Poker Sunday

I played a pretty good amount of poker yesterday, but unfortunately the results weren't very impressive. I played two Sunday tournaments and almost 1,000 hands of cash games. The two Sunday tournaments went very standard, with nothing much happening in the beginning, then getting it in ahead and losing. In the million, I got it in with AK vs. AJ and lost that, which left me crippled. Then in the UB, I got KK in against a flush draw and lost. The million was $530 this week, so that sucked. I'm not going to play the Sundays anymore unless I satellite into them. As for the cash game session, I played about 940 hands and lost $10. I never fluctuated above or below a buy-in, but I did have a lot of interesting spots. Here are some of the hands:

http://www.pokerhand.org/?1315047
This was by far the worst hand I played. As soon as I got check raised 4x my bet, I was basically able to narrow his hand down to two possible holdings: a set or a small/medium flush. His large raise shows fear and that he wanted to take the pot down right there. For some unknown reason, I got the instinct to gamble and I think it was more scorn for people making these types of calls against me and winning. I still had 30% equity in the hand, but I definitely was getting the odds to justify a call. Either way, this was very uncharacteristic and something I hope to never do again. Plus, it basically taunted me for playing like a donkey by giving me the diamond on the river, but it was of course the only diamond in the deck that could pair the board.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?1315065
I hate the way I played this hand. For some reason, I decided to just flat call the raise, rather than squeeze like I normally would. By doing this, I left myself in a very confusing spot. The original raiser has a range of something like 22+,A9+,QJ+. The button caller has a slightly smaller range of around 33+, AJ+, KQ. My instinct told me that the original raiser was most likely on two paint cards and that the caller was on a medium pair. I'm still not exactly sure what to do in this spot. If I lead, there is a decent chance I take it down there, but if I get raised, I almost always have to fold. This doesn't sound bad, but my lead out often gets raised by the original raiser on boards like these, and alot of the time it is a bluff with over cards. I decided to go for the check raise, and then if I got 3 bet I could easily fold. The flop checked around, so I figured my hand was best, and I bet out. When the one player just called, I was still lost in the hand as I felt he might call with a combo draw hand, a slow played set that is now afraid of the heart, or two pair. The river isn't a great card, because I now lose any lower pair except 88 or 77, and those two hands would never bet that river in my opinion. So I once again turned into a calling station and paid him off with his rivered straight with 44 (a very marginal call on the turn in my opinion, but what can you do).

http://www.pokerhand.org/?1315086
This hand was really frustrating. I had been 3 betting quite a bit in the few hands prior to this one, so I decided to mix it up and just call with my AK. I got a really nice flop and decided to check raise about 3.5x his bet, and then he flat called. This allowed me to assign a range of a set or a weaker ace, with the weaker Ace being the case about 70% of the time. Unfortunately, this guy decided to get stubborn with his mid pair and called the raise, and then got the perfect turn card for his hand. I made a committing bet on the turn and he shoved on me with his 20 outs (literally) and hit another 8 on the river. I was only a 55% favorite going into that river, but it would've been really nice to fade half the deck for once.

There were some other interesting hands where I actually won the pot, but I feel this post has enough in it already. Please leave me some feedback on how I played these hands as this wasn't my best poker session...