Back to the Real World

... Whatever that means.

Atlantic City was a good time. After deducting transportation, meals, and hotel fare I still took home about $3500 playing nothing but 2/5 NL at Borgata.

Borgata charges you time at the 2/5 game to the tune of $5 per half hour instead of raking pots which ends up working out in your favor since each pot would be raked $4.

I thought it could be a good trip when I was dealt black aces in the big blind my very first hand. It folded to the button who made it $25. I made it $75 total and he flatted. The flop was A Q 5 with two hearts and I led for $65. He raised to $190. I shipped and he insta-called and turned over AQ. I turned over my top set and he just kept shaking his head and saying, "that's so sick" as the rest of the board ran out.

A few hands later an older genteman raised to $25 from the hijack and it folded to me in the big blind. I called with 5d4d and we saw a flop of 8c 6c Qh. I checked and he bet $35. I called and the turn was 3s giving me more outs. I checked and he bet $55.

I took some time here. His bet sizing on the turn made me feel like he didn't have a Queen and probably had something like 99-JJ, AJ, AK, etc. I thought I could call here and lead a lot of rivers to take the pot away from him enough times to be profitable and so I called again. The river was 9c making the final board 8c 6c Qh 3s 9c and I felt like this was a great river to bluff. By his reaction to the river card I was certain he hadn't been drawing and in fact probably had nothing in his hand.

"One fifty" I announced and before I finished speaking his cards had hit the muck. A couple hands later he asked if I had 10cJc. Online you can simply ignore the chat box but when I play live I feel like saying 'yes' to any question is probably the right way to go. Saying yes here reaffirms his "good fold" and keeps him thinking I'm a solid player who's running good. The last thing you want to do is tell the other guy you bluffed him off a better hand.

Then I went card dead for about 5 orbits meaning I either had non-playable hands or everyone folded if I raised, which was very infrequent since I mostly had non-playable hands.

The next big hand to come up was this one ...

From early position, a young and very aggressive Asian player with about $700 behind made it $25 and a new player at the table flatted from mid-position. I had 8h9h and about $1300 behind on the button and flatted while both blinds folded.

The flop came out 9s9d6s and the original raiser led for $50. The MP caller folded and I studied the board, leaning forward a little bit. I did this hoping he would think I was trying to see if they were clubs or spades to find out if I had a flush draw. For some reason his bet felt strong to me and he was leaning back in his seat and checking his phone. For some people that could mean they don't have interest in the hand, but not after a lead into 2 players. I was putting him on a pretty big overpair and felt like a smooth call would be cause for concern. If I was going to extract any extra money here I felt like sticking in a large raise to make it look like I was drawing was the way to go.

With $132 in the middle I announced a raise and made it $150 more on top. This got him to sit straight up and start looking at me to get a read. "Why so much?" he asked. "You want to take it down right here, right?"

Most of the time I stay silent but this time I simply said, "I wouldn't mind." This really got him thinking. He kept telling me he thought I had a big flush draw. Finally he says, "You're on a flush draw and you're in bad shape. I go all in."

"I call."

"Ok, let me see your draw."

"I called you."

Somewhat sheepishly he turned over AsKh and then I flipped over my hand. The Turn brought a 6 to kill any hopes he might have had and I dragged another large pot.

If I had simply called his bet on the flop I'd have extracted nothing more from him. By sticking in a somewhat big raise but leaving enough room for him to shove thinking he has fold equity I opened the door for him to use his own aggro play to hang himself. I was surprised by his holding, though. Once he shoved I really felt like he did have a large pocket pair but his shove wasn't terrible. I can't really call about $500 more with a naked flush draw especially when he reps a large pocket pair on a paired board. After the hand he even said he liked my raise because he didn't expect it from a made hand and thought he could get me off of any flush draw except a straight flush draw. Can't really disagree there, either.

This post has gotten pretty long and I've only covered the first day of poker. I'll chop up the trip recap into another post or two. Last Tuesday it was 65 degrees in AC and so I didn't play any poker. Instead I chose to see the whole boardwalk and act like a tourist. Thursday, my last night there, had some decent stories and that will be coming up next.

Miscellaneous

I leave for Atlantic City on Sunday morning and will be staying there five nights. I ended up booking the Waterfront Premium Suite at Harrah's and plan on asking if I can upgrade to the corner penthouse-style suite when it's time to check-in. Right now there is still availability so I'm hoping I can get the upgrade at a discounted price.

I asked about comp for the current stay. They told me I need to get a Harrah's card and then all my comp points whilst gaming can be used for future stays. Well... no shit.

