Hiya,

I will start with the stud questions. Jef in his comment pretty much summed up most of the answers.

1) You have split 6's with a Q kicker. An A up open raises in EP and there are a few callers showing very little. Do you Fold or Call?

Call: You are getting the odds to draw now a few people are in[

2) Same scenario as above except the A up is in MP. Do you fold or all?
Call: Although this hand is a bit tricker because there is a chance you could be reraised from behind you once you have called, there are still callers in and the likelhood now of it being raised is very slim. And as 1) you are getting value to draw to your trips/two pair.

3) Same scenario as 1) except it's folded round to you. Do you fold or call?
Fold: Although there is a chance of a player calling behind you, nobody has come in as of yet and you do not want to be going HU against what you strongly think is aces. You could call this if the player who raised seems to be very loose, but if he is tight it's an easy muck.

4) same scenario as 2) except it's folded round to you. Do you fold or call?
Fold: Again same answer as 3, unless you think there is a chance of someone calling behind or that he is an extremely loose player.

5) same as scenario 1) except your kicker is an 8. Do you fold or call?

Call: Doesn't make much difference that the kicker is an 8, except there will be more times you get done over with a small two pair, but then this is where your board reading skills come into play

6) same as scenario 2) except your kicker is an 8. Do you fold or call?
Fold: For the same reasons I have already given for any folds in these scenarios


These may be simple questions and basic theory, but I actually found for 2 of these questions I didn't know what the best course of action was. After I spoke to my friend it all made perfect sense. I also noticed from playing that there are also a lot of people out there that do not know how to play these sort of hands, so hopefully this gives my reader(s) a bit more insight.

So, on with what has been happening since Saturday.

Sunday was an ok day. I got a friend of mine to play the £40k GTD on Sun which he cashed in (27th for £400). I watched my friend play for a bit, then I played some 5/10 stud till around 4am and did ok.

Monday was a bit of an up and down day. First of all I was annoyed I had to get the stud games going. I waited till about 5pm then decided to just sit down and be prepared to play HU and shorthanded. Well, the £2/4 game soon filled up and it started off badly and ended up ok.

The £5/10 then got going so I decided to give that a go and promptly lost. The game was very juicy so I ended up playing full handed then shorthanded till about 3am. At this point the players left and it was me and someone else HU. To say I completly dictated the play of the game and was in complete control was an understatement. I usually play this person at £2/4 and while not overly great, they usually do ok.

Tonight I ended up taking a lot of money off them at £5/10 and was playing till around 8am. By that time a few more players joined and I was too tired to keep track of more than one board.

There were quite a lot of 20bb+ pots with this person, one being when I had trip 5's on 4th, we ended up 8 betting it, with two of the fives showing, they were double bets naturally. Disaster on 5th when they now showed open aces. I was convinced that they had trips and me crushed so I called down from then. Turns out that all they had was a pair of aces.

That was probably the most exciting of the hands, with a couple of others such as Aces up, flushes, a house v house and so on.

So tomorrow I think I might take a day off except perhaps play a tourney or something. I think after this session I need a bit of a break. Let's see how the games are tomorrow.

Anyway, that's it for now.

Night.