Double props

First, to my brother, Matt... He took down the Winner's Choice tournament last night on Full Tilt and will most likely be joining me at the Borgata at the end of the month.

Enough about him. Now about me!

Played the $100 deepstax tourney on stars last night. I fell shy of the money as I made a couple of unsuccessful moves, stopped getting service, and then did not win a coinflip. However, I made one of my best calls ever, which I will share with you now, including step by step analysis.

Why am I doing this? Since I pepper this thing with so many frustrating stories, bad beats and whining, it's high time I proved how AWESOME I am.

POKERSTARS GAME #3565882008: TOURNAMENT #17356879, HOLD'EM NO LIMIT - LEVEL V
(75/150) - 2006/01/07 - 21:44:44 (ET)
Table '17356879 26' Seat #4 is the button
Seat 1: Octavian_C (11170 in chips)
Seat 2: pjabone (10435 in chips)
Seat 3: leemur1 (3165 in chips)
Seat 4: DeOhGee (9775 in chips)
Seat 5: jmikekennedy (22695 in chips)
Seat 6: shakeybubba (13820 in chips)
Seat 7: zqxjk (9645 in chips)
Seat 8: THEOSU (10800 in chips)
jmikekennedy: posts small blind 75
shakeybubba: posts big blind 150

I have started to run this table over. I switched gears dramatically in the past few orbits, taking down maybe 6 pots in the past 2+ orbits, and calling raises in two other pots. Therefore, my image is extremely loose. I am aware of this.

*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to THEOSU [6s Qs]
zqxjk: folds
THEOSU: raises 300 to 450
Octavian_C: folds
pjabone: folds
leemur1: folds
DeOhGee: folds
jmikekennedy: folds
shakeybubba: calls 300
*** FLOP *** [Kd 3s Qc]
shakeybubba: checks
THEOSU: checks

Pretty standard. I checked because I'd been very aggressive postflop, and I didn't really need to create a big pot when I was not sure where I stood. It's about to get interesting.

*** TURN *** [Kd 3s Qc] [Ks]
shakeybubba: bets 600
THEOSU: raises 1200 to 1800
shakeybubba: calls 1200

I could see him leading the turn with a king if a blank came off, but I simply could not see him leading the turn with a king once he made trips. It made no sense to me. I raised because I felt it likely that I had the best hand, I had a good draw. It was a raise for value at this point.

*** RIVER *** [Kd 3s Qc Ks] [Jh]
shakeybubba: checks
THEOSU: bets 2400
shakeybubba: raises 9170 to 11570 and is all-in

What's not reflected in this hand history is that shakeybubba used a signifcant amount of his time bank to make this decision. Not down to 2 or anything, but maybe 20 seconds. So he used all of his normal time, plus twenty time bank seconds. I was talking to sandtiger from PSO who was sweating me. When the river hit I said "I don't think I'm any worse than chopping this." My bet on the end was for value. I had him on a hand that was along the lines of JT, a medium pair or a queen. When he check/pushed I had to suddenly reassess things. So I went back over the hand, step by step. Was this player's play consistent with my read on every step? Could I be mistaken and could he have a king? The answer to that was yes, clearly he could, but I had a strong read that he did not have it in this instance. Therefore, the only hand I was afraid of was AQ. While there was clearly plenty of places to find a fold, I went with my instincts and my read that I was good.

THEOSU: calls 6150 and is all-in
*** SHOW DOWN ***
shakeybubba: shows [Td Tc] (two pair, Kings and Tens)
THEOSU: shows [6s Qs] (two pair, Kings and Queens)
THEOSU collected 21675 from pot
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot 21675 Rake 0
Board [Kd 3s Qc Ks Jh]

The call earned some mad props from the table. Of course, I had to tighten up for a while afterwards, because they saw I had raised with Q6s in EP. But, it earned some tremendous respect from the table, which is a good thing. Oh, and it made me feel like a champ.