Hey everybody--happy hump day!
I was lucky enough to get a full eight hours of sleep last night and wake up without the alarm today, but man, my sleep schedule is all jacked up. I've been working swing shift for the past three years straight, then last week I had a couple of graveyard shifts, and this week I'm on day shift. Yesterday I had to go in at 5:00 am, and today I'm going in at 11:00. There's no rhyme or reason to my schedule at work, I just do what they tell me, but damn, it plays hell with my system. I still kinda feel like a zombie today.
Maybe it's time to just brew a pot of coffee and get over it...
[Pause]
Ok, coffee's on. Now I can concentrate.
Since I last updated late Monday night/early Tuesday morning, much has happened. I got up at 3:45 yesterday morning, did my usual morning toilette, then headed in to work, thinking I was gonna get stuck doing not a damn thing all morning, making no money, and generally sitting at the desk yawning all morning, hoping some players would show up.
I took a walk by the poker room on my way in from the garage, just to see if there was a game going, but there was not. There was a dealer sitting at a dead spread, with two players and the floorguy, but they were just hanging out and shootin' the shiat--they weren't playing.
So I went and changed, got some breakfast (the only good thing about working those oddball hours is that they put out a nice breakfast buffet in the employee dining room), and had a cup of coffee. Once it was ok to clock in, I headed back over to the poker room.
I sat down at the table, letting the other guy go home, and joined the conversation. The two players and the floor supervisor each had at least $300 worth of chips in front of them, and as soon as I sat down, one of them suggested that they go ahead and play some 3-way mixed format games with a dollar rake each pot. The floor supervisor was ok with that, so we decided on playing a modified HORSE game. I'd deal eight hands of Stud, then eight more of Omaha, then Razz, Omaha Hi-Lo, and then Stud 8-or-Better. Nobody wanted to play Hold-em.
The thing about those game is that they are all 'action' games. There are lots of ways to make hands, so the pots get huge, even just three-handed. And the betting was capped almost every round, too, so I was pushing huge stacks around the table after each hand. Of course, the players were just moving money around the table, but I was getting anywhere from a buck to five bucks a hand in tips, so while the house was making a buck around, I was making double that or more each time.
After awhile, my shirt pocket was so full of white chips that they were falling out onto the table every time I leaned over to push a pot or bring in the muck. The floor guy got me an empty rack, so I while the players were doing their thing, I was using the couple of free seconds I had each hand to transfer chips from my shirt pocket to the chip rack in the chair next to me.
I ended up sitting there dealing to those guys for just over two hours straight without a break, and managed to make over $150. So my crappy shift turned out to be a huge score. But all good things must come to an end, and once all the regular old codgers that come in every morning at 7:30 showed up, we had to break our game up and I had to go and deal the normal 4/8 game. I spent the next three hours doing a half-hour on, half-hour off the Hold-em table, and managed to pull another fifty out of the old guys. Another dealer came in at 10:00 am, and since we only had one game going, I got sent home at 10:30. I was ok with that--I was tired and I'd made my money for the day.
Since I thought I'd make about fifty bucks for the entire shift, and coming off of the previous days big score in the tournament, I had a few extra bucks in my pocket. Instead of coming straight home, I drove over to the men's store and bought a couple of new shirts. I was going to get the black guayabera shirt I was talking about a few weeks ago, but they weren't on sale and I didn't wanna pay $58 for a shirt. But there were some other good-looking sport shirts on sale for 25% off, so I got two of them, instead.
I came home, relaxed for a bit, took a shower, then headed back downtown to Binion's to take another run at yet another tournament. The Tuesday tournament was exactly the same as the Monday event--same format, same buy-in, so I figured my chances were good if I didn't get too cute and donkey off any chips with stuff like Ace-Jack.
