Tuesday, May 09, 2006
I was leaving Empress last night, and saw something that struck me as bizarre. I was walking through the parking lot to my car, and off in the distance, a handful of what appeared to be grown adults were tailgating in the parking lot. They had a blue cooler full of beverages, and tunes blaring from the open car doors. One guy sat on the trunk of his car, with his lady friend nestled between his legs, and another couple was making out like school kids against the car next door. The others were whooping it up and having a gay ol' time.
Tailgating outside a suburban casino on a Monday night... OK... is it just me, or is that weird?
The poker inside was loose and passive. I sat at the $5/10 game for about 2 1/2 hours. I was up a nice $140 until my very last hand - JJ. I raised the action preflop (and capped it when a raise came behind me), and bet out on the Q-high flop. My two opponents were a solid player across the table from me, and a loose "cool-guy" who thought he was playing for WPT millions, often pushing his 2nd pair like Aces. I was last to act, and the solid player was just calling calling calling. Cool guy popped me for a raise on the flop, but the Q-3-8 board just didn't look scary to me, and coming from him, his raise was nothing more than a bully move.
Both guys checked the turn to me (4), and I bet again. Solid guy looked decidedly uncomfortable but called anyway (he was pretty textbook - strong meant strong, weak meant weak), and Cool guy sighed as he called. He totally had AK. I had no doubt.
The river paired the board with 4's, and the solid player bet out excitedly. Mother Effer. Cool guy reluctantly folded, and though I knew I was beat, for one bet into a mountain of chips, I had to call to ward off the bluff. (You only have to win 10% of those crying calls on the end in big pots to make it profitable over the long run...) Had the other guy called, I would have folded, since I'd get to see the hand anyway, but there's no way this pot was getting shipped uncontested.
The solid player had 3-4 of diamonds. No wonder he made the comment after the turn that he never should have even been in this pot. The poker gods sure rained down on his river. No pair, no draw after the flop.. nice call, guy. He must be psychic.
So, that pot cost me $60 or so and brought my profits for the night down under $100. Just then I got called for a seat change (I was at the must-move table), and was so annoyed with the JJ loss that I decided to take my winnings and leave, lest I tilt off the rest at a new table.
+$87 (8.7 BB)/ 2.5 hours = 3.48 BB/hour
Average that out with Sunday's results:
7 hours, + 0 BB
Seriously. I left exactly even after 7 hours of play. I was never up more than $50 and was never down more than $50. If you count all of the diet cokes, I was probably up ten bucks on the day. Ugh.
So my two-day run came out to: .92 BB/hour
Ayayay.
No poker tonight. Must work. Maybe Wednesday.
