Hands that can change your poker life forever....

[Josh W]

I probably have a bunch that will come to me, but I don't feel like typing that much, so I'll tell one for now.

It's the first time I'm playin 80-160. I raise AKo utg, and the button cold calls.

Now, he's a tricky player, but a winner. And his cold call (this was 3-ish years ago when 80-160 was high limit), and his call was a "float". I know he's going to try to outplay me.

Flop comes like Q66, with two spades, and I have ace of trump. I bet, and he calls.

For some reason, I put him on nothing, and knew he'd raise the turn, in line with his "outplaying" strategy. I don't remember what exactly led me to believe this, but even then I was a winning player, and have always been very good at reading people live. I trusted my read completely here, but I didn't know what to do.

turn is a red 4. If I bet, he raises, I'll have to call 2 bets (turn and river) to see showdown. I don't wanna do that. I'm a 20-40 player playing over my head.

So, I checkraise him, and he threebets. I'm pretty certain of my read, so I still decide to call down. River is like a 9, and I check call. He mucks without showing.

This hand was important to me because I learned I could play and not worry too much about the money. I learned that I really could/should trust my reads.

And I learned that I could play 'high limits'.

Josh

[Tommy Angelo]

They say it's emotions that makes a memory really stick. Well the hand I remember first was the last time I just died at the table. It was like the third major death in my life. First was my mom, then my dad, and then this hand. The one good thing about the hand at the time, as with the parental passings, was I knew it would never hurt quite this bad again. It was about six years ago and I was running bad bad bad for a long long time. I wasn't getting laid. I was smoking cigs like crazy. I was playing bad and going down. So naturally when I got down to my case few thousand I get in a shorthanded $80-160 game. (This was when they had $80-160 at LC on Thursdays for about a year.)

My stack was already dwindled when I got pocket nines on the button. Capped before the flop. Four players. Flop comes K-9-2 with two clubs. The flop is capped and one player gets out. So it's threehanded now. One guy has K9 (sooted), for top two, and the other guy has AK of clubs for top pair top kicker nut flush draw.

You can see how this is going to go, right? The turn was a king and we capped it again. River, king, and that's when it got ugly inside, because I had already told myself that I was going to quit after this hand and never play this high with no bankroll and I was going to take this monster pot home right now and I'll reform and restart again but this time for real.

But the king came and I wasn't even surprised or anything and I folded with seven chips left and I picked them up and walked and I was gone for a while.

(edit: I got this wrong somewhere. There was no king on the flop. They were both drawing to hit runner runner case case king king to win. Wow, I got all shook up just writing about this hand!) OH! I remember now, whew. I flopped nines full. Flop was 9-5-5 (or some small pair). One guy had K9, the other AK w/ flush draw. Then comes the king-king on board. Wow, now I can let go of this hand I think! Thanks!)

[protocol]

There's one hand that immediately comes to mind. It occured in Dec. 02, when I had only been playing online for about 3 months. I was playing mostly 1/2 or 2/4, yet my entire poker bankroll was only about $200, split up between Paradise and the now defunct poker.com. A combination of bad play and bad luck had me just about ready to quit for good.

Anyways, Paradise was doing a promotion for their 250 millionth hand. If you were dealt into the hand, you would win $1000. If you won the hand, you would win $25k. Once it started getting close, I decided to stay up through the night to see if I could hit it.

Amazingly, I was dealt into the 250 millionth hand, while playing only two .50/1.00 tables (I had lost so much waiting for the hand to occur that I couldn't open any more). I was dealt 63o. The action was capped 10 ways preflop. The flop came down 655. Capped 10 ways on the flop. The turn was a face card, and it went capped 10 ways once again. The river was another overcard to my 6. The action was capped yet again, this time only 7 or 8 ways. I decided that for $4, I needed to see the showdown in a $25k pot...but it went to someone holding a five.

A six on the river would've been nice, but even still, the $1000 was huge for me at the time, as it increased my bankroll sixfold. I had been pretty close to going broke, and I almost certainly would have without this.

With a much larger bankroll, I had room for error. It still took a few months before I was sure I was a long-term winner. But, had I not been dealt into this hand, it is likely that I would have went broke and quit poker.


BTW, this has to be the biggest limit pot ever, at 108BB's.

[Noo Yawk]

Mike,

Send that in to Ed as an article and get the $200 for it.
F'ing best stuff I've read here in forever. Too funny.
-NY

[ggbman]

It's not a specific hand, but after running my $200 initial deposit least year up $425, it was back around $50 at one point. I mananged to win a $10 SNG, although i dont remember any of the hands. That was maybe the most significant break of my poker career.

[mike l.]

and when i remember you telling it to me it was that they were these rich businessmen type who were just laughing it up and the money meant nothing to them. great terrible sad hand.

[DonT77]

I had read like a dozen books on poker and been playing online for like a year and been reading posts on 2+2, but I had been running bad almost to the point where I was losing interest in poker and was ready to quit the game. My bankroll was dwindling and I kept moving down in stakes from 3/6 to 2/4 to 1/2. I had some early MTT success, but that had dried up recently too.

I went to Phoenix on a business trip and decided to stop in for some live play at Casino AZ where I entered a 3/6 game. I was stuck about a rack when I got AJo in UTG+1. UTG open raised, but he was a loose player - so I called (of course now I realize that calling is probably the worst option here). A player in MP 3-bet, UTG & I called (and I was feeling very uneasy about my AJo right about now). The flop came AT2r. UTG bet, I raised, MP & UTG called. The turn was another A. UTG checked, I bet, MP called, UTG folded. The river was the case Ace giving me quad aces. I bet, MP called and flipped up QQ for aces full of queens and we collected a bad beat jackpot (thank God he called 2 bets on the flop with an underpair!). I got $3300 for the winner's share and I'm up about another $15K since then - recently winning at 10/20 Limit and $100 buy-in MTTs. Without those running aces, I don't know if I'd still be playing right now. It was the first in a series of breaks that renewed my zest for the game and eventually led to me coming back and beating the 2/4, 3/6, 5/10 games as well as the $20-$50 MTTs. I have the BR now to play 30/60, but I'm going to make sure I can beat 10/20, 15/30, and 20/40 first as I am determined to not piss away my good fortune like I almost did early in my poker career. (comments?)

[arkady]

[ QUOTE ]
and my whole apartment wanted to committ suicide.

[/ QUOTE ]

i was in a bar with a lot of friends at that time, probably one of the worst feelings ever experienced. makes me feel better knowing that somewhere in new york, people experienced a similar pain.

nice finish on the tourney, at that time I still didnt know what hold 'em was. wow.

I wish that i could say the same about one hand making me broke, but with the way I keep my bankroll, it doesnt really apply. I play poker for fun, and have managed to make a very insignificant amount of money doing it relative to my main source of income. But this post doesnt necessarily mean a pot that if you lost you would have been totally bust because you had your whole bankroll in the game, but maybe a pot you won in a tournament that propelled you into a spot that allowed you to cash or win, where otherwise you wouldn't have.

[lil feller]

That avatar is friggin awesome.

lf