by john | Jan 22, 2011 | Gambling, Poker
Where I’m not tied to the computer every moment that I’m not at work, sometimes I play poker. And since I’ve been getting killed online over the past couple of weeks, last Friday night I drove to the nearest place to play live poker with real cards.
In West Virginia.
Four and a half hours away.
Yep, that’s right folks, unless I want to play in a home game (which I enjoy, but it does sometimes feel like we’re passing the same money around the table week after week) or I want to play in an underground game (which I’m not fond of not just due to the illegality of it, but more due to the risk of robbery), I have to drive multiple hours through the mountains and rent a hotel room just to play cards.
Fortunately for me I still had a bunch of Marriott points, so the room didn’t cost me anything. Unfortunately for me, filling up my new truck with gas costs me almost $75. But I’m just whining, and that’s silly. I knew the deal when I hit the road. So after our mini-trade show on Friday, I rolled up I-77 to Charleston, WV, and checked into my room. I decided not to play Friday night, even though the games were probably pretty good. I had only gotten about four hours of sleep Thursday night, and may have consumed my body weight in wine, so after working all day and driving four hours, I was pretty well done in. So I finished off volume 1 of The Hunger Games, which is teh hawesome, and went to sleep.
I got up Saturday relatively early, wrote a little bit, then made my leisurely way to the casino. I got there about 1:30, and got on the list for a 1/2 game. It wasn’t an unreasonable time before they opened up another table, and I sat down with about $200 in front of me. And took off. I went on a quick heater, making some good reads and picking off a couple of bluffs from a guy in the 5 seat. He was a 2/5 player waiting for a seat, and showed all the earmarks of a player sitting in a game that was too small for him. He juiced the pots bigger than they needed to be, c-bet every hand, checked the turn if he got called, bet the river regardless of his holdings, etc. It’s not a terrible way to play, but when you do it every hand, and you’re in 80% of the hands, people are going to pick up on it. So I watched him get caught with his hand in the cookie jar a couple times, and then called him all the way down with second pair for my whole stack. I was good, and doubled through him.
I got off to a great start, but when the room opened up another 2/5 game, all the action left our table and it turned into the battle of the old nits. I couldn’t get anything going, and was starting to get frustrated. I looked at the $450 in front of me and decided that the next time it got to an even hundred, either $400 or $500, I was racking up.I never got there, racking up a couple hands later when I caught myself playing badly and cashed out $250 ahead. That was something I had really wanted to work on this trip – paying attention to when the table wasn’t any good and picking that time to take a break. I figured I’d go indulge my slot jones for half an hour or so, and put my winnings in my pocket.
Slots didn’t go so great, as I dropped a quick $40, so it was back to the poker room. I got seated right back at the same table, with the same old farts, and the same frustrations. I bought in short to start, only $100 this time, and blew through that in record time. Then a young Asian kid who I’ll stereotype later sat down on my left, and another new guy sat down directly across from me. I was in the 6 seat, so the Crasian was in the 7 and the other new guy was in the 9. A middle-aged ladynit was in the 8s, and she wasn’t crazy about all the betting going on. I reloaded to $200, and had about $150 in front of me when my key hand came along. The Crasian was in every hand, pretty much regardless, and was on his third or fourth buyin. I think he’d just come back from the ATM for buyin #4 and promised our end of the table that he was going to “play smart now.” The 9s had shoved his whole stack in over the top of Crasian’s raise for three hands in a row, and seemed to be really grumpy about something. It must have been something away from the table, because he hadn’t been sitting with us long enough to have any issues that I understood.
So I’m in the cutoff with KsQs, and it’s limped around to me. I make it $12-15 to go, I don’t remember which, but that was my standard opening raise. Crasian calls, Ladynit gets out, Grumpy calls, and we’re three-handed to a flop of Q-5-7 rainbow. Grumpy checks, I bet, Crasian calls, and Grumpy puts out a big check-raise. With top pair, 2nd kicker I think I’m ahead here, and I’ve seen him make big overbets several hands in this orbit, so I stick the rest of my stack in the middle. Crasian calls, which I’m flat amazed at, and then Grumpy calls, turning over AQ. Shit. Bad read, Johnny, you’re dominated.
