One ear, one horse race, a lot of overtimes, and cash games.
I woke up Friday morning without the ability to hear out of my left year, not the best feeling in the world but not shocking considering the ear infection I was on medication for was just clearing up. I decided it was best to go back to the doctor to see what was going on instead of waiting this time. Turns out that there was a lot of drainage in my ear from the infection being forced out and they thought it was a good idea to flush my ear. Sounds easy enough right? It was anything but easy… that was probably the second most painful feeling I’ve ever experienced. It felt like having an ice pick driven into my skull and twisted while getting drop kicked in the face. On the bright side, my hearing came back shortly afterwords and the doctor thinks everything will be good to go from here on out.
So after going back home and taking a nap to let the ringing in my head stop, I ended up getting an early start to the weekend. I jumped in the trailblazer tossed on some Outkast and headed to the card room. I managed to arrive a little before most people get off work so it was easy to scout and find a game to sit in. I found a 1/2 game with a couple semi regulars and a few unknowns who looked to be playing passively, so I took a seat and went to work.
The play was pretty boring and I was slowly building a stack over a couple of hours. Around 7 at night the table got a lot more lively when an Asian guy I call named Jackie (or possibly Jacky… I’m not sure which spelling of his name but it could be like Jackie Curtis who is transgender film star, poet and playwright so I’m going with that one… and it’s pretty amazing what you can find with a google search of the name Jackie) sat down. Jackie likes to buy in with the minimum then just overplay the first big hand he gets. He might be the worst post flop player in the history of poker. So he just tries to shove with the best of it or when he thinks people won’t call a big bet and the best part is people get really lose with calls trying to stack him which always loosens the game up.
Shortly after he arrived I got involved in a big pot where I flopped the nut straight against a huge field. It was 3 bet before it got to me and I put in a huge raise to narrow down the field and I get 2 callers. One of them with 2 pair and the other with a flush draw (who put in the 3rd raise ahead of me). Flush gets there on the turn and the guy with two pair shoved into me, I call him and get the side pot but finished down in the hand. Later with A5 against the same guy who hit the flush I flopped trip 5’s and we got it all in and I doubled up against his 75. So a few of us are shipping chips around the table in some pretty big pots and Jackie is getting anxious to play a hand when the following hand happened. A guy in the 7 seat who normally is a limit player (and a bad one at that) raises to 7.00 with pocket 8’s. A guy with pocket 10’s calls, a guy with pocket aces calls, and Jackie wakes up in the small blind with a pair of queens, so he shoves for nearly 70.00. Limit tard with his 8’s snap calls, guy with tens calls, and the guy with aces thinks this is a good time to raise so get shoves in a total of 150. Jackie is all excited talking about how he just outplayed everyone and is going to quadruple up… meanwhile limit monkey guy decides he has the best hand and calls, and the one guy who was playing the hand reasonably well decides his tens are no good and mucks them. Long story short, hands are flipped and the flop comes T84, and the worst hand of the 4 preflop ends up winning a huge pot. This alone made the game more interesting because now Jackie goes on super tilt and starts overplaying hands even more, and the worst player at the table has a lot of chips he is destined to give away. With that in mind I turn down the 2/5 game and stay at this table. The rest of the night is sort of uneventful for me however as I lose one huge pot to the aforementioned itiot when he chased a gut shot strait draw against my set and hit it, and the rest of the time I just had to grind away to get chips back. We end up closing down the game at nearly 6am, I leave up a couple hundred after a 15 hour session. A little disappointed that it easily could have been a thousand dollar night but it didn’t turn out that way.
Saturday was more of the same, but better…
I head to the card room around 3 and find the casino is absolutely packed. Oh yea… the Kentucky Derby is going on and of course the racetrack is going to be a lot busier than normal. I was hoping this would mean a packed room but everyone was still busy watching the races so there wasn’t much for game selection when I first got there.
I got seated in a short handed 1/2 game where one of the guys who is a fairly regular player was running the table over with some really agressive play. I called raises from him twice and missed flops where he fired huge continuation bets at me and decided that the next had I got into him I was going to just make a play for the pot regardless of what I was holding. On the button I called a medium raise from him with 87 suited (spades) and saw a flop with 4 way action that came AQ8, with 1 spade. It checked to him and he fired a 1/3rd size the pot bet and I decided this was where I was going to make a play. I raised his 15 dollar bet to 35, and he called. Turn was the 5 of spades and he checked to me so I fired out 75 leaving myself only 50 behind. He thought about it and called. River was a spade and he shoved enough in to cover me which seemed odd considering I thought I just sucked out on him. I called my last 50 and he showed QQ for second set. My spades won and he looked extremely confused by how that worked out. I told him I thought he was weak considering he was raising and firing at every pot so I just tried to make a play and got lucky.
