Ready or Not

Just a quick poker update after three more sessions - two tournaments, one cash game - and one misread. Busted out of both tournaments early on, couldn't get anything going and was mostly card dead for both. No real hands to dissect from either since I mostly folded or swept blinds with my raises. Cash game was more successful as I had been playing a little sloppily in past weeks and wanted to tighten up a bit. Luckily for me I was able to catch some decent starting hands early and build up a little bit of a stack when my biggest hand of the night came through. I raised from middle position with 9,9 and got a call from the button. Flop came 8,9,9 and I had a pretty good idea that my quads would be good. I checked and my opponent led out. I called. Turn brought a blank. I checked and my opponent bet out, a pot-sized bet. I thought about the last film I had seen in order to seem like something was on my mind and when sufficient time had passed, called. River was meaningless to me, of course, and I led out for half the pot. He thought and thought but then laid it down. Poker is easy.

Until you misread an opponent, that is.

One of the last hands of the night, I limped with AQ, hoping to trap a late position raiser. No raise came and the flop was good to me, A,K,x rainbow. I bet out and got one caller, very quick call. Turn was a club, now two on board. I bet again and again my opponent called. At this point I had him squarely on A,x, definitely not AK, not his style to limp from late position with it. I began to think about my river bet. Then it came with another K so I downsized a bit to around half the pot. My opponent thought for a couple minutes (during which time I relaxed, if a raise was coming it would have come quicker) then called. I confidently flipped my AQ and he showed a K for trips. We talked about the hand after the game and he said he thought that I had been playing bottom set on the flop. He had also picked up the nut flush on the turn (which surprised me even more because he didn't raise me on that street) to go with his pair of kings, and was worried I had filled up with his third queen. As I had him covered, he was worried about getting stacked late in the night, so he just called it and took it down. It was a very surprising result and threw me off for the rest of the game (only about another 10 minutes.)

I'm looking at playing the $550 deep stack event at Foxwoods on August 22nd. If I do, I will obviously post the lead up and results.