Wow, it's been a while

Poker's been rough the past couple of months, pretty much ever since my tourney win I've been struggling to break even. I've changed over to non-deep tables for the time being because the deep tables were more and more becoming littered with regs, which is even worse than the shortstacks I have to deal with at the 100bb max tables.

Anyway, it's been working so far, and last night I hit a fun hand that gave me most of my profit:

I'm ~200bb deep in MP and pick up pocket jacks. A tight, 13/9 player that I don't have any other real read on opens from UTG+1 and I flat call, so as to not eliminate all but the top end of his range. A new player (0/0 over 3 hands, 100bb deep) calls 2 seats to my left and the big blind calls as well. We see the flop 4-handed.

Flop is 8TJ rainbow, giving me top set on an otherwise scary coordinated board. BB checks, original raiser pots it for nearly $15, I make a mandatory raise up to $49.

Usually when there's a cbet and a raise in a multiway pot, the other players can't possibly wait to get rid of their hands, but the late position player goes into the tank, really using up his timebank. Eventually he shoves for his 100bb!

BB folds and it gets back to the opener, and he shoves over the top for his remaining nearly 200bb!

I have to double-check that I did, in fact, flop top set.

Now, I think it pretty much impossible that the original raiser flopped a straight, and is instead likely spazzing with AA or has an underset. I thought the late position guy probably had 79 or even 9Qs, for sure, but it's still an obvious call since I'm basically freerolling here so long as the opener didn't flop a very unlikely set.

So I instacall.

Opener turns over AA, and the guy who overshoved my raise turns over AQo!

Um, thanks for the 300bb I guess! My top set holds against the double gutshot and overpair, and I remark that you almost never see postflop play that bad even at the deep tables. I think I'll force myself to deal with the shorties for a time.

Besides, I play better shortstacked poker than the vast majority of them do anyway.