I was in a hand in the 400/1200 No Limit Hold Em I played last night. I was holding 8-9 suited. I was in 2nd place with 3s-4s. Aside from Big Slick, my two other hands were somewhat decent. In middle position, I raised 2x the big blind to $800. I had a stack of about $3,100 when I called. Everyone folded to me.

I had about $3,100 in chips.

I bet $600 to try and steal the blinds. If I won the hand, I would have a pretty nice stack. But, I was not going to let a chance to doubling up get away from me. Not unless I had a huge hand. I called.

The flop was all face cards. I had top pair, but the worst hand. Even if I hit top pair, there is no guarantee that I would win the hand. And if I lost to an over card, it would only get harder for me to pick up chips in a later hand. Not that I would want to waste chips against Big Slick, but I don’t like throwing away a big hand unless I have a monster.

The turn was a disaster. I checked. Both blinds checked. This may have been the best time for me to make a move since both blinds were in the pot. If I had any sort of hand, I would have made a cbet. But, since I didn’t, I let the one blind call.

The dog owner re-raised to $4,000. I looked down. This was not going to be a hand where I had 3’s or 4’s. Not unless I got extremely lucky on the flop. And even if I did, it still might not be worth losing a full pot of $1200 to a pair of threes. I was getting the impression that the player was getting out of control. And the more I thought about it, the worse I felt.

I re-raised all-in. My opponent called. I hoped that the flop would help me out.

The flop was all cards. I did the same thing. Except I folded when my opponent raised in the same situation a few hands earlier. This time I called. On the turn, out of all these bad hands, my two other outs did nothing for me. Luckily, I only lost the pot about $100, and that’s not a lot of money. I definitely won’t be doing this play again in a while.

So, what was the point? My point is simply – you have to be more selective in Early Chipampa than your counterparts in other games. Especially in a later position. For example, in Hold ’em you have to be more aggressive. targeting a player directly to my right would be horrible if someone pulled pocket Aces and beat me to it. It would also be horrible to run into a player with pocket 5’s. You want to pick and choose the right hands to play.

Calling all in’s with hands like Q-6s and pocket 5’s to Timmy2000 netted me an average of $50.00 each time. That’s not a lot, but usually I would at least double that each time. Beating out players who had previously been in the hand was very important. I had about 10 or 15 mins to wait for the blinds to appear, so I picked up $300 chips to try and double up. I was happy to draw out on the button, as it gave me a chance to see if I could steal the blinds or not.

Unfortunately, the small blind went all-in with pocket 7’s! He had over 25 big blinds! It was only $30, but I was able to fold knowing I probably couldn’t win the hand. However, the closer I got to the double-up goal, the less I wanted to stick around. To try and get some more value for my hand, I threw away both blinds and raised the pot on the button. It was a good decision, as the flop was almost exactly at my buyin.

For the next three or four hours, I did pretty well. I made some all-in plays and almost always had some chips. However, the difference here is that I never made a mistake and actually ended up losing my chips on purpose. It’s a good thing I stuck to my game and actually made money rather than going all-in and losing.

After my lucky win on the button, things started to go downhill. Sometime I was the chip leader, but often I would be out chip leader with about $200 to go.