Until the King hits the turn, which crushes Grumpy’s soul. River is a blank and Crasian mucks his hand, claiming 5-7 for a flopped two pair. I only half believe him, because he was a nutjob and might have made that call with QJ and been in third place the whole time. Grumpy leaves, Crasian rebuys, and I stack a $450 pot. I tread water for a little longer there, finally cashing out with a $50 profit when I’m called for a 1/2 PLO game.
PLO lasts about three orbits before I stack one player, who isn’t replaced, then I get it all in with the nuts on the flop against another with the same straight and a redraw to Broadway. There’s a third player in the hand who has a wrap Broadway draw, and I pick up the nut flush draw on the turn. River blanks and I chop the pot, but the game breaks because we’re only three-handed at that point. So I decide that at 11PM it’s a good time to grab some grub and head back to the hotel, banking about $350 for the day.
After I eat I wander through the pit because I’m a degenerate, and plop down with $80 at a $5 Let it Ride table. I make all the bonus bets and pick up a steady string of nothing-nothing-nothing, until I’m down to two hands’ worth of chips. I make all my bets, look at my cards, and I’m holding 6-7-6, so I’m already good for the $5 3-Card Poker bet. I pull back my first bet, because I need tens or better to make anything good, and tell the dealer to show me a six or a seven. He obliges, turning over a six. I wave off and leave my other two bets out there, since I’m a guaranteed winner this hand, and he continues the nice and turns over a seven for his other down card, giving me a full house! I’m pretty happy about the 11-1 on my $10 bet, but I’m even happier when I see that the payout for the $1 bonus bet on a full house is $200! The dealer turns over all the hands, gives me my chips, I toss him a redbird and head straight for the cage, certain that I have used up all my run-good for the day.
So it took me nine hours of poker to win $350, and in 15 minutes of Let it Ride, I won $250. Crazy world, right?
I crashed, got up Sunday and drove home, happy with a $600 profit and no worries about covering gas money for this trip. Not sure when I’ll b back up there, but it won’t be long, I guarantee.
by john | Jan 10, 2011 | Poker
Free money is always the sweetest money, and this week I managed to claim a little of the sweetest money when I played in the inaugural Gambling Tales Podcast Freeroll on Full Tilt Poker. The kind folks at FTP put together a freeroll for us, and Special K and I promoted it to the best of our ability (which means that he did a lot of work, and I sent a couple tweets and emails, which is about the same division of labor as we have on the creation of the podcast, but that’s beside the point). All our efforts resulted in the freeroll filling up before it even started, with 1,000 people registered!
Now if they’d all showed up, I’d probably still be playing in the damn thing. But fortunately for my time commitment, only about 25% of the people that signed up actually played. A big part of my hated that, because there were some people who would have happily played that couldn’t get registered, but since I can usually outplay a ghost stack (only usually) I attribute my deep run to the fact that only two people at my first table were actually people. I managed to not get into any confrontations with the other live player at my table, and built up a decent little stack for myself by the time most of the ghosts were blinded off.
After a little while I finally got moved to a table with some real live people, which was a lot of fun, because the whole point of playing for me was to interact with our listeners and have some fun with my friends. I ended up at the same table as Special K for a while, then got moved, then got moved back, and hung around and hung around until the money bubble burst, guaranteeing me at least a $.06 return on my time! Ok, leave me alone, it was my first tourney cash of the new year, a real milestone. I played around, trying not to get involved with anything too embarrassing, and after a while I realized that being one of the hosts of the show actually was making me play better. Even though I’m a terrible poker player, and did get into one big hand with a guy where I called a preflop raise with suited 8-9, caught an 8 on the flop and then went runner-runner boat on him to send him home, I generally didn’t play too stupidly. So maybe I should host more tournaments if they’ll make me play better? Nah, one a week is plenty.
