Beating Up a Bully

A Super Nova at a $10NL table? That’s what/who I had to my left at Stars, five white stars on a red background under his nick, representing 100,000 VIP points in the last year. That’s one helluva lot of poker. He was a pro!

Okay, maybe he wasn’t a pro. But he did play a lot of poker…poker hands. And he was aggressive about it. If a hand was limped around to him, rest assured he bet the pot. If he had the Button, he raised. There certainly was no limping from the small blind when it was just the two of us. So, when I had pocket sevens, I raised it up 5 x BB. He then 4 bets me! I type, “Not worth it Mr. Muscles.”

Now I have to explain the comment. His avatar was a picture of a woman sitting on the lap of a Chippendale dancer. I kinda assumed the guy in the photo was the villain.

He was textbook, so, I backed off and waited.

PokerStars Game #24311613372: Hold'em No Limit ($0.05/$0.10) - 2009/01/26 20:15:25 ET
Table 'Murzim IV' 9-max Seat #8 is the button
Seat 1: esky skid ($10 in chips)
Seat 3: misterbigone ($5.90 in chips)
Seat 4: stoxpeon ($12.40 in chips)
Seat 6: bastinptc ($17.25 in chips)
Seat 7: JoeIngram1 ($11.25 in chips)
Seat 8: MarkSpakman ($2 in chips)
Seat 9: PapukGarojan ($2.20 in chips)
PapukGarojan: posts small blind $0.05
esky skid: posts big blind $0.10
mik4u1: sits out
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to bastinptc [Td Ts]
misterbigone: calls $0.10
stoxpeon: calls $0.10
bastinptc: calls $0.10
JoeIngram1: raises $0.60 to $0.70
MarkSpakman: folds
PapukGarojan: folds
esky skid: folds
misterbigone: folds
stoxpeon: folds
bastinptc: calls $0.60
*** FLOP *** [4s 2s 7c]
bastinptc: checks
JoeIngram1 said, "musclesss"
JoeIngram1: bets $1.10
bastinptc: raises $1.10 to $2.20

I wanted to take control of the hand without over-commiting.

JoeIngram1: calls $1.10

And I did. With his flat call I have him on an AJs or some such hand. He may also have something like a pair of eights. He’s hoping to spike an Ace or set.

*** TURN *** [4s 2s 7c] [9c]
bastinptc: bets $4.10
JoeIngram1: calls $4.10

*** RIVER *** [4s 2s 7c 9c] [5d]

But he doesn’t.

scottcollins has returned
bastinptc: bets $5
JoeIngram1: folds
Uncalled bet ($5) returned to bastinptc
bastinptc collected $13.65 from pot

Players like this I don’t seem to have as much trouble with as I do the standard variety of calling stations who limp and call, hoping to hit the flop hard.

8 out of 17 times while in big blind (47%)
5 out of 16 times while in small blind (31%)
22 out of 105 times in other positions (20%)
a total of 35 out of 138 (25%)
Pots won at showdown - 6 of 10 (60%) Two of the remaining four were flopped second nut flushes. Ouchy.
Pots won without showdown - 8