Last time I went to play live, I had two pretty stupendous pots when I was dealt AA twice in three hands.

Typical $1/$3 live game. Two people limp, and the guy on my right (with about $150) raises to $40! I look down at my red Aces and consider flatting, but then decide not to get fancy with these idiots and just shove my $110 stack. The guy on my left snap-shoves like he can't get his chips in fast enough. Folded around to the original raiser who reluctantly calls. At this point, I'm wondering if the guy on my right could possibly have the black Aces, because the way he was acting, I would have thought I was dead with Kings. I flip my Aces, the guy on my right flips Queens (about what I expected), and then the snap-shover shows JJ? JJ???? An innocuous board ending with an Ace on the river triples me up.

Two hands later, I raise to $18 with AA (again) after one limper. To my surprise, I get 5 callers! The flop was something benign like 9-6-2 with two spades (I have the Ace of spades). Checked to me, I bet $65, and the guy on my left (the guy who oddly shipped with Jacks) shoves for $90 total. Folded back to me (whew), and I obviously call. A third spade makes me slightly nervous, but I turned up my Aces to a series of "wow's" and he mucked on the river. All of a sudden I have like $520.

I played for about 90 minutes after that, went totally card-dead (and got a fair amount of ribbing for not playing many pots in that time), and cashed out for $480. Nice little session. Too bad I went back to the casino later and dropped $190 back at $3/$6 limit (card dead even worse). Limit is like watching paint dry now. I probably need to play higher to make it more exciting. That sounds healthy.

Online, I've been running mostly cold. In PLO, I've been taking some sick beats and running into sick coolers (second set with blockers versus top set on draw heavy boards where their range is wide open, etc). Had a nice straight flush for almost 300 BB today, and hopefully I'm back on the upswing, but we'll see what happens. I'd like time to play tournaments, but it never seems to be the right time. Besides, cash games are probably still more +EV for me, but I'm still jealous of these other THP'ers taking down big scores. When is my boat gonna come in? I want a vacation this year! ;)