The Biggest Fish in the Smallest Pond

Vinny Gambini: What about these pants I got on? You think they're okay?
Mona Lisa Vito: Imagine you're a deer. You're prancing around. You get thirsty. You spot a little brook. You put your little deer lips down to the cool, clear water - BAM. A fucking bullet rips off part of your head. Your brains are lying on the ground in little bloody pieces. Now I ask you, do you give a fuck what kind of pants the son-of-a-bitch who shot you was wearing?

”My Cousin Vinny”

I spent about 4 hours last night setting up the new machine, and a further hour changing the settings and installing all the drivers/programs that I use. No poker programs are on the machine as yet though.

I was thinking about the big jump I made, and thought back to the times when I was putting my entire bankroll on the line for a $5 buy in. How hard it was to go from $0 to $1 – I tell you, that was the hardest dollar ever earned. And I was thinking about if I could do it again when a little email popped into my inbox.

I have received $10 from Titan poker because I have been away for so long. Hang on, didn’t Noble poker give me some as well?

I checked into Noble, and I had $5.46 in my account. Well, why not one last hurrah on the old machine?

Why not go back to my roots and post about playing at the penny tables?

I headed to the $5NL tables, and thought I would see what I could do.

I managed to push everyone off the first hand when I have top pair on a ragged flop, and with 4 checks in front of me I put out a pot sized bet. Wow, that was some tight post flop play for a penny table. Pretty soon I am up to $6 (or up 50BB if you prefer) and I’m pushing people around constantly. It was funny how good it felt – I then thought about the level I was playing at and compared it to going to a kindergarten and muscling the other kids out of their snack packs. I might have to do that today, I could really go a snack pack right now.

So anyways, I get dealt the rockets in the small blind. There are about 4 limpers then late position raises it to 20 cents. Actually, that’s kind of depressing in the light of day now. Why don’t we say they raised it up to 10BB. The button then re-raised to 30BB total. And here I am, sitting with aces. I decided to make a bold statement here – I’m going to scream out at the top of my lungs “I have Aces, you don’t want to mess with me!”.

I re-raised it to 131BB, about 40% of my stack. That usually sends a pretty clear message, doesn’t it?

2 callers. Well, ok I guess.

The flop is Jack high rainbow, and I decided that these guys already had more than 75% invested in the pot, they are either all-in or all-out now so lets make the decisions easy for them. I pushed and had both of them easily covered.

2 callers. Well, ok I guess.

The turn and river come and bring not much. I show aces, late position has Queens and UTG has sevens.

And I am sitting at a 1c/2c table with nearly four times the buy in, or 924BB.