I got there about 45 minutes early, so once I signed in and paid my registration, I walked over to the other side of the casino to the snack bar, where Lucy the short-order cook has been working for decades. If you haven't been to Binion's since the good old days of Benny and Teddy, or even the bad old days of Becky, you wouldn't recognize the place. It's bright, airy, and clean, with new carpet and paint, fewer machines, and more space to walk around. Even the snack bar has been expanded from the 12 or so stools at the counter to having tables available.
But the menu hasn't changed at all, so I went with one of my all-time favorite Vegas meals, a plain hot dog and a bowl of their famous chili, piled high with cheese and onions. Yeah, I know it was 104 degrees outside, but inside the casino, it's always around 68 degrees, so chili didn't seem too out-of-season. Knowing Hoya's affinity for the Bean-of-the-Day special at the snack bar, I sent her a text message saying
Binion's Chili. Oh hell yeah.
She texted me back saying that she hated me or some other such nonsense. Some chicks have no sense of humor...
Oh, and by the way, back in the old days, whenever I'd eat at the snack bar, I'd always have a root beer with my meal. But not anymore. The good folks in charge at Binion's have now seen the error of ways past, and no longer serve that vile Pepsi shiat. They are now a Coke place! Of course, they still have the old Pepsi menu boards that Benny hung in there back in the sixties, but still, an all-time classic just got much better!
Of course, I never can finish a whole bowl of the chili, so I gave up about halfway through and headed back over to the tournament area. And I saw a bunch of the exact same players as the day before, and even had one guy that was two seats away from me for most of the day on Monday sitting next to me when the Tuesday tournament started. Of course, all the players that saw me on the short stack late in the tournament came over to find out how I fared, and were all fairly surprised that I'd made it all the way to eleventh place. Like me, they thought I'd be out much sooner--it's tough to go to war against an army of big guns when all you have is a slingshot. But I a very lucky David, and several Goliaths went down ahead of me.
Feeling much more confident and biblical on Tuesday, instead of being the underdog David, I felt more like Samson going up against the Philistines. And a jaw-bone of an ass seems to be more my speed, anyways.
So, the cards went in the air, and we were underway once again. The tournament started with about 189 players or so, so I figured the payouts would be close to the same as the previous day. And when the announcement came over the PA system to Shuffle up and deal, well, I was thinking about all the things I could spend that seven thousand dollar first-place prize money on.
Normally, in big tournaments like this, most players start out playing extremely tight, so it's pretty easy to pick up the blinds and scare away limpers early on, with the happy side effect of letting everyone at the table know that you are not one to be trifled with.
On the third hand of the tournament, I was on the big blind, and looked down to see an Ace-Nine offsuit, one of my most-hated garbage hands of all time. Everyone else always over-values it, but you're generally beaten by a raise, or outkicked, and you can't make a straight, either. So unless we're late in a tourney and shorthanded, or I'm on the short stack and have to make a move, I generally treat it like it's a seven-deuce with a bad case of the clap, and get rid of it without a second thought.
But there was only one limper, so I was free to check.
The flop came out Nine-Queen-Nine. Jackpot!
I checked, as did the limper. The turn was a Four, but wanting my opponent to think I had a Queen, (and also see if I could get more than $50 bucks out of him), I raised it up to $175. He fired back at me, betting $400.
Since he had limped in, I knew he didn't have pocket Queens or even Ace-Queen, but I put him on probably having an 8-9 or 9-10 suited. Since the board was all raggy, the best he could have was a nine, and I had him outkicked, anyways. So I came over the top of him for $1200. He went all-in and I couldn't call fast enough, thinking that I'd just doubled up.
The cards got turned over, and the dude had Queen-Nine, flopping a full house!
F*ck.
Seeing that last non-Ace card coming off the deck was like watching a slow-motion train wreck. Or as Lars Vargas so eloquently put it, I haven't witnessed anything that sick since I saw Tony Bourdain getting tea-bagged in an Uzbecki dungeon. And just like that, Mikey was the very first person eliminated from the tournament. A dubious distinction, indeed.