While playing the table was watching the Kentucky Derby. I would like to take this time to dispute the claim of the Kentucky Derby being the most exciting two minutes in sports. It wasn’t even close the most exciting two minutes in sports on Saturday. It did spark an interesting discussion about why our state is retarded for allowing betting on horse races and not other “sports”. Anyone who thinks the derby is more exciting than the Bulls/Celtics series should be drawn and quartered. That triple overtime game 6 and a well played game 7 were a great way to finish out the series. The one part of the Derby I really do get a kick out of checking out is all the women with unnaturally large hats and dresses they will probably never wear again. Even the guys wear some pretty outstanding outfits. Who else though Jordan’s yellow stripped suit was pretty damn hilarious? He looked like a partially peeled rotten banana. I wonder if David Stern would fine him for wearing that to a game?
So after the Derby the room started getting a little more action and I continued playing 1/2 for another couple hours. Pretty soon there was a 2/5 game that was about to open. I checked out the lineup of people who were going to be playing and decided it wouldn’t be that difficult of a table. I took 375 over to the 2/5 game to start with and cashed out my profit from 1/2. I sat down and built my stack up to 500+ pretty quick as I had AA and KK in the first 3 orbits and got some money out of them by taking down both pots with bets on the flop.
Then I got involved in a pot with Fast Finger T. He is an older guy who is missing the tips of at least two fingers and always has dirty hands. I used to think he was pretty passive but that read was horribly wrong as I had learned over the last 4-5 sessions I’ve played with him. I raised to $20 with AQ of clubs and got 5 callers. Flop came Jc Td 4c, and I bet 50 into the field, Ted was the only caller. Turn was the 2 of clubs and I had the nuts. I think about how to play the hand for a second and remembered how hyper agressive Fast Finger T could be, so I checked over to him and he looked at the board for a minute before betting 50 back. I thought about calling or raising, periodically checking my hole cards to make it look like I was trying to catch one more club. I end up calling hoping the river blanks, and sure enough the river was an offsuit 8. I check to Ted and he thinks about it for a second and looks like he is just gonna flip his hand over and I am immeditly regrettig the check. He goes back and forth with a handful of chips for a second before firing out 200 at me and leaving himself 70 behind. I think for about 10 seconds and say “all-in” and he looked a bit shocked. He calls and I flipped over my hand. He looks at the board and the my hand and says “oh I didn’t even see the clubs” and then he accidentially exposed his 8 high club flush going into the muck and looks back and says “I guess I did see them”. Fast Finger T heads off to the sunset, my stack almost triple what I bought in for.
The next two big pots I played didn’t turn out quite so well.
I limped a A2 suited in diamonds in late position after a few other limpers. Flip came 742, with the 7 and 4 both being diamonds. Bottom pair and nut flush draw was definetly playable here, so when the loosest player at the table opened up for 30 I called with position on him. Unforntuantly for me the player in the small blind (The Rock, so nicknamed because you can’t move him off a hand) who is a reasonably good loose agressive player check raises to $200. Actions folds around to me and there is one other player behind me who had called. I thought about possible hands he had in the small blind and finally decided he either had a straight draw, a flush draw or some 2 pair combination and against that range I really liked my hand. I reraised to put him all in and isolate it down to me and him which was only another 120 or so. Bad part was my read was slightly off as he flipped over a set of 4’s. That took away 3 outs I thought I had but when the turn came a 3 it gave me 4 more. I needed a 5 or a diamond on the river and got blanked by the 6 of hearts. Ship a big one over to the Rock.
Next time I had a couple diamonds was in my big blind. A really loose player raised to 15 UTG and picked up 5 callers before it got back to me. I decide to get involved with my T2 of diamonds hoping to flop big or dump it quick. Well I flopped big when it came KTT. Even with that flop I just wanted to play a little small ball because of how many cards could come that would hurt me on the turn, so I check and the origional raiser bets 35. He picks up a call from KG. No, I was not playing poker with Kevin Garnett. In this case KG is short for Kingergarden because thats about where his level of thinking is in the game. He plays his cards and never considers what his opponenets are holding, who raised preflop, what there image is, what they might be raising with, or basically anything that a beginning player with half a brain starts to pick up on after a few sessions. I decide I should still keep this small with a 3rd player entering the equasion and just flat call the bet. When the turn card peeled over and it was a 2 I was picturing stacks of chips falling into my lap. I check again, and the origional raiser tosses out $100. KG decides that he needs to put all his chips in the pot at this point with the worst hand, because thats what he does. I can already see his thoughts on his face… I got a T OMG I must be ahead, no way anyone has KK, AT, KT, T2, or 22! So I reraise knowing I’m way ahead here and sure enough I was as he flipped over QT. I’m already restacking my chips from pushing them out when the dealer flips over a Q on the river and I vomit a little inside. I don’t mind much because I know KG is putting those chips back in play with every marginal hand he gets so there is a good chance I’ll get some back later.
Aside from loosing those two pots, the rest of the 2/5 game went very well for me. I was up almost 1100 at one point shortly after that and just through general play was down to about 800 at my low point. As the table got short handed late into the night I went on a rush as a couple agressive players kept trying to fight with the loose maniac at the table. I ended up cashing out of the game up 1200, nearly 3x my origional buy in. At the end of the day I was up 1675 between 1/2 and 2/5. Nice run for the weekend.