Met sash and his girl for lunch at carnegie deli and after bloating ourselves went to play some 2/5 NL at mgm.

We run good so the game we’d called about in advance was just starting as we arrived with 2 open seats.  I run bad so Sash won the flip for position and took the 9 seat while  had the 7.

I’d been up 18 hrs by this point so I was immediately in a pretty meh spot – but it’s not like I can just refuse to play when he wins position, I just have to minimise the loss to him.

Sash took full advantage with a vpip over 40% which further restricted the hands I could enter with, but he did fire up the table some with straddles at every opportunity and blind raises utg+1 when he got the megafish sat between us to straddle.

1st interesting hand for me was my 1st blind, 2 lmp limps and the pensioner in the SB raises to 20, I flat with J9dd and we see a flop T98hh 4 way.  SB leads for 50 and I min raise to 100.  I can fold if one of the people behind ships and don’t mind getting it in versus the old guys likely overpair.  The most likley course of events is the one that happened tho.  turn bricked and he checks to me.  I sigh deeply and audibly then announce I’m all-in.  He tanks and folds.  I refrain from showing the semi-bluff. Half the table then says “I knew you had it when you sighed”, to which Sash lapses into the trademark giggle that has half the UK tour thinking he’s a chick and calls the sigh the anti-nuts.  I plan to sigh and push with air against him this trip and slam-show as it would be so crazy to do it against him without the nuts.

Next interesting hand, I’m in the SB and sash has straddled.  mp ships for 62$ and I look down at AQs.  Even live I should figure to have the best hand here with the straddle halving effective stack sizes.  I get a slightly sick feeling realising that if I put any chips into this pot I have to stack off against sash.

I like a min-raise here to rep a weak iso hand and encourage him to ship over me for immediate profit and freeroll on main, but I was fairly sure he’d seen me do this a lot with KK/QQ so it would put me in an awkward spot where I wouldn’t be comfortable folding but I’m probably in bad shape to his reraise-range.  So I flatted and as expected Sash raised to 220, I insta-ship and he has to call.  I flip AQ and they both flip AK.  Nice.   Flop AKx. “CHIPS!”

His range probably isn’t as wide I first thought because of the live nit in the hand, but AQs should still be the nizzles.

The pensioner from the early hand decided that he was pretty much done folding at this point and especially to me which let me get back to even while Sash booked a dime win.

Even is fine after losing the position flip and I was pleases with how soft the 2/5 games were. And soft in a fun way not in the UK way that makes me want to hammer nails into my eyeballs to serve the twin purposes of not having to watch the weak-tight horror show anymore and relieve the soul-crushing boredom