I once again asked if there is any discount for my current trip if I play X amount of hours each day. After the woman began repeating herself I just gave up. Atlantic City is no Vegas. This much I know already.

Speaking of Vegas ... my girlfriend and I might be going out there at the end of the month. One of her friends wants to have her birthday there. She's trying to get everyone to stay at Treasure Island but I have other plans. I haven't been out there since a few of the newer places were built and I can't decide between Vdara, Palazzo, and Wynn/Encore. The reviews for THEHotel at Mandalay Bay look good, too. So many options ... anyone out there have opinions?

I digress.

I've been playing a fair bit of online poker lately and am sad to say I still can't kick Rush Poker. I played $100 NL for 600 hands this morning and made 2.5 buy-ins. Nothing fancy, really. I flopped a set versus top pair top kicker to win one buy-in and had a bigger flush than my opponent for the second buy-in. The tables seemed a bit more loose which I think was a direct result of playing early in the morning against more Scandinavian and Russian players. The Germans seem to have turned into competent poker players. For a while they were the dead money at the table. Now it's the French, Romanians, Bulgarians, Hungarians and the like.

I also managed to satellite into the PokerStars Sunday Million and the Full Tilt $750,000 Guaranteed. I'm not sure if I'll play or take the $T on both sites. Actually, I take that back. I'm playing. The possibility of a six figure score or 20 more donkaments ... yeah, about that ...

Atlantic City

I've never been, but I want to.

Does anyone have hotel recommendations? Comp/discount tips?

Spirit Airlines has very cheap round-trip airfare rates from Boston to Newark so I'm fine there. I'm looking to stay Sunday-Thursday next month before March Madness.

Borgata looks to be a very nice hotel but the rates have been too high for my liking so far. I won't spend enough time in the room to justify the cost.

I'm obviously beginning to read up online but so many of these websites are utter trash filled with ads all over the place. It's been tough to weed out the garbage and get to real content.

Foxwoods Recap

The characters:

Seat 1 - Executive chef at a well known private country club
Seat 2 - Former investment banker
Seat 3 - Seafood cook for a decent restaurant
Seat 4 - Former 5/10 uncapped NL player who had to drop stakes
Seat 5 - Me
Seat 6 - Former president of a manufacturing company who is now self-employed. Amateur chef.
Seat 7 - Drunk tourist
Seat 8 - Young spewtard
Seat 9 - Quiet rock
Seat 10 - Younger, good player

This was my table for the better part of 12 hours. The conversations covered the best wine and restaurants in the world, investment banking, the best online poker site for cash games, the WSOP, China, and the fact that I managed to leave a 1-2 NL table with $1800.

I sat with $300 and basically folded for three or four orbits. Prior to the seafood cook taking seat 3 there was a guy in a Yankees cap who was hammering every single pot and it was working for him. No one at the table, except possibly me, was an aggressive caller and so they were laying down hand after hand to him. Then it happened.

I picked up AQ suited when he was UTG. He made it $13 and I flatted. Obviously it's a raise under most circumstances but I had a plan for the hand.

Everyone else folded, fortunately.

The flop came A 4 8 rainbow. He bet $30 and I flatted. The turn brought another 4 so at this point I was 99.8888% sure I was good. He bet $75 and I jammed over the top for about $160 more. He took a very long time and at that point I was 100% sure I was good. Finally he called and turned over AJ so I won a nice pot there.

I managed to win another pot of about $200 when I flopped top set versus a shorter stack's bottom two pair.

My biggest hand came when I had 55 on the button. There were three limpers ahead of me and I limped the button. Small blind completed and big blind checked his option.

The flop came J 3 5 with two hearts. The small blind led out for pot. Big blind called as did seat 3, the seafood cook. Seat 3 was a pretty aggressive caller who knew how to float in position and take a stab on the turn, but this was a multi-way pot and so I put him on a pretty big heart draw. I thought the SB probably had some sort of Jack in his hand and the BB probably had a Jack or a heart draw.

Obviously I needed to raise here. I made it $75 more on top and the Small Blind thought for a bit before pushing all-in for about $110. The big blind immediately shoved for about $130. Seat 3, his name was Paco, thought really long. We'd been chatting and he knew I was a good player.

Paco: I know that no matter what I do your next action is all-in and so I am doing a pre-emptive all-in. Good luck to us.

Me: You're right. I'm all-in. Let's do this.

