Saturday, December 23, 2006

Sometimes You Get the Donkey

It has been far too long since I got a major adrenaline rush out of a poker hand, but last night I was playing in a 1/2 NL live game at Sam's Town after washing out of the late tournament, when I got one of the best hands I've had in a long time.

I was staring at pocket kings UTG, and raised to $7, which wasn't really that big of a raise given the way the game had been running, but I knew that even the idiots at the table had a tight image of me, and anything more than what had been my standard raise up to that point would have won me a measly $3, tip not included.

I got 4 callers, including the BB.

The flop came Qc Kc Qs and I nearly wet myself. BB checks, I check, checks all around, but I knew someone had a Q. It was just that kind of game.

The turn was a 5s, BB checks, and I figure I may as well test the waters. I toss in $25, two players behind me fold, the BB flat calls me. River is the As, and the BB checks while staring off at the TV uninterested in the game.

Huge tell for this guy... I have not a doubt in my mind. I'm getting paid, and push all-in without the slightest of hesitation.

He jumps out of his chair and practically screams, "I call!". As his arm is coming down to ghetto-slap his cards on the table, I casually toss my KK onto the board and watch with a joy I rarely get anymore.

The man goes pale, and his legs loosen like he just took a right hook from Tyson, bracing himself with his free hand on the table as he tries to turn his Qh 5d back down to muck it, but it's too late, we've all seen it, and the few good players at the table are trying unsucessfully not to laugh. I bank four bills and send the tourist back to his room with a christmas "bad beat" story for his wife.

It's about time one of these morons called my UTG raise out of position with shit cards and got what they deserved. I needed to write it down here just to put future bad beats in perspective.

-Tommy
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Tuesday, December 19, 2006

Glasses Down!

"I would feel bad just ditching you with strangers while I go play poker, but I think I'm going to ditch you with strangers while I go play poker." - Me, to Waffle (roomate, not blogger).

By the time we got to Caesar's the blogger tourney was already nearing the end, so I wandered around to see who was present. My roomate knew the one of the masseuses in the room, and I had to carry on without him for a few minutes.

I recognized April and Gracie railbirding the last two tables, so I went over to say hi and reintroduce myself from this summer, when I had met them briefly. After I told Gracie that my roomate was with me, and what he did for a living ("Senior Aquarist" for the forum shops... he gets paid to feed fish or something), she immediately seemed to lose interest in the game, and wanted to go "see the fishies". I introduced my roomate to them and while they haggled over arranging a private tour, I went looking for Iggy, who I heard was donking it up at a nearby 3/6 table.

"We got seats open." he said, but I never play when drinking, so after checking with Waffle to make sure he was Ok with his new tourguide duties, I grabbed an empty chair next to Grubby and asked for a waitress (who took a little over 45 minutes to appear), ordered a few glasses of Jack & water, and embraced my inner donkey. Also present were Grubbette and Linda. About an hour later I caught an ace on the river to go with the two in my hand, and figured being up $9 was as good a time as any to go get something to eat before heading acroos the street to the PokerTek shindig at the Imperial Palace.

After a quick snack I met up with a friend who deals (poker, not drugs) in front of the Palace, who I invited because of his obvious professional interest in the automated tables. When we finally navigated our way to the room the party was being held, we were surprised to find that we were the first to arrive (I don't think that's ever happened to me before), which meant we were first to choose our chairs next to the open bar. This later turned out to not matter at all, since I spent all my time playing on the tables, and the open bar had no whiskey.

As for PokerTek, I didn't like the tournament table, but I want desperately to see the heads-up table in bars around Vegas. Especially bars that already have Gaming licenses. I get all tingley when I think of drunken slot junkies lined up in front of that thing on a Saturday night. Hopefully the insanely aggressive blind structure was for demo mode only.

Eventually we headed back downstairs to find seats at the Pai Gow tables where I managed to run through $300 in a little less than an hour playing with Maigrey, who introduced me to the game last summer, and Garth, who had a theory about keeping our sunglasses down during the hand to intimidate the dealer. It didn't work.

Eventually I had to leave to meet up with some Vegas locals, which I'll probably continue to regret until the next WPBT meetup. In fact, next time I'm going to make sure my schedule is clear for the entire weekend.

-Tommy
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Thursday, December 14, 2006

Anyone Seen My Saddle?


"Where's your hat at?" - question most asked of me last weekend.

Strange thing about my penchant for cheap $5 Walmart "cowboy" hats. Half the people I know think I look funny when I'm wearing one, the other half think I look funny without it. Perhaps I'm just funny looking. In any case, I only wear them during the summer when I need to protect my scalp from the Vegas sun, because Walmart doesn't carry them all year long, and I have a bad habit of giving them away to random people during my regular drunken binges.

-----

One week ago today, the bloggers started coming into town for the weekend, and about this time last Thursday I was sitting at my desk, finishing my work for the week, and looking forward to tracking them down for drinks that evening. I went home, ate some dinner, changed out of the work clothes, then decided maybe a short nap was in order being rather tired after my standard 4 day work week of 10 hour shifts.

When I woke up early on Friday morning, I was a bit upset about missing out on the early chance to see everyone, but figured I'd catch up with them later that night. No problem. In the meantime, I decided to play a little online poker. There was a HORSE tourney starting on Full Tilt, so I played. A few hours later I finished in 3rd, decided I was on a roll, headed out to my regular haunt, Sam's Town, to see if I could keep it going.

I ended up playing in the 7pm tourney there, where I cashed in first. Technically, it was a 2 way chop, but my reputation there is such that even though we had the same number of chips, my headsup opponent didn't want to play me, and offered me an extra $200 to split it with him. I will never understand that, but I will never turn it down either. Why work for the money when they give it to you?

It's hard to quit when your running good, so I decided to play in the 11pm also, figuring I could easily catch up with everyone later that night. Instead, I went out on the bubble, and decided the strip was too far to drive for drinks, so headed to the local bar to celebrate the days winnings.

At approximately 8am I realized that I was really, really drunk, and the Blogger tourney was starting in a mere 5 hours. "No fucking way I'm missing out on all that dead money", I told myself, and headed home for a nap.

When I woke up (still drunk) at 2pm, I cursed a bit, took a shower, then called my roomate to see if he needed to be bailed out of anywhere. He had passed out at a party on the north side of town, woke up a few hours later, and drove directly to the very same bar I had left earlier that morning, where he was enjoying a tasty beverage. I told him about my wins the night before.

"Whiskey Money?", he asked.

"Whiskey Money.", I responded, "You get us to Caesar's, I'll find a way to get us home.", and a half hour later we finally met up with the blogger crew in the poker room.

Things get sort of fuzzy from there, but I'm starting to put the pieces together.

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Last night I took down the HORSE 4k Gaurantee on Full Tilt. Going into headsup play (beginning in the Razz round) I was a 4 to 1 dog in chips. My $50k to his $200k plus.

40 minutes later we enter the Hold'em round, and I have the chip lead by ~50k, and a monster psychological advantage. It is damned hard to come from that kind of deficit in any form of limit poker.

I have my Grandfather to thank for the win. Anytime I saw him when I was younger, he would lay claim to whatever allowance money I had playing headsup stud with me. He never soft played me. I used to get upset after a loss, try to whine my money back out of him, but he never relented.

In more ways than one, it was a good lesson.

-Tommy
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