Friday, March 02, 2007
Who's house? Run's house...
Yeah, that's right. I'm back in black.
I finally got seated at the 5/10 limit holdem table at Empress around 11pm. It turns out that I waited for a seat almost as long as I actually played, leaving somewhere around 3am. I'm glad I waited, though. Had I gone to Indiana, I would be sitting in a traffic jam on the Indiana toll road right now. (Even iPass can't save me in that case). Instead, I'm not only already home, but I've made myself a snack, pet the cats, and got into my pajamas. Life is good.
My night didn't start off on this chipper note. By the time I'd gotten seated, most of the table had turned over and players weren't nearly as loose as when I'd been observing. I was glad to take the 1o seat, though, as it had done well for the aforementioned sharky regular.
Since the table was a bit tight, I was playing a bit loose, and unfortunately for me I was nailing second-best-hand after second-best-hand (the ol' flopped straight losing to a flush bit, etc). By the time dealer Don arrived, I was on my way to coughing up a buy-in. With dealer Don, though, also came the proverbial loosening of the belts, and we were seeing a lot more people to the flops. Nice.
As I got low on chips, I weighed my options. The table had money on it. The money was moving around. It was definitely not time to leave. I hit up the ATM and stopped by the cage to get me some more reds. The cage cashier remembered me from my first buy in and asked, "What are you playing?" I said, "Poker." He said, "That's your problem. You should be playing blackjack." I said, "Oh hell no!" He informed me that he had given me the "lucky ones" this time, and sent me on my way.
I got back to the table just in time to play under the gun, and I took the hand. Bang bang! Bullets it is! I made out in a sick way, turning a full house against a couple opponents who called me down. I wish I could be more specific, but all I remember is patting myself on the back for my glorious timing as I scooped a nice $150 or so pot. Huey Lewis was on the radio.
That's the power of love, baby.
The family pots continued, and a few of my hands managed to hold up, bringing me to a 10BB profit for the night over 4 hours of play. Hey - I'll settle for "average." That's perfectly fine with me! Give me 2BB/hour any day and you'll see me dance a little jig through the tunnel and out of the casino. (This blog's namesake was on the radio as I departed this evening - and yes, I really did dance a little bit of a jig).
In the "plugging leaks" category, I only paid off one hand tonight that I shouldn't have paid off, where I knew I was beat but paid to see it anyway. In that same vein, every time I laid down a decent hand like TPGK to a coordinated board, I was right on and was absolutely beat. I went a little too far a couple times with low pocket pairs, but when it's 2 or 3 bet preflop with 8 people in, it's hard not to justify seeing the turn for five bucks.
Those Aces were the only big hand I saw. Lots of baby pocket pairs did a whole lotta nothing for me, but I'd rather that than get sucked out on.
All in all, a good night. I have to wake up in 6 hours to attend a webinar for work, and my hope is that I can get my ass moving early enough to get to Empress early enough to make it worth my while. (They close the poker room at 6pm on Fridays). It is so lovely to play poker 15 minutes from home. Hallelujah!
With that, I am off to dream of dancing sugarplums and Broadway on Fifth Street.