Paco had about $340 behind when he shoved so this had turned into a really large pot. The Turn brought a Jack giving me fives full and the river was a 7 or 8. I immediately turned over my boat and the dealer began looking at everyone else.

The small blind turned over J2 of diamonds (wtf?). The BB turned over KT of hearts and even though Paco didn't have to show he sighed and showed me A7 of hearts. Wow. Just wow.

Paco gave me a fist bump and the guy to my immediate right, the former high stakes player, patted me on the back.

Seat 4: It's been a long time since I saw someone with this much money at a 1/2 table. Congratulations. You've definitely played well enough to deserve it.

As I stacked my chips I looked up to realize a couple nearby tables had come over to watch the action because a commotion had been building while we were all taking our action on the flop. I'd been so in the zone that I didn't even realize any of this until the hand was over.

It took 4 racks to go to the cage and I basically had everyone in the 1-2 section looking at me as I took the long walk over there. I could get used to that.

Foxwoods Redux

I need to get down there more frequently.

Sunday afternoon I sat down at 1/2 with a full stack ($300) and left the table with $1780 at 10:30 PM. I'll do a trip recap as well. I had some very interesting and cool people at my table.

Wow.

Last night I played in the $10 w/rebuys on the Cake nework.

I'm not one to grumble about bad beats, but the following chain of events is quite ridiculous. 60 get paid and I am 2nd in chips with about 45 remaining. I busted in 3 hands after this sequence. Bear in mind this is three consecutive hands which is the only reason I am posting it.

Hand 1: A guy shoves 11,000 chips UTG and it folds to me on the button. I have 59,500 in chips and snap call with KK. He has 44 and flops a 4.

Hand 2: MP raises 3X. I 3-bet with AsKs. He shoves and I snap call. He has AQ and rivers a Q. That was another 26,000 gone.

Hand 3: UTG min-raises. Someone in MP calls. I once again have AK (offsuit) and shove. UTG folds. MP calls with Ah9h and rivers a flush to eliminate me.

Some nights it just isn't meant to be.

Foxwoods Recap

After not really knowing what was going on until the last minute I ended up driving down to Foxwoods very early Monday morning to play in a $400 tournament capped at 250 entrants. I think they received 244.

The level of play was probably on part with a $30 or $50 online buy-in. There were some very competent players at my table but they were also playing straight-forward enough where I put moves on them two or three times.

With the blinds at 800/1600/200 I had around 64,000 in chips.

I had 7d8d on the button and a woman who had been playing fairly tight made it 4,800 from middle position and I elected to flat. Both blinds folded and we took a flop of 2 6 4 with two diamonds. I'm obviously not going anywhere.

With 13,800 in the middle she bets out 6,500.

I tanked for about 90 seconds before announcing a raise and made it 20,500 more on top which was putting her in an all-in or fold spot and she had zero fold equity against me. She ended up thinking for about 3 or 4 minutes before folding black tens face up and asking me to show.

I flashed my 8 of diamonds and mucked the other card which made her tell me she can''t believe I played pocket 8's that way. Yeah, me neither.

I made another move later where I got someone off top pair with no kicker when I held bottom pair and a flush draw. The player, an older guy who played very tight, hemmed and hawed and then told me I must have him outkicked before folding.

My bustout hand was very standard unfortunately. And by standard I mean I took a pretty bad beat to get knocked out just shy of the money.

With the blinds at 2500/5000/600 I had gone card dead and was stuck at 12 big blinds.

UTG, a kid with a PokerStars fleece who acted like an expert but obviously didn't play higher than $20 MTT's, limped in and UTG+1 went all in for close to 20 big blinds. The UTG+1 player had a thick cajun accent and kept saying he didn't know how to play. It wasn't an act. He was pretty bad.

I looked down at QsQh and called his-all in.

The kid with the fleece told me he was laying down a monster he limped to trap someone with "just for me" because "I don't seem like I stink".

The Cajun turned over TdAd and got runner runner diamonds to knock me out. Well played, sir.

Fleece told me he had limped with Jacks. Yeah, that's a trap hand ...

I would definitely do this tournament again - you got a 20,000 starting stack with 25 minute levels and blinds began at 25/50. Unfortunately I was dead for the first four levels but the players had no issue getting into very large pots with very suspect holdings that early on so I felt like I had a large edge over the field with my cash game background and growing MTT skill set.

So, I never ended up playing in the cash games because the tournment lasted into the evening and I didn't feel like staying overnight, but I highly recommend playing anything under a $560 buy-in at Foxwoods if you are competent because you will have an edge over the field for sure.