Yes, I'm not going to lie. I played this hand awfully in nearly every way possible. This type of hand is the reason that Mecos calls me a mizor so often. BUT, I did redeem myself with something of a read on my opponent. Basically, he was a bit bluffy and also seemed to be getting sick of the fact that I was raising so god-damned much. I'll post the hand and then attempt to preempt - or at least soften - the merciful assult I'm bound to recieve.

NOTE : Couldn't get the converter to work right, so I'll just post the ugly hand history.

***** Hand History for Game 2368682222 *****
$3/$6 Texas Hold'em - Friday, July 15, 17:17:05 EDT 2005
Table Table 27564 (Real Money)
Seat 5 is the button
Total number of players : 10
Seat 2: sweetybear ( $260 )
Seat 4: TangRocks ( $289.75 )
Seat 8: LedZepRocks1 ( $327.25 )
Seat 10: onemagician ( $73.96 )
Seat 6: pponkass ( $249 )
Seat 1: mickyank7 ( $121.50 )
Seat 9: injogen ( $135.50 )
Seat 7: medusa11 ( $130 )
Seat 3: Palmira ( $33 )
Seat 5: truenob ( $119 )
pponkass posts small blind [$1].
medusa11 posts big blind [$3].
** Dealing down cards **
Dealt to TangRocks [ Ad 5s ]
LedZepRocks1 folds.
injogen folds.
onemagician folds.
mickyank7 folds.
>You have options at Table 32707 Table!.
sweetybear folds.
Palmira folds.
TangRocks raises [$6].
truenob calls [$6].
pponkass calls [$5].
medusa11 calls [$3].
>You have options at Table 32735 Table!.
** Dealing Flop ** [ Td, 8d, 4s ]
pponkass checks.
medusa11 checks.
TangRocks checks.
truenob checks.
** Dealing Turn ** [ Ts ]
>You have options at Table 32707 Table!.
pponkass checks.
medusa11 checks.
TangRocks bets [$6].
truenob folds.
pponkass folds.
>You have options at Table 32735 Table!.
>You have options at Table 32735 Table!.
medusa11 raises [$12].
>You have options at Table 32735 Table!.
TangRocks raises [$12].
>You have options at Table 32735 Table!.
medusa11 folds.
TangRocks shows [ Ad, 5s ] a pair of tens.
TangRocks wins $52 from the main pot with a pair of tens.

Okay, we'll start with preflop! I grant you that A5o is not usually a raising hand from the cut-off, but in this situation...well, it's still not a raising hand. Easy muck. What can I say, I get antsy sometimes. Obviously, my plan backfires rather brutally when the button, SB and BB all call! Heh heh, I guess when you try to pull shit, shit happens!

On the flop, I finally make a right decision and just give up on the hand, not even bothering with a continuation bet. It checks around and back to me on the turn, and I decide...awwww, what the fuck it doesn't look like anybody has anything and a bet only has to take it down 1 in 4 times! So I decide to compound my previous stupidity by firing out another bet!

IMPORTANT : Please note that I've already admitted to making two idiotic decisions. Thus there is no need to hurt my feeling with a reply centered around this already-stated idiocy.

And I get check-raised! Okay, easy fold...BUT, like I said, this player is (1) bluffy, and (2) is sick of me raising so much. I don't have much of a solid image at this point, so I really thought there was a decent chance that the BB was on the resteal. How often do I have to be right? Well, I'm putting in 2 bets to win 7...7:2 odds is like...I can't do math. Suffice to say that I thought there was a pretty good chance SB was bluffing. So I raised, BB quickly mucked, and I showed my cards like the true misguided asshole I am. After an awkward pause, BB responded "lol, good enough"

The moral? Do neither as I say nor as I do...but don't mess with the mizor!

-TW

Mecos,

I described the hand as awfully played primarily because of the fact that I was involved to begin with preflop. Hell, I'll open-raise Ax on the button or SB every time, because I think it's +EV...but we both can agree with 2 off the button is a bit of a stretch. I'm still a bit up in the air on my turn bet...I think it was probably -EV, but not by a lot. Basically, what I'm saying is that the only thing I'm downright happy about in this hand was that I put a read on the check-raiser, acted on it, and it worked. That felt good. But even if my read is right and he's bluffing a good bit of the time, there'll still be times he actually has something to call/raise me with, and those times I'll be wondering why I got myself in this mess to begin with.

All that being said, I have a masochistic tendancy - and a severe spelling disorder - that means I'm going to continue to put myself in messes like this one. Hell, maybe someday I'll make a post of all the various hands where I made fantastic reads that were dead wrong. I think you folks would get a kick out of them. Especially the ones where I was dead wrong, but sucked out anyway!

-TW