Still running pretty well, winning more than I’m losing, though one spectacularly awful trip down to Atlantic City (spread out between the Taj and the Trop) wiped out the gains from four straight up sessions. Even with that nightmare (and is there any drive longer than that trip up the Parkway after a crushing?), I’m still feeling pretty positive.
Made my way to Foxwoods with a non-poker-playing friend Saturday night. Went to check out the World Poker Finals action, thinking I might play a small-limit game for a half-hour so my friend could watch… well, it’s probably a combination of the tourney and Mohegan slothoki Sun closing their room, but I’ve never seen a room so packed in my life. We’re talking lists of upwards of 30 people for the low-limit games…sheer insanity. I talked to somebody later who busted out of the 10:00 a.m. tourney at around 11:15, and then had to wait four hours to get into a live game. I did see Men “The Master” Nguyen, though.
Anyway, no great lessons to be learned, so I thought I’d run through a few amusing notes from my recent play.
What Would You Do? $10-$20 game, reasonably well-behaved. I’m in early position, but not involved in the hand. Under-the-gun calls, an aggressive, near-crazy guy in middle/late position raises. The two blinds fold and the raiser, not having seen the UTG caller, thinks he won and turns over his hand: pocket 4s. The caller, an older, salty guy, says Hey, I’m still in the hand, and three-bets. The now-embarrassed-and-exposed raiser calls, and the flop comes something like 378 rainbow. The salty guy bets and says, laughing, “Look, I have you beat, just fold.” But really, if you think about it, that isn’t a bad flop for pocket 4’s (and what if the other guy had AK or was just pulling a well-justified move). Looking deeply pained, he calls. Anyway, the turn and river come (maybe a Jack and a six), the first guy keeps betting, the embarrassed guy keeps calling, and at the end the first guy turns over…pocket 5s! The (might-as-well-be) nuts! We laughed for a good two minutes straight. with lots of “I put you on that hand” comments.
I’m sure you’ve heard this conversation before, somebody saying how he’d never play online because it’s rigged and too easy to cheat and stuff like that. It’s a reasonable opinion and I can’t blame someone for feeling that way. Except that in this particular case the player in question was in the middle of a hand where he called in early position (and a subsequent raise) with Q3…only to see the flop come down QQ3! My pointing out that if he had seen that particular hand online he would have been sure cheating was involved was met with an icy glance.
Nothing to do with recent play, but if you’ve ever been curious about what it’s like from the other side of the table, be sure to check out the always interesting, enlightening , and hilarious Table Tango on PokerWorks, the first-hand report from a dealer at the Bellagio. And speaking of vicarious living, though I no longer play online for real money, I still find myself drawn to the $100-$200 games on PokerStars. If nothing else, it makes me feel a lot better about my bad beats when I see somebody else get run down the river to lose what’s pretty much my yearly gambling budget on one hand.
