Sorry it's been awhile, I figured I'd blog right when I got back home from my first Commerce trip but then I got sick so I've been laying around a lot and not really feeling like doing much of anything.

Anyway my first Commerce trip was from February 2-10, and it went pretty well. I ended up being a $35,000-$40,000 winner on the trip (I know that is quite the range and I could figure it out for sure but I haven't added up the #'s in the spreadsheet yet), even with losing $37,000 the last night I was out there (yeah I had already booked a flight home before that session). Plus I played 3 tourneys, including a 16th place finish in a $530 6-max NL LAPC event which saw me losing a pot for chip lead with QQ vs JJ all in preflop (zzzz standard tournament stuff), and after those three I'm basically tourneyed out for awhile (though depending on how the next few days are in cash games I may play the LAPC $10,000 main event).

The biggest positive? I felt like I was playing really amazing poker almost the whole time I was out there.

Here was one sequence of hands within 20 minutes apart from eachother against Tommy Hang, who most (including myself) consider one of the best around at LHE.

Hand One:

$400/800, I open UTG 5-handed with As2s. Folded to Tommy who calls in the BB and hasn't been in the game long but is quickly buried $10,000.

Flop KT7 two hearts. He check calls. Turn red 2. He check calls. River Ace of hearts, putting the third heart on the board. He bets. I pause about 15 seconds and then raise. He thinks for 20 seconds or so, says, "got AK huh?" and then calls, which makes me think I'm beat and he must have A7 (most likely) or AT. I wait a second and he doesn't table anything so I table my A2 two pair. He flashes me AQ as he mucks.


Hand Two: Tommy opens on the button, I 3-bet A5o in the SB, he calls. He has 4-bet in this situation once or twice already before.

Flop: J42 two spades. I bet, he calls. Turn Ts. I have no spade I don't think or maybe the 5 was but whatever. I bet, he calls. River red 8. I check, he bets, I pause maybe 5 seconds and checkraise. He goes into the tank for a solid 20-30 seconds and then calls. I table my hand and he shows Ad2d for the win. Sick bet/call by him, but I'm totally fine with how this hand went down, especially 20 minutes after I made a fairly slim value raise versus him. I kind of like how I've set the tone to not be messed around with on the river, and hopefully that results in either me getting to pick up some more slim value raises versus him, or else he'll finally start to fear my river actions enough that he'll actually check behind a hand like A2 on this board. Fun meta-game, either way.


I've also played some fun hands versus Max, who is one of my favorite players to play against -- especially because of how our meta-game has transformed quite a bit over the years. It went from me thinking he was a huge donkey and always trying to get position on him, to me starting to respect his game while I simultaneously ran AWFUULLLLL for 1.5 years straight at Commerce so he likely thought I was a donkey even though it was just genuinely I was running baaadddd, to now we both know eachother plays a pretty tough game and both have mutual respect. He still likes to have position on me, but what I've noticed nowadays is he doesn't tend to three-bet me with BS much ever, which is nice and a sign that he takes position on me simply so he can try to keep himself from tangling in pots versus me, I think anyway. At least I'm going to assume it's because of that and not because he still thinks I"m a donkey, which I have no indication of that since as I said lately when he's had position on me he hasn't been playing many pots against me.

One hand he opened on the button, and I 3-bet from the SB with Ah8h, he called. J84 flop, I bet, he called. Turn 2s second spade, I checked, he bet, I called. River Ts, I bet, he called, I show my hand, he mucks. I like that he thinks I'm tricky enough (and maybe I am?) to still be showing up with a hand worse than whatever he called with on the river, being that the Ts hits T9/QT/97/any spade redraw I picked up on the turn so I really wasn't expecting too often to get a payoff by worse (yet I still bet it for value because I think he WILL check behind worse hands, and I'd like to at least give him the option of calling with worse). Or maybe he pegged me as having 65 suited there a chunk of the time because that'd also make sense on the turn after 65 picks up a double gutshot...?

I wish I could remember some of the hands Max played against me where he owned me, especially on the first night I got in, because there were several where he made me feel foolish. What's funny to me is that Max's presence still helps games get started, when really he's one of the stronger players in the game most of the time if he's off tilt and focused.


Good luck at the tables the rest of the month, I hope this next Commerce voyage that begins for me in a few hours ends up at least as profitable as the first one.