God Bless free money

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God Bless free money. Pacific Poker popped a sawbuck into my bank this week with NO restrictions. Just felt like Santa Claus or something. So I did what any self-respecting semi-compulsive gambler would do. I played.

I had forgotten what kind of cowboys played here, but I got the sense that liquor was being consumed around me when two people busted during the first orbit of the $4+.50 20-seater. It took about five minutes to gauge my spot at the table. Typically, I will lump people into three or four main categories.

• Guys to bust – you might call them “calling stations”. If these guys are in the blinds, I will limp with good drawing hands, and raise big with premium hands. This way, if I hit a flop with a drawing hand, I can build my bets on the turn and river and try to take all their chips. This is important because SOMEONE is gonna get their chips and it might as well be me. I’ll raise 5xBB with a premium hand because they’ll likely call, and I know I have the better of it most of the time.

• Guys to bleed – you might call them “tight-weak”. Steal their blinds with mediocre hands. Even if they call, they’ll fold to a continuation bet on any flop that doesn’t hit them between the eyes. With any luck, they’ll get frustrated by your stealing and try to crack back when you have a real hand.

• Guys to avoid – you might call them “good”. Anyone who seems to vary their play should be avoided. Anyone who seems to understand position should be avoided. Unless you have a clear shot at flopping a monster (pocket pair or Ax sooted), these people should be avoided with any speculative hands.

• I don’t mind “tricky dicks”. Most guys who like to slowplay are predictable. If you’re lucky, you’ll see them do it on someone else before they nail you. If they do it once, they’ll do it again. One other thing, to most of these wags, “slowplay” means “check-raise”. If they bet a small amount, they probably have a drawing hand or something like middle pair and they think they’re protecting it.

Anyway, I placed 3rd in this one to push my bankroll up to a whopping $16.50. The hand that hurt me was three-handed when I had the second nut flush and ran into the nuts. JTo with the jack of clubs and a flop of QT6 of clubs looked pretty good. The Kc on the turn gave me the second nut flush with OESF draw. I push, he THINKS and calls. Since Pacific still hasn’t figured out how to show the hands during an all-in, I didn’t see his Ace of clubs until 95% of my stack was slid in front of my opponent. Sheesh, I didn’t even get a chance to yell “ONE TIME!” trying to hit my one-outer.

FFL – I’m up against Performify this week. Yahoo’s point predictor has it roughly as a toss-up, but I think I have a clear advantage. He has Deion Branch, I have Tom Brady. If Deion scores, Tom scores. He has Priest Holmes and the Philly defense. If Priest scores, his defense suffers. Given these tradeoffs, I think I’ll roll him by double digits, especially if Reggie Wayne decides that it’s about effing time to score some points.