I didn’t have any “never seen that before” hands but I did have a couple of noteworthy ones.

Hand #1

I make a raise from early position and get a call out of the big blind.  Flop comes out beautifully.

At this point I’m pretty positive that I’m in good shape against a blind hand.  Obviously I have to bet enough to make someone pay to draw to their flush and that’s what I do.  The turn comes a non diamond and I do the same thing making it expensive for the flush to get there.  As fate would have it, a diamond fell on the river.  I checked and made a crying call only to see what I already knew.  Personally I thought I’d done enough to keep the draw from getting there but obviously I didn’t.

Hand #2

Button makes a raise and I reraise out of the big blind with my kings.  He calls and we’re off to the flop which doesn’t look all that dangerous.

There’s really only a couple of hands here that scare me but I really don’t have him on JJ, or 88.  KJ and AJ cross my mind as good button hands and I’m actually hoping he’s got AJ as I’ll win a nice pot.  I suppose button raises with 55 is possible but it really doesn’t concern me.  A second Jack falls on the river and I’m forced once again to show down the second best hand which was best going into that last card.

Hand #3

Love seeing them those rockets!  Love even more when someone moves all in before I’ve got a chance to act.  I had the all in player out chipped by just a few so when my aces held up it was nearly a double up for me.  This put me back above chip average and I propelled me for another hour or so.

Final Hand

I’ve got 66 on the button and the player to my right makes a minimum raise.  I call and the flop comes out:

I didn’t put him on a J and he’d already had trip 5′s two or three times already tonight… how many times can one guy have the same hand???  You guessed it… one more time.  I wasn’t able to catch my 6 and my day was done.  On to next season for me – hope it will be better to me than the current season.

See you after the flop!