So this Thursday we’ll have another Gambling Tales Podcast freeroll, and this time we will not be releasing the password anywhere but on the show, so go listen and register! Congrats to DeeBakes for being the inaugural GT Podcast Freeroll winner! I had a blast playing and chatting with Dee, and hope that he can make it to a WPBT gathering sometime soon (like December)! So if you want to play poker with me, listen to the podcast and sign up!
Then last night I signed up to play the PokerSluts Tour Stud Hi tournament, with such stud geniuses as myself, BamBam, DocChako, VeryJosie, and GadZooks. At least one of those players is actually good at stud, and if you need a hint, I guarantee that it isn’t one of the men! That should narrow the field for you a little, huh? I built up a big stack early by being a ridiculous card rack, picking up trip 6s at least three times in the first three levels of the tourney. Just like I said to Doc early on, I caught cards early on and went card dead once the blinds got high, losing a big pot to Gadzooks when she made a flush on 5th and I played bad, then losing another big pot to SmBoatDrinks (or something like that, I don’t take notes and pay very little attention because, as I have said time and again I am a bad poker player) when I played bad again. So then I missed a big draw, I think I had a flush and a straight draw, or maybe a pair and a flush draw, or something that felt like it was a good draw that missed, but I might have mentioned that I don’t take notes so I don’t really remember, so gimme a break, I drink a lot and forget things, okay? So I bubbled, and that sucked, but it was a lot of fun seeing those folks again, and Zooks puts on a great tourney series, so check that out sometime!
by john | Jan 3, 2011 | Poker
So yesterday Suzy, Special K, T and I rode down to G-Vegas for the annual BadBlood New Year’s Day tournament, an event that I won in 2006 and have not experienced any real success in since then. I continued my streak, managing to save the least amount of face only by not busting first. I busted second. 24th out of 25 runners, that’s me.
But I did pretty well in the cash game, more than making up for my tournament buy-in, and Suzy’s as well. We played half No Limit Hold’Em, Half Pot Limit Omaha, with two $1 blinds. The original idea was to keep the game kinda reasonable, with a $100 max initial buy-in, and if you went busto you could rebuy for $200. That went out the window along about the second hour, and the cap was raised to $300 per reload . It turned into a wild game, with aggro play from TheMark, tight play from Special K, bad play from me that caught up, and generally a good time to be had by most. Depending on the hand. We all complimented BadBlood on his “This dad is so sick…” T-shirt that his son gave him for Christmas, and by the end of the night we had appended several different endings to the shirt title.
Pretty much all of my profit came from a couple of key hands, which is typical for my poker sessions, online or live. After gifting my first buyin to TheMark in a hand you’ll have to listen to the podcast to hear about, I reloaded for another hundred. In a round of Omaha, I woke up with kings and a couple of other crap cards, but I did have one suit with my kings. There was a raise in front of me from TheMark, I re-raised, and G-Rob pushed all in right behind me. TheMark called, and I put the last of my chips in the middle, figuring if I’ve run into aces, then I’m glad I brought more money. Turns out I had run into Queens and something else, as I showed my hand to take the main pot and don’t remember what Mark held, but it was better than G-Rob’s hand. So I tripled up and then had some chips to play around with.
Another big hand that featured me and Gucci Rick was probably one I played badly, but caught just enough on every street to stick around. I’m sure there was a raise preflop, and I called with Qd-9-Ad-x. The flop came down nine-high with two diamonds, so I had top pair, decent kicker and the nut flush draw. Rick bet out, and I called. The turn brought a queen, and I checked. Rick bet out again, and I moved all in over the top. It was about sixty bucks more for Rick to call, and he went deep into the tank before finally deciding that there was way too much money in the pot (over $400) for him to fold for another $58. He made the call and showed his flopped two pair. I had caught up, making a bigger two pair on the turn, and my hand held up to bring me up to profitable for the night. I ended up running Rick down another couple of times when straights hit on the river to take a significant chunk of his stack, and I was able to leave the game with a tidy profit, and a win over one of the better players in that game, in my opinion. Rick is one of those guys who up until last night has always had my number, betting me off hands when I have weak holdings and catching up when he needed to against me. But poker, she’s a fickle bitch, and last night things were running my way and I got out alive. It was a good way to start the year, and the first time in a couple of years I’ve been able to log a big win on the first day of the year.
