Goooooool!!

Ah, it feels nice. Calm day at work, followed by a hat trick on the soccer field (7-2 win), then a nice doubleup (+$24) at the Reraise Homegame.

The hat trick wasn't impressive in its execution. I opened the scoring with a left-footed-cross-turned-goal, then a penalty kick, and ending with another nice lefty shot. I could've had three more - I found the post twice and had a header go just wide.

The trick left me feeling all warm and fuzzy because it's been ages since my last one. I'm not a goalscorer. I'm pleased with solid defense and decent passing. Anything else is icing. The last time I had this much icing was probably eight years ago in college in a 5v5 indoor game.

The Reraise Homegame is some of the worst and toughest poker I've seen, simultaneously. Post-flop, bluffs are everywhere. Betting out bottom pair is commonplace. Preflop action often goes like this: Jack-seven suited raises UTG, 98s calls, pocket fives reraise, AKo coldcalls, everybody calls. Volatile poker at its finest. Or ugliest. Did I mention the suckouts of people who don't want to fold draws, even bad five-out-better-hit-my-kicker-or-trip-up draws?

I was puzzled with what to do when I saw the following: two red aces in the SB. UTG raises to $2, KingReraise reraises to $7. I figure King for good cards, and he hates to fold, so rather than make a small reraise, I jammed for $40 total. Everyone reluctantly folded, showing UTG's 55 and King's KTo (wtf? seriously). Even the BB wanted to play his QJ-suited. My aces would've gotten cracked by the 5 on the flop, and not paid by the other bigstack's unimproved KT.

I know that if I smoothcall the $7, UTG calls, and probably the BB. I don't want three opponents against my aces. These guys LOVE seeing flops. In retrospect, making it $17 to go was probably a good balance of stack commitment and getting only one caller, King.

The cool part of the night is that I ran into a hand in the first 10 minutes and was crippled (stupid Kournikova!), leaving me with $1.50. I asked if I could rebuy another $20, and was told 'no'. I proceeded to go on the heater of all heaters, doubling up to $3 with A8o, then tripling up with AJ-suited. Tens, then queens, then two Big Slicks added more chips to my stack. The pinnacle was rivering the nut flush against KingReraise, who was smooth-calling my on-the-come bets with middle set. At that point, I had turned that measly buck-fifty into $60 or so.