How Would You Play This Hand

Full Tilt runs a daily $150+13 buy-in tournament at 3:00pm EST. You receive 3000 starting chips with the blind levels increasing every 12 minutes. This tournament gives you an extra 2 minutes more at each blind level over their standard tournament structure.
Today’s tournament began with 334 players. The top 45 finishers got paid with 1st place paying out $12,525, 2nd place paid $8,016 and 3rd place paid $6012.
This is one of my favorite daily tournaments on Full Tilt because of the structure and the size of the field. It’s not such a huge field, as many guaranteed tournaments, giving you a better chance to go deep. A 3000 chip starting stack and 12 minute blind levels allow you more opportunities to see flops and try to get lucky.
That’s my general philosophy in the early rounds of a tournament with a good structure,. I try to see a lot of flops cheap with drawing hands in multi-way pots from late position. If I hit the flop hard, I put myself in a position to take down a big pot.
After almost forty minutes into this tournament, I saw a lot of flops but didn’t hit much. I bled away about T$1000 chips from my T$3000 starting stack up to this point. But, I wasn’t discouraged. I knew if I could catch a couple of hands I’d get right back in it. This next hand came up.
Here are the chip counts going into the hand.
MP2: 3,460
CO: 2,095
BTN: 4,705

SB: 6,680
BB: 2,200
UTG: 3,660
UTG+1: 2,255
UTG+2: 2,895
Hero (MP1): 1,950
How would you play this hand? With the blinds at 25/50, I pick up J♠-10♠ and limp from middle position. The reason I limped here is I didn’t want to come out with a standard 3x raise and get re-raised from a couple of players with bigger stacks who were sitting on the Button and in the Small Blind. It’s very important to pay attention to player’s stacks that are left to act in the hand. I am willing to call a standard raise to see a flop especially from a player raising out of the blinds. I’d have position on them the rest of the way giving me an edge.
A player to my immediate left makes it 160 to go and everyone else folds to me. This player has been playing pretty straight forward without getting out of line. If I miss the flop completely, I can get away cheap.
The flop comes A♥–A♠–9♠
I flop a J-high flush draw and decide to check. Since, I’m playing this hand out of position I’d rather try to see a free card. If I bet out and get raised, I will probably have to let it go. I check and the player to my left checks. This made me a little suspicious but, he could’ve easily whiffed the flop. He may even think I’m slow playing with an Ace in the hole.
The turn brought Ks. The board now looks like this: A♥–A♠–9♠–K♠
I hit the second nut flush and bet out 250 into a 395 pot. The reason for this sized bet is I don’t want to scare my opponent out of the pot. If he has an Ace which is well within his pre-flop raising range, he’ll definitely come along. He may even re-raise me. If he has a King, he may just call due to my weak looking bet. He decides to call my 250 bet and the river brings a harmless 2c. I feel like I’m way ahead here due to the action up to this point and I size up a value bet I think will get paid off. With the pot at 895 I bet a little more than half on the river, 450. He instantly called.
What do you think he had? With two Aces on board, I couldn’t believe he’d call me all the way down with an Ace. At least a solid player would’ve re-raised me on the turn to see where he was at in the hand. The hand he flipped over was one of the two hands I figured he might have.
Results: 1,795 Pot
MP2 mucked K♦-Q♦ (two pair, Aces and Kings) and LOST (-860 NET)
Hero showed 10♠-J♠ (a flush, Ace high) and WON 1,795 (+935 NET)
Winning this pot brought my stack back up to T$2885 which is almost what I started with. Shortly after this hand I picked up Q-Q and doubled up before the 1st break. I took that stack deep into this tournament and finished 3rd overall for $6017.

PokerXFactor acquires PokerFox

PokerXFactor.com, the online poker training center, announced the acquisition of competitor PokerFox.net. The move means that Chris “pokerfox” Wallace and Adam “hatfield13″ Stemple will be joining PokerXFactor as instructors.

According to a press release from PokerXFactor:

The acquisition of PokerFox.net will add over 200 videos of advanced poker instruction to the PokerXFactor (PXF) Training Center library, plus numerous articles and blogs aimed at helping poker players win. In addition, Chris Wallace, who is recognized as a top poker coach today, will focus on teaching PXF subscribers bankroll building, cash games, poker software and tools, and general poker best practices. Adam Stemple will become PokerXFactor’s lead instructor on mixed games. Both instructors will play active roles in the PokerXFactor community.

