Welcome to Bustoville

...population me! After 2 more jumps with Kevin in the morning (AFP-3 & -4), we went to lunch before I met Nate at the Bellagio so I could borrow his car to drive myself home for a badly needed nap. We have to skydive in the morning since the air thins out when it gets hotter in the afternoons (which makes landing more difficult), so I had to wake up at 6:30am again for the second day in a row.

I woke up from my nap just in time to see the Cavs eliminate the Pistons. I'm happy LeBron won so he can get this whole 'winning' thing out of his system; the Cavs won't be doing much of that in the Finals (GO SPURS!)

Ben was just moving in as I finished watching the game, so we hung out for a bit before I drove back to the Rio to check on Meyvis and Strassa. The Rio poker room was packed, just like yesterday. Nate was playing 2/5NL, but I didn't see Jason at any of the tables; oh well, on to 5/10.

The table I sat down at was pretty loose-passive at first, but I quickly realized it was due to a loud, friendly French guy sitting with >3k who was clearly at least a few beers into his night. He was your stereotypical whale: friendly, personable, funny, disliked players and dealers who wouldn't converse with him, very loose-passive, and he was sitting with a big stack. Even though the Rio 5/10 game is uncapped, I chose to buyin for only $1k because I'm short on cash. Aside from him, the table was still very juicy. First interesting hand: (I have ~1100, villain (SB) covers)

1 limp to me in MP, i raise to $50 w/red aces, SB calls, BB French guy calls, limper folds.
Flop: QdJx9d
Blinds both check to me. I've been playing pretty TAG; SB (villain) seems like a somewhat solid player who is capable of c/r perceived position bets on "scary" boards, so I decided to check behind.
Turn: 5c
Great card. Both players check to me again, so I put in $110. SB calls, BB folds.
River: 5s
Another great card for my hand. SB leads for $200, and I take awhile to think about calling or raising. Since I have him pegged as a somewhat solid player, I ruled out a flopped straight or set since he wouldn't have checked these hands TWICE with such a loose-passive player behind him in the BB. I think he would have probably bet to protect his 2pr hands as well, but I can see him checking them at times too. He certainly does not slowplay a straight or flopped set, though. So, given all of that, I decided to put in a small value raise to $500. Villain called pretty quickly and flipped up Kh5h to scoop the pot. I like my play in this hand overall, including the raise on the river. I think I get some nice value from smaller 2pr hands here much of the time when called.

The only other hand of interest was 2-3 hands later, just after I had reloaded my stack to $1k:

I raise QhQd UTG to $40, folds to our French buddy who 3-bets me to $145, folds back around to me. He starts talking it up again about how I should call with my 55/66/77 but the dealer better not flop me a set. I haven't seen this guy 3-bet once preflop before, so some serious warning bells went off. I elected to call and CRAI on any flop that wasn't Ace-high.
Flop: 5h6h7h
The whole table erupts with laughter as I check. French guy bets $300, I shove, he calls and flips up AhKd.
Turn: 8h :(
River: 3c

That left me with about $120 in cash, so I borrowed 1k from Nate to get back in the game. I was pretty much stuck in idle the entire rest of the night, even though the French guy was practically begging me to double through him. When the tournaments broke for the night, so did most of the ring games (including ours), so I repaid Nate and we drove home.

I was still dying to play when we got home, so I decided to play a little online while setting up this blog. Pulled up FTP and found only two active 5/10NL tables (both full ring), which seemed very odd to me, so I decided to grind the 2/4 & 3/6 games there and on PS. In the meantime, Meyvis was kind enough to swap me 1k in cash for 1k online, so I'll get to try my hand at 2/5 tomorrow until I can find someone to trade me more cash for online$.

Interesting hands from tonight:
Hero call vs a big donkey, too bad I'm wrong. If you happened to have read that 2+2 post about player types, this chick was totally an L-P SOOT (54/9/0.65-ish).
Q3c owns me tonight
Finally stacked the donk
Stacked her again!
Protecting my squeeze vs. an obvious re-steal attempt
Another nice pot

Made just over $1850 at 3/6 and $856 at 2/4 in under 900 total hands, so it was a pretty good session. Despite the results, I don't think I ran any hotter or colder than normal; I just felt I was playing really well and that the tables were very soft (which they absolutely were). Always nice to do well in at least one session per day.

That pretty much does it for today (er, technically yesterday). So tired....