Then we almost died on the ride home because of bad road conditions and a doucherocket on I-85, but that’s tomorrow’s story. Now go buy a book! And if you’ve bought a book, leave an Amazon review, they really do help!
by john | Dec 15, 2010 | Poker, Travel, Vegas
This will be a multi-part trip report, spread out over several posts, over several days. Don’t get all impatient when I get sidetracked by – Oh look, squirrel! – and it might take me a while to get back to it, but all the stories I remember will be told eventually. Let’s start at the beginning.
My flight sucked.
Let’s be really clear, here. My flight suuuuccccckkkkkeeeedddddd. I t was crowded, hot, bouncy, and I was uncomfortable for most of the four and a half hours. It’s times like that when I’m supremely jealous of friends like Special K, who get upgraded all the time. Then I think about how much time they have to spend in airplanes to get said upgrades, and I get less jealous. So I got there, and headed to the MGM to crash for a couple of hours before I kicked it into high gear in the evening.
And kick it into high gear I did. The IP is where they’ll stick the hose if they ever give Las Vegas an enema, but for some reason we all congregate there at the Geisha Bar every year to drink like college kids. Since our visits typically coincide with the National Finals Rodeo, there are pretty good drink specials going on around town. So I end up taking extreme advantage of said drink specials, and doing myself grievous bodily harm. Last year I started a tradition, a particularly unhealthy tradition, of drinking cheap beer out of buckets until I pass the blood alcohol content of an Irishman at a Dropkick Murphys concert. So I did.
Then I made my mistake – I decided to play poker. Now I’ve played a lot of cards at the IP over the years, a lot of it with bloggers. But little if any was played when I was as obliterated as I was Thursday night. I bought in for the table minimum ($60) for the first orbit, and blew that away pretty quickly. Then I reloaded for $300, the table max, and tried to play reasonably while also trying to remain upright in my chair. Neither of these things proved easy. But I managed for a little while, and after I’d bled through around a hundred bucks, I decided to get up and join the 8PM tournament as a late entrant.
This is my new strategy for tournaments in Vegas – never play the first level of blinds. Every tourney allows registration for at least two levels after the event begins, and some allow it for up to four levels. And the only saying about not being able to win a tournament in the first level, but being able to lose it then is certainly true. As long as I can come in with a reasonable stack relative to the blinds in level two or three, I’m going to skip the first couple of levels every time. This strategy has proved solid for me a couple of times at the Venetian, and also paid off last Friday at Aria. It didn’t really help at the IP, because although I doubled up on the first hand (of which I recall zero details as I was on pitcher #4 of 7 at that point), I ran into aces with ATo at the final table and resumed my drinking.
Somehow a couple of hours later I found myself back at the IP poker room, seated at a table that included CaityCaity and some other folks that I recognized and am sure were more than happy to relieve me of my money but whom I don’t remember. Apparently at some point there were a lot of people warned and/or tossed from the poker room, but I missed all of that. I may have taken a nap or two between hands. Really, that was napping. I swear it. I left that table because I fear CaityCaity’s poker drunk or sober, and went to sit next to PokerGnome. This was not my best move, because even though I had position on him, the Gnome can also outplay me when I’m sober, much less biblically inebriated. But somehow I managed to triple up at that table, I think at the expense of the civilians to my left, because I’m a drunken out-of-position ninja. Or because I was too drunk to fold. One of those.
