, I got my opponent to call me all they way down with only 10 10 and I won a very nice pot. This strategy also worked on several other occasions where I raised in late position with hands like KQ and AT, got one caller, and missed the flop, but the combination of my position and the equity I had developed with the KK hand meant that my 2/3 pot continuation bets were not getting called unless someone had a hand. I was able to win 4 or 5 juicy pots in that session and wound up with a profit of over $60!
Overall a good night, and I was even able to transfer some $$$ back into my checking account to pay some bills !
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