Hella Hold'em

Happy Merry Everything, Everybody!

Here's wishing a happy, safe, festive holiday season to you and yours, whatever you choose to celebrate! :)

Happy summer, everybody!

This is the time of year when I exhale and relax, enjoying a little respite from work while making all kinds of plans for what I'll do over the next 3 months... half of which I never get around to. One of those things is to play some poker! I've had a few opportunities lately - there's a home game around, and there's a poker room about an hour and a half north of me - but neither is as convenient as things were back in Chicago. So I was glad when the old online league I played in came back to life. (It had gone under when Full Tilt tanked). We're not playing for league points yet (as far as I'm aware) - just random tourneys - but I'm glad it's back.

One challenge I'm finding, though, is that I don't seem to have the attention span for online games that I used to.  During last night's game, I went against my better judgement and called all in on a double gutshot straight flush draw with 1 card to come. Hey, my mac n cheese was almost ready, and the game was getting in the way of the Runner's World article I was trying to finish! Luckily for my distractions, I busted out.

I'm hoping to at least get up to Hollywood for some table time a couple times this summer. I'd love to make it up to Atlantic City, but I'm about to take trip #2 of 3 (which means, leaving the cats alone and paying a cat sitter). This generally results in some form of destruction of my house, as the cats get pretty mad when I leave them for so long. So I don't think a fourth trip is in the cards this summer (because I would want to spend at least 4 days in AC). I haven't ruled it out, though. The magic 8 ball just says, doubtful.

I will officially kick off my version of summer this weekend seeing Dave Matthews Band at SPAC! There will be camping and good times involved. And when I get back... maybe some poker. :)

Happy Spring!

Guess what? I played poker! Wheee!

Last weekend, I checked out the poker room at Hollywood Casino @ Charles Town Races in Charles Town, West Virginia. It's about an hour and a half from my house. On Saturday night and part of Sunday, I played $1/2NL. The rest of Sunday, I played $3/6 limit. Then I went back Monday afternoon after work and got seated at an insane $1/2NL table and quickly switched over to $3/6.

The verdict: decent room. Coffee/soda/water and well drinks are free (nice that there's some free booze, even though I don't usually drink when I play). Dealers for the most part were good, if a little slow. They don't strongly enforce things like English-only at the table, or one-player-per-hand, which got a little annoying. But I didn't see any mistakes in the hands or pot calculations/etc. There's a small selection of items available for table-side dining (none vegetarian that I could tell, though they don't have a menu - the waitress just recites everything). Drink service was fast most of the time.

The drive is a bit of a bummer compared to the days when I was 15 minutes from the poker room, but I often opted to drive an hour over to the Indiana boats anyway, so it's not much worse than I'm used to, either. I'm just glad there's a reasonable option!

The only downside on top of the drive is that they don't accept call-in's for seating. The wait for a seat has been 30 minutes or so (even on Monday).

With the exception of the insane 1/2 table I was at for all of 5 minutes, the games are soft soft soft! Back in IN, the 3/6 limit game in particular was usually full of rocks just grinding out their chances at the bad beat jackpot. In WV, it was more of the, 8-people-to-every-flop kind of game... just the way I like it!

With this new addition to my recreational options, I think I may have to fire up my old poker tracking spreadsheet!

I've also been invited to a local home game this weekend. Man, I miss home games!

So as spring starts springing, I gladly welcome poker back into my life. :)