I did find myself playing second pair a lot stronger when drunk than I have been sober, which was something I specifically wanted to work on this trip. The playing second pair thing, not the drunk thing. The drunk thing was a given. I’ve been playing second pair like a nutless wonder, folding to obvious c-bets, but after pitcher #6, that didn’t happen. Of course, after pitcher #7, I have no idea what happened. But I did manage to cash out a small profit (if my recollection of only buying in for a hundy is correct), and staggered off to bed around 4:30 in the morning. I made it back to the MGM and did something I haven’t done since college – not puke, but I fell asleep with my contacts in, which led to all sorts of festivities on Friday morning and a huge pile of grateful to the fact that I always travel with a spare set of contacts.
End of Day 1 – down around $200 in poker, probably another $200 in food, booze and cabs.
Still to come – my annual donation in mixed games, tournament silliness, bounties galore, and Full Tilt Food!
by john | Nov 18, 2010 | Gambling, Poker
The following is a sponsored post.
The World Poker Tour is one of the most famous poker tournaments in the world, second only to the World Series of Poker.
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As with most major poker tournaments, players have the option to either buy-in to the tournament, or attempt to qualify online.
There are satellites for the World Poker Tour running on several different online poker sites.
The World Poker Tour attracts a lot of media attention, and many of their main events, including the Bellagio Cup, are televised.
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The World Poker Tour has many poker tournaments with big money prizes. Titles in the tour are very prestigious, and the World Poker Tour Player of the Year award is considered to be a huge honour. The top players who compete in the tour have amassed career earnings of more than $5 million in the tournament, and there are several players with WPT career earnings in excess of $3 million.
The WPT was started in the United Sates, by attourney Steve Lipscomb in 2002, and was acquired by PartyGaming in November 2009. The tournament focuses on Texas Holdem poker.
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by john | Oct 27, 2010 | Poker, Real Life, Vegas, Writing
But this is what you get. And you’ll like it, too! Or not, but you probably won’t be pissed enough to tell me about it if you hate it.
So most of October has been spent getting Hard Day’s Knight ready to go, and yesterday I got home to find a box full of books waiting on me! So the book is available from Amazon and via CreateSpace, with ebook coming in November. Place your orders now by clicking here. I’ve booked a table selling books at a local Halloween carnival for Friday night, a NC Writer’s Network meeting next weekend, and a comic book convention in Raleigh on 11/12-14. So feel free to stop by any of those events and see me, too! I’ll have copies at each event to sign for folks, so either bring your copy or buy one at the event.
Speaking of buying, the lease was running out on the Element after almost four years, so I traded it in a couple weeks ago. 
The dealership bought me out of the lease, which was great since I was 10,000 miles over the lease (with 6 months driving left), and I picked up this beauty. She’s a 2008 Chevy Silverado with all the electronical type gadgets, and only 55,000 miles on her. She rides like a dream, and has a ton of room in the back seat. It’s a shortbed, but that’s all I need for the errands I run around the house. So far I’m loving it.
Last week saw me in Las Vegas for a conference, and wouldn’t you know it, I had a little time to play the Venetian noon tournament while I was there. Some of you may recall my epic 20-way even chop performance in that same tournament last December. I followed that up with a 7th-place finish, good for $500 (and $30 in prop bets!). I got really lucky once whe I cracked Kings with my Jacks after all the money went in preflop, then got really unlucky later when my Aces got cracked by Kings. I was crippled, but quintupled up on the next hand when I flopped a boat in a 6-way limped pot. So I made it all the way to 7th before I ran pocket fives into pocket tens and headed off to dinner. I played a little more over the week, ending up about $350-400 for the trip.
I of course used my winnings to book my flight to Vegas for December, and I’m looking forward to seeing all my degenerate friends again! I get in on Thursday and fly out on Monday, and I’ll be staying at the MGM. I also have a trip to NYC the weekend before to celebrate Suzy and my 15th wedding anniversary. We’re using Marriott points to stay at the Marriott Marquis in Time Square, and we’ll see American Idiot and something else while we’re there.
So that’s what’s going on here – now go buy a book!
