Excessive Variance

The weekend before last so I was planning a road trip down to Nashville to hang out with some friends for the weekend.  Originally I was going to take Friday off of work and leave Thursday night so I could show up early Friday.  However once I found out my babysitting plans for Friday night had fallen through I was going to skip out on the trip.  When I told Alan I wasn’t going to make it he suggested I fly down on Saturday morning which seemed like a decent plan except all the flights were close to or above $1000.  For a two day trip a thousand dollar flight is a bit much.  Then he found me a flight for a little over $200 through a discount website so I booked it.  When I checked the website of the airline I was flying the cost on the same flight was over $1100.  Moral of the story, shopping for airfare deals is worth the time.

So I get down to Nashville Saturday morning and head out to Alan’s place to hang out and wait to meet up with everyone else.  I had been to Tennessee once before and my one distinct memory was going into a McDonald’s for breakfast and them blaring old country music which made me feel like I was walking into a scene from Deliverance.   This time however it didn’t take long to find more unusual things.  For instance I came across a stop sign that tells you not to stop of you are turning right, if you are parking in the street you have to put two wheels on the curb instead of just being next to it.  The Grocery stores sell beer but no liquor, and liquor stores don’t sell beer.  What a fucking inconvenience.  Then in the liquor store we were accosted by a rather large dog which isn’t exactly something I’m used to.  I’m just happy that the store didn’t smell like dog piss.

Despite the oddities that filled Nashville, we ended up going to meet up with everyone else at some Irish sounding restaurant called O’Charleys for lunch.  I would have been more impressed if they had leprechaun servers, but no such luck.  The only person who knew I was coming beforehand was Alan, so when we showed up for lunch I was a bit of a surprise.  So much so that I nearly got a fat lip from getting headbutted by Kristen when she gave me a hug.  So after sitting down and having a nice lunch we headed back to Alan’s for some poker, drinking, and whatever else came up.  We ended up testing out his setup for his new bar poker league which included tables, chips, computer software and anything else you might need to run a game.  There was lots of fun as we joked around and drank a good amount of beer while mixing in shots of Patron.  Eventually we headed out to dinner at Fuji’s Japanese Steakhouse & Hibachi Grille.  It was a a good time as we drank some more and were entertained by our goofy chef.  After that we left and headed to a local bar where more drinking occurred, prop betting took place (bets on number of people in bar, price of a electronic dart board,  money in my pocket, and how often the waitress had made out with locals among other things),  karaoke was preformed (though I’m sad we didn’t get to see Nuthin But a G Thing preformed), and the girls were hit on by a redneck biker guy who claimed to have beaten the world champion in darts.  After more drinking we called it a night, and headed to the suite to crash where we were even treated to an impromptu T-Pain performance.

Next morning we get around and go to Ruby Tuesday’s for sort of goodbye brunch as a lot of people were leaving.  After saying goodbyes I was off to meet up with Alan to go to a home game that was going to be a deep stack PLO tournament and cash games.  In the tournament I busted just before the final table, and waited for a seat in the cash game.

The cash game was a 5 dollar on the button dealer choice game.  When I first sat down the popular game was PLO8, though occasionally PLO,  Stud8, or Razz would be chosen.  When the game got shorthanded the triple draw games became more popular (2-7 or A-5).  The weird thing about it is these guys liked to play it with a no limit format, which in triple draw is just retarded as anyone with a made hand tended to bet everyone out of the pot.

There was a guy to my right named Ray who was quite possibly one of the three worst players I’ve ever seen.  The guy was a walking book of tells.  He reminded me a lot of Old Richard Simmons who plays in our local games.  Ray would openly call for cards and when they hit he would over shove into pots betting 10x what was there to “prevent draws”.  One hand we were playing A-5 triple draw and after the first draw I had a made 8 (8542A) and he was still peeling his cards.  He held them up to his face and started cheering when he saw one, saying loudly “Oh just one more is all I need” and he apparently was happy with the card as he shouted “YES!!!” and instantly shoved nearly $300 into a $35 dollar pot.  I laid down my hand knowing I was going to have to toss my 8 and pull for a 7, 6 or 3.  He got looked up and when the hands were shown down Ray’s 7532A beat the other guys 7543A.  Alan was the lone dealer at this point and we kept exchanging glances whenever Ray would so some randomly stupid play which was pretty much every other hand or so.

The game ended and I booked a small loss for the weekend, but it made me wish I could play in that game on a daily basis.  I flew back into town the next day after a long layover in Madison thanks to a screw up on my tickets.  With my late arrival Monday was sort of a wash so I called it a night.

Tuesday I had an outstanding invite to a local game that has probably been running longer than any other game in the area.  It’s private 15/30 mixed game that is played in a downtown hotel.  The guy who runs it rents out a suite, and each of the players pays a rake on the first buy in that covers part of the suite and dinner for the night from the hotels restaurant.  I’ve heard about the game for years (inducing some weird stories surrounding it) and I’ve known people that have been playing in it for a while, but I had never been invited before.   So this was my first time going, and I got there a bit early to check things out.  As players filtered in I was familiar with the majority of them which was nice, since I wasn’t going to be playing a ton of unknown commodities.  I ran really good the first hour and had nearly trippled my buy in and was getting a lot of comments about “welcome to the game… we are here every week” type comments since I was running the game over.  One of the rules of the game though is you can’t leave before midnight if you are winning.  Not that I was planning on hitting and running, but I switched gears and slowed down a bit to preserve my win and let someone else run hot for a while.  By the time the game was ready to break at midnight I had leaked back a little of my profit but still booked a nice win.

I liked the game so when my schedule allows it I’ll defeintely be playing it again.