All I could do was laugh and tell myself that sometimes I'm too smart for my own good. I suppose I needed that lesson in humility, if not only to remind me that I'm not as good as I think I am, but also to provide a good laugh and a good story for everyone else at my table. I know the guy that beat me is gonna be telling that story for years.
Stunned by my sudden demise, I wished everyone good luck and shuffled off towards the cash games, hoping to get my money back...
Luckily, I got a decent seat at a loose table, so it was just a matter of time before I could get my money back. All I had to do was be patient and wait for big cards. It didn't take long, and within a half hour I'd limped in with Aces and made four-of a kind, raking a bigger than expected pot against a flush and a full-house.
Then later on, I think I put one guy over the edge. I was on the button and had pocket fives. He was on my right, and raised the action. I called, as did three or four other people (limit game--everyone calls to see a flop), and although the board was rags, there was a five in the middle of it. I'd flopped trips. I knew the guy had Aces, and everyone checked to him, knowing he'd bet. He did, I called, and so did everyone else.
The turn didn't help much, he bet, and I raised. He was in love with his cards and re-raised. I was thinking WTF--is this guy that stupid that he doesn't recognize trips? So I just smooth-called, in case he was semi-bluffing a flush draw or a bigger set of trips (there was only one overcard on the board, but I was about 99% sure that he wasn't rolled up with it, and I knew that a re-raise wouldn't get him out of the pot, so if he made his hand, I didn't wanna be stuck for another $16).
But, the Poker Gods rewarded me for accepting their earlier lesson in humility, and the case Five came out on the river. Mr I'm-in-love-with-my-pocket-Aces guy bet into me, and I raised.
He cursed, and said Oh yeah, show us all your f*cking Ace-Five, genius as he called my raise.
One thing I can't stand is people who think they are experts at calling other people's hands and love to just talk about it, trying to validate their delusions of what expert poker players they are. Especially when I know I'm the smarter and better player (that's not arrogance, that's a fact--there are some dumb players out there, and pushing with Aces all the way to the river when you should *know* you're beaten just proves my point). And to insult me, in addition to thinking that I stayed in with Ace-Five, well, he had to learn his own expensive lesson in humility.
So I said You can't read a hand for shit, genius, and I showed my quad fives.
The whole table erupted in laughs and groans of disbelief, and my opponent went on a pretty good tirade, coming just short of Duran-Duraning the table, before he cursed some more, kicked his chair over, and headed outside to cool off. Or find a building to jump off of. I'm not sure which.
Oh, and by the way, I raked a huge pot.
It was pretty fun after that, and the guy came back about twenty minutes later--still on tilt. Since I was directly to his left, I straddled his big blind every time, which just pissed him off even more. He sat there bitching and moaning the rest of the afternoon, and eventually lost every dime he had. He raked a couple of small pots before going broke, but of course he stiffed the dealer both times, so both times I tossed the dealer a buck from my huge stack and politely said That's from him.
Heh. If he wasn't about sixty years old, he probably would've tried to beat my ass, but he was a scrawny piece of shiat and couldn't do anything but sit there and take his medicine.
Anyhow the day was pretty mellow after that, although I raked one more huge pot when I had King-Queen of diamonds, catching the Ace and Jack on the flop. I totally pushed the action with my Royal Flush draw and some poor unfortunate soul had trip Jacks and another guy made a lower flush when the Ten of diamonds came on the river.
Man, there's nothing quite like getting called in a showdown and turning over a Royal Flush! Well, maybe showing quad fives to the resident asshole, but you know what I mean.
After that, I played until my blind came back around, and then I racked up and called it a night, not only breaking even, but actually making a few bucks in the process.
I'm not sure if my schedule will allow me to play in another one of the Poker Classic tourneys before it wraps up in two weeks, but I'm ok with that. I think I could use a break. I've got to work for the rest of the week, and I still have that whole moving thing looming on the horizon.
In fact, it's about time I take a shower and head on down to the casino for another day dealing the cards instead of playing them.
Y'all have a good one.
Mikey
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