I've always been a limit HE player for small stakes in the casino (2/4, 3/6 and the occasional 5/10 until i realized my BR can't take it), but I decided that I was gonna sit down at the $1/$2 blind $300 max buy in NL table at the Taj Majal in AC. Why would a limit player do this? Well, i've been playing with my friends in small stakes NL games for about a year and I was ALWAYS a winner. Seriously, i was down maybe 3 times for the 100 times that I played with them and none for more than $40. Often, i was up $40, and very often up even more. Now, I will be the first to admit that most of my competition had no idea of how to really play while I was really trying to learn. Reading forums constantly (eventually only BTP), I realized while playing PLO that I can get used to making the big bets needed to be successful. My bankroll had grown to a point where I could sit down.
So anyway, I decided to sit down at the game with $200 which would be enough to manuver in the game but a little lower than a full buy in in case I find that I am over my head. Well, the first 10 round around the table were boring as I got NOTHING to play, but this gave me the tightest of images that I felt it really helped later. After being down $50 in blinds and a couple limps and one draw chase, i found myself with 77 in the BB as the UTG+1 made it $12 to go (the standard raise) and he got 4 (!) callers before it got to me. Well, I called and the flop came a beautiful A75 2 clubs. I decided to bet out (a bet that really was too small) and got 3 (!) callers. Now the pot was huge. The turn came and offsuit Q. I go all in for the $120 i had left and the preflop raiser took no time to call. I think i'm dead as he probably outplayed me with AA or maybe even QQ. River is an offsuit 10, I flip my cards over and he mucks. I can only guess he had AQ since they don't make people show on all ins. Well, now with almost $400 in front of me, I relax and start to really play. These people only saw my one hand and it was big and I made it expensive so no one was willing to play back at me. I didn't really exploit it but won some small pots because of it.
Eventually, I make the most of my cards and as well as getting in some good situations (like my AA vs JJ all in preflop for about $150) with some REALLY BAD players. My stack continues to grow until its over $700 and I have everyone covered by at least $200, and most by at least $400. I take a break, come back for my BB and find AA and there are 6 limpers to me. Well, I won't go into details since I will post the hand in a separate thread for analysis. Just lets say I got greedy and really misplayed it for a $400 pot against a terrible player who caught a gutshot with A3s on the river. Everyone had sympathy for me and I couldn't think straight. So, I ended up folding all my hands til my next BB and decided to leave since I wasn't playing right and didn't want to tilt off my money. I left up $324 which could have been up almost $700 but this was still my biggest win EVER!
Well, I will try the tables again. I'm not sure how well I actually played because they were terrible and scared of me. NO ONE ever raise me (except for the AA vs JJ hand preflop) because I only showed down good hands and ALWAYS made people pay to play. So I was never really put to the test because no one EVER raised me. So I will have to see in the future. Thanks to everyone that have helped me with their posts. I will be posting hands that I played for advice.Statistics: Posted by briachek — Sun Jan 16, 2005 8:57 pm
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