Feds Admit They Have No Clue How To Enforce Anti-Online Gambling Legislation

In the fall of 2006, Congress (for reasons that have never been explained) put a clause banning online gambling into a bill supposedly about protecting our ports (so no one would vote against it). Since then there's been an ongoing legal effort to get that part of the law overturned. It's particularly upset financial institutions who are told they need to stop gambling operations from accepting money -- though, they're not quite sure how to do that. To top it all off, even the federal officials who are charged with enforcing this law are now admitting that they have absolutely no clue how to enforce it, noting that the legislation itself is incredibly broad and unclear. In other words, we have a law that almost no one wants and which those in charge of enforcing have no idea how to enforce or even why they should enforce it. So why did it get passed in the first place? Well, at least our ports are safe.

Devilfish Poker a Loser

The online home of British poker professional David "Devilfish" Ulliott post a six-month loss recently. PLUS-listed Devilfish Gaming Plc announced that Devilfish Poker Ltd saw a pretax loss of nearly 280,000 pounds. This is compared to 180,000 pounds lost last year when faced with higher administrative costs. The news continues to look grim as the report indicates that the room doesn’t expect revenues to increase during the next six months. This is when Devilfish Poker will be integrated into a new gaming platform by Entraction. The report does indicate that the room’s directors expect the six months past that to be a period of regrowth.

Knight Rider in Las Vegas

Fans of the recently cancelled "Las Vegas" television series may have noticed the casino set of the fictitious being used in the NBC movie-of-the-week (if they still had movies-of-the-week) "Knight Rider," based on the series with David Hasselhoff (above is a picture from the preview poster, though we don't remember the revamped car looking this good).

Ratings were high enough that NBC greenlit the show into a series, and who to run it other than Gary Scott Thompson, the creator of "Las Vegas."

While we thought the "Knight Rider" movie stunk on ice, we have hopes for Thompson and his penchant for action and soap opera.

Perhaps we'll see more of The Montecito. Maybe we'll at last have a pseudo-ending that the "Las Vegas" fans have been craving.

Hulu.com and NBC.com both offer the "Knight Rider" movie on their site, streaming for free (along with episodes of "Las Vegas," R.I.P.).

Playboy issue featuring Jennicide is on newsstands

  The poker community has known for some time now about Jennifer “Jennicide” Leigh’s appearance in the May issue of Playboy, and the wait is now officially over.

Cherry Club Las Vegas opens as only strip club with water park Archives

The new 116,000-square-foot Cherry Club Las Vegas opens tonight, hosted by Scott Baio and joined by various porn stars from around the country.

Baio (Chachi from "Happy Days") will serve as a judge for 21 amateur Cherry model finalists competing for the title of Miss Cherry Pie and $1,000 in cash. And they won't have to worry about Baio, since he married his longtime girlfriend last year (Baio was a frequent guest of the Playboy mansion before being banned from dating too many Playboy Playmates).

The first gentlemen's club to be located on the Las Vegas Strip, Cherry also boasts a waterfall and wave pool with cherry-shaped inner tubes big enough for two. Positioned on various water stages are Cherry dancers wearing white clothing designed to quickly turn dry to wet to dry again from water that's encouraged to be splashed.

In another first, Cherry is also the only club in the nation to be completely account-based: patrons can receive cards in the mail and add money to them via credit card or cash at the cashier. All transactions are cashless, including dances, where dancers will scan your card in advance. This conveniently addresses the problem of getting bills wet in the pool.

The "Breaking the Cherry" ribbon-cutting ceremony begins tonight at 8 p.m. Complimentary food will be available from area eateries, with an open bar of Three Olives cherry vodka the first two hours of opening.

Each night, Cherry will feature an anonymous dancer who's never danced before. The patron who correctly identifies her at the end of the evening will be randomly drawn and refunded of all his night's dances. Guesses can be made via card swipe at kiosks throughout the club.

Tonight only, locals with photo I.D. receive the first dance and first drink for free. After the grand opening, locals will always receive 2-for-1 cocktails, bottle specials, and a special whirlpool lounge.

Appropriately, the club is located south of Sahara Hotel & Casino in the old Wet 'n' Wild location.