Happy New Year !!

I'm getting the poker itch REAL bad. I'm still playing local $1/2 games, but it's hard to not put some money back into the PartyPoker account.

The local game I'm playing at has some really loose players. Here's a nice hand from the last time I played.

Full table of 10. Bought in for $300. Worked it up to about $330 within the first 30 minutes.

Loose cannon at the opposite end of the table, you could tell that everybody was gunning for him. He bought it cheap and worked it up to about $600. He was raising 8-5, straddling every couple of hands, betting crazy, .... all over the place.

He's in the BB and several players limp in, I'm one off the button and limp in with A3-diamonds. He checks it in his big blind. Flop comes down all diamonds Queen high. SB checks, he checks, checks all the way around. Turn is a nothing. He bets $10 ... fold ... fold ... call .. and I call.

So now we have 3 people in the pot. River is a nothing, but completes an inside super crazy hidden straight, if someone was playing crazy cards. He bets $40, other caller folds, .... I Hollywood, but not for too long. I'm thinking, "How can I make some money on this hand?" ... I min raise to $80.

He starts talking and contemplating then says, "You have Ad and didn't make your flush .. I raise $80" .... Now I'm in heaven ! ... I put my head real close to the board to stare at what he could possibly have. It's possible that he has a straight. His betting patterns match a chase that he's done before. I think about how to get the most out of him. If I raise all-in, will he call ? I decided that he will defintely call $100 more, so I say, "Raise $100 more" .... then then look of terror, it finally hits him, he is defintely beat, but $100 more into a $462 pot and he has to call.

I turn over the nuts and he turns over 2nd nuts. We both flopped the flush. Crazy, no way I could put him on that hand. It's 118 to 1 to flop a flush, almost impossible to put somebody on another flopped flush.

Jeff was playing that game and I could see him steaming. Everybody else was too. When you got a maniac like that you are just praying for that type of hand to trap him with. CardPlayer had an article not that long ago about the dangerous river raises. And that was a perfect example of why you need to watch out.