I've said this many times before, I feel like cash game poker is the main way you earn your living as a pro. From the more flexible hours, to the potential to have much, much shorter days cash games just make a lot of sense. I have been very focused on the cash game side of the equation for most of this year, trying to develop my skills to a point where I could start relying on cash game income more, as well as take better advantage of my rakeback deals. I have noticed one major problem with me playing cash games more, it's absolutely more boring to talk about than tournaments.

Every now and then though you have a session playing cash games where everything just goes your way. This past Monday was one of those sessions. A buddy of mine sent me a text at about 9 in the morning which read and I quote, "If you're awake, I'm heading down to Foxwoods today." It had been raining for a full day at this point, I had no other real plans, and I had just come off of a big weekend of filming so I was itching to play anyway. I drove in and arrived around 12:30PM to the casino. The place was utterly packed, I've never seen it as busy as it was on Monday since the World Poker Finals last year. The waiting list for a 1/2 NL seat was something like 40 people deep. Now the one saving grace was that there just weren't a ton of tables running at this point so once new dealers started coming in the lists started moving. I still didn't start playing until about 2PM, but it could have been much worse.

I played for a 6 hour session and had only two big pairs, AA once in a small pot and KK once in my biggest losing pot of the day. Usually that's the start of a bad session story, but my tale has a very happy ending. I was hitting monsters left and right. My small pairs were making sets, my suited connectors were flopping big draws and getting there, some of those were actually just flopping the stone nuts. One such hand had a very funny quote in it. UTG raised to 12 and I looked at JTo from MP, I had about $300 infront of me so I opted to try and play a big pot, plus this game was notorious for people calling behind. I got one other caller and the flop comes:

Qx9c8c

UTG bets out $40 and here's where I'm not too sure what's up. If I call I'm giving the guy behind a chance to chase if he has a flush draw with about 4-1 on his money (a little less thanks to the rake). If I come out blasting here it screams big hand, at the very least AQ trying to blast away a draw or maybe a hand like QTcc. I wanted to try and win a big pot here and I thought UTG is def firing the turn so I opted to call. The third player just folded and the 5c hit the turn. We got it all in on the turn where UTG had AQ. The quote of the day portion of the story come from the guy who folded who said when the hands were turned up, "I folded a club draw. Had to fold since you called, I wasn't getting the right odds." Um...ok ship the pot then. I left the session +$671 so I went and got myself a $20 sushi dinner over at Shrine to celebrate then went on my merry way.

Cash games are much better in the moment than they are talking about later. I've had some funny things happen to me at the tables before, a guy standing up and his pants falling down is likely the top of that list, but it's always "sexier" and more exciting to talk about MTTs. By the time the MiniFTOPS rolls around I'll have some more to talk about but until then, back to the salt mines.