But I'm awake now, thanks to work calling me and waking my ass up, which really sucks because it wasn't about me picking up a shift, either. Oh well. All is well, however--they just wanted to make sure I'd done some paperwork, that's all.
Anyhow, I went in around 9:00 pm last night, hoping to find a couple of tables full of drunks, tourists, and those likely to call to the river every hand, but instead, what did I see? One solitary 4-8 game with two of my co-workers already playing in it, and no obvious fish. Damn. Oh well, I sat down anyways, just to be social. I knew it was gonna be a tight game. The no-limit game looked pretty good, though, but even as I was considering it, one of my co-workers, who was actually working at the time, said No way baby, no no-limit for you! You've been killing this game--you gotta stay and play 4-8! She was right, so I sat down at her limit table with a rack of white chips.
And it was a very tight game--I hovered around breakeven for about three hours, never really getting away from the +/- $20 level. But then, I got lucky. I don't know what time it was, maybe around midnight or so, when I was dealt an 8-9 of diamonds. I made a casual glance up at one of the big screen monitors in the corner of the room and saw that the High Hand of the Day was paying $239 for an 8-Queen straight flush.
Of course some knucklehead raised pre-flop, so I decided to go along for the ride. I think there were six callers, so the pot already had over forty bucks in it before the first three cards came out. And what a flop it was--Queen of diamonds, Ten of diamonds, and a rag. That gave me four to the straight flush. It was bet and raised in front of me, so I just called again, thinking that this was gonna be one hell of an expensive draw.
Four players saw the turn, which was that magical Jack of diamonds, giving me the monster straight flush! I was hope hope hoping that somebody in front of me had the Ace/King of diamonds, giving them a Royal Flush, with me getting the sucker end of it. If that were the case, we would soon be cutting up a $175,000+ bad beat jackpot, and everyone would then see Mikey doing the $50,000 naked happy dance right there on the poker table.
Of course it was checked around, but the guy on the button bet. Here we go, I thought, saving my raise until river, not wanting to knock out anyone, hoping the board would pair and somebody might make a full house.
The river was a blank, it was checked to me, I bet, and then everyone folded. Damn. Nobody had the Royal. But I still turned up my Queen-high straight flush and a cheer went up from the table when everyone saw that I'd made the high hand.
$239 baby!
It took about two or three minutes for the floorman to fill out the paperwork, and he brought me over my prize money. I toked out the breakage to the dealer and floorman, and then had them change the $200 in chips into two crispy Benjamins which went directly into my wallet. While all of that was going on, the post-hand discussion revealed that one of my co-workers had actually folded the King of diamonds, but didn't have the Ace. That would've been something had the two of us hit that bad beat jackpot--I was thisclose to pocketing forty-five grand-plus!
Oh well, no complaints here--I'll certainly take the small payoff!
Even after that, it was still kind of a tight game, tough to make money in, although there was one really obnoxious guy who everyone wanted a piece of. He'd been all-in twice, and since everyone was coming after him, players would pay him off with marginal hands, thinking he was stealing, so he survived and started to chip up again. I was three seats to his left, and decided that I was not leaving the table until I busted him.
I got the opportunity about an hour later--he bet into me when I flopped trip Kings. We got into a small raising war that put him all-in with only a draw. It never got there, and I ended up busting him. After that, we played short-handed for another hour or so, and I raked one very nice pot on a beautiful semi-bluff that got there--I was on an outside straight draw with an 8-9 in my pocket, a King hit the turn, so I bet out like it made my hand, got two raisers, I re-raised, they called. A five hit the river, giving me the stone-cold nuts, but lather, rinse, repeat on the betting action, and I took down a HUGE pot. Of course, both players put me on Ace-King, and when the other two players turned over their sets, they were just completely flabbergasted when I showed the out-of-nowhere straight.
Bam! Knockout.
That pretty much killed the game right there--like I said, we were short handed, and I broke one guy and crippled another on that hand. The other two players had begun to rack up and call it a night anyways, so that's where it ended.
I managed to walk away with almost $200 profit from the game, plus the other two benjis in my wallet from the high hand. Not a bad night at the poker table!
I considered heading over to Sierra Gold to celebrate my good fortune with their graveyard special steak & eggs deal, but I was exhausted and the whole idea of eating a steak right before going to bed was a lot of fun last week during the Madness, but now, not so much. So I drove straight home and hit the sack, where I've been ever since.
Today, I have no plans at all. I may head over to the bank and deposit some scratch for when the next round of bills make their appearance. But I'm not scheduled to work again for awhile, and since it's now the weekend for the rest of the world, I'm gonna go back down and feast on the tourists and drunks tonight. I gotta make a livin' somehow.
Mikey
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