Big Saturday of poker and horses

Had a pretty big Saturday at Northville Downs.

Started the day off handicapping the pick 4 at Ellis Park. I put about $190 into the tickets, and immediately started off with a 12-1 shot winning the first leg (who I had), to make a long story short, by the 4th leg I was still alive, and 0 favorites had won. I had the 1 (paid $1270 if wins), 3 (paid $3000 if wins) and 6 (paid $900 if wins) covered. I also was going to get consolation payouts of several hundred if any of the other horses except the 5 won, as nobody had them in the pk4 at all. So I put $50 on the 5 to win as a hedge, and watched the race. The 1 took the lead right from the gate, and led by several lengths entering the stretch. In the final few strides my 3 almost caught him on the far outside, but the 1 ended up holding on, giving me my 2nd best scenario.

At the same time of this pick 4, I was playing in a $40 Pot limit Omaha tourney. As some of you may know, Omaha is the only game I play online anymore, and people are really terrible at it. I got a monster chip stack early and cruised to the final 3 (there were only 14 players). I took a brutal beat with 3 remaining (got a guy to go all-in before the river, with his only card to win the pot being a T….boom T on the river). I managed to recover, and got heads-up. After a bit of play, the blinds were really high, and I wanted to bet some more ponies and play some cash poker, so we chopped it for $240 apiece.

Then I sat down at the same cash table as Erik, and after a few hours of drinking and breaking even, I hit a $500 pot with the monster hand 4-2, and ended up making $300 at that table.

The Poker Grump would be proud of this one. I was sitting with about $215 going into the hand, and was in the SB with 24o. UTG limped (had been a thorn in my side for most of the night, but I knew he would overplay a hand), all folded to me, and I decided just to complete, and the BB checked his option. Now as an aside, I know the Grump might recommend raising for value here, but I decided to just complete the BB for deception sake.

The pot was only $6, and the flop came 853r. I checked, the BB led out $15 (some of these players love the overbet). When the UTG called the $15, I decided to change my decision from folding to calling and hope to drill my open ender.

The turn was the lovely A. I checked again, the BB bet $25, and UTG raised to $50. At that point I had a tough decision, as both raising and calling showed significant strength. Because calling I felt gave up as much info as raising, I decided to raise, and popped it up to $100. The BB folded , and UTG debated and called.
The river was kinda ugly, a 2, which I felt increased the likelihood of him being able to dump a hand like aces up. I moved in for my last $100, and he debated for about 30 seconds to 1 minute and decided to call. I turned over my cards, and he said “I thought that was what you had.” and proceeded to muck.

Thanks Grump!