Something Is Jacked Up

Hey Gang--Happy Monday!

For those of you re-clickers that checked in yesterday, I had a brief post up for several hours, but there was something wrong with it. I couldn't get edits to save and the final posted version didn't look anything like what I'd typed up, so after trying to fix it a couple of times, I just said the hell with it and took it down.

You didn't miss much--it wasn't juicy or scandalous or anything. Just your typical I'm-tired-but-here's-what-I'm-doing post. Feh... I could tell that I was incoherent when I wrote it, so it was just easier to round-file it and start over.

Anyhow.

I finally feel like I'm well rested after walking around in a fog for a couple of days. First of all, I didn't get much sleep at the tail-end of last week, and then all these months of working graveyard make it hard to get up at 7:00 am and work a very long 12-hour day, which I did on Saturday. As tired as I was, I could only manage a couple of two-hour catnaps on Saturday night, and I woke up much too early on Sunday, too, which really farked up my system.

Being so tired, I was on auto-pilot while dealing that free-roll tournament, and thought I messed up on one hand early on during the final session, but I called the floor over to make a ruling and it turns out that I actually did the right thing but one of the players goofed up a raise. No biggie, no harm, no foul, but even as much as I dislike working that big free-roll tourney, I still try and go the entire weekend without screwing anything up or making any errors. I figure that if I have to be there, I might as well try and bat a thousand. I hear about so many mistakes that other dealers make, and I thought it was pretty cool that a couple of players (complete strangers I'd never seen before) complimented me later on how much they enjoyed playing at my table. It's all just part of my evil plan to poach players from other casinos and get them to come and play in my room.

Anyhow, I managed to score the early-out on Sunday and made it back here to the homestead by halftime of the Packers-Cardinals game. As tired as I was, I still watched that game to it's conclusion. Wow--what a classic. I had no dog in that race, but you gotta love Kurt Warner. The guy is incredible.

My plan last night was to sit for several hours and write an almost epic-length rundown of my experiences on Thursday night when I was on a 12-hour poker bender that was just amazing. When I got home on Friday morning, I jotted down a few notes on a legal pad, and I filled up a whole page!

But writing that up is just too much effort for a subject that half of my readers find tedious at best, and as much as I enjoy dealing and playing poker, I don't want this to become a completely poker-centric blog. Hell, I don't even like poker blogs myself, so I try to talk about a variety of subjects. However--I feel like I should share a few things from the experience. We'll talk about cole slaw or something later in the week.

Like I said--I was out playing for 12 hours straight on Thursday night, and it started out ugly for me. In the first game I sat down in, it was kind of a grind and I was only up about $40 after almost three hours. Then, just as the game was about to break up, I lost $160 on one hand where I had top pair-top kicker all the way, paired my Ace on the river, but my opponent back-doored a flush. I made a big bet on the turn that would put him all-in, thinking he'd fold, but he said "Well, I have to leave anyways, so I'll call". Of course that Ace of hearts came out, giving me top two pair (Ace-Queen, of course), but he went runner-runner. The game was already short-handed, so when he got up, the table broke. That sucked, losing a big hand like that with no way to get my money back.

So instead of coming home, I drove over to the M and got into a 1-2 no-limit game over there. I started off pretty well there, recouping my earlier losses on my first two hands, so I thought I was off to the races.

It didn't work out that way, however. I kinda treaded water for a bit, but the around 2:00 in the morning, I took three pretty tough beats right in a row which caused me to lose most of my stack. At that point, I was in for over $300 and was the short-stacked mope at the table. Of course, I refused to re-buy, but it was my goal to make that micro-stack last as long as possible.

On one particular hand, I got all-in for about $40 with pocket Nines, got one caller, and flopped four-of-a-kind! I had gone over eight years without flopping quads, and now I've done it twice in three months. The first one, my Fours on Halloween night, got me a jackpot of $4,444, and I thought that the Nines would net me $1500. Unfortunately, somebody else had already flopped the Nines that week at the M, so all I got was the regular high-hand payoff which was reset to $50 after the Nines hit, and it was was only up to $79 when I caught it. Damn.

But then, not a half-hour later, the guy directly on my left flopped four Threes. It hadn't been hit that week, so he got a $1500 jackpot. You believe that?

With my double up on the quads and the seventy bucks I got from the house, I had a little bit better of a stack to work with. But I was whip-sawed at that table. We were short-handed, there were only five of us left, and it seemed like it was always $7 or $12 to see a flop. I was card dead, so my stack was slowly evaporating into the ether. Around 3:30 in the morning, I was down to $21 left, completely tired, and pissed off that I just couldn't get any cards. So I told the table that I was just going to put my $21 in blind on the next hand. My four opponents all agreed to do the same thing, thinking the game would break, so we decided to just run the board out blind, winner take all. I made two pair, Kings and Jacks, and suddenly I had a hundred bucks in front of me!

The problem was, besides that and the four Nines, I couldn't get a hand to hold up. There was one kid there who just hit every card in the deck and had over a thousand dollars stacked in front of him. He raised every pot pre-flop, called everything, and damn near hit every river. Since I was short-stacked for so long, just kinda hanging around, it didn't bother me too much, but he sure pissed off a couple of the other guys. So the game was more of a grudge match at that point. The kid wasn't playing very well, just getting lucky, so the only reason the the table was still going was because the other guys all wanted to get into his stack.

My hundred bucks got whittled down to $37 and by then, I'd been playing for almost eleven hours and I'd had enough. It just wasn't my night, and what was left of the $350 I'd left the house with earlier the night before was sitting in front of me in the form of seven red chips and two white ones.

I decided to go all-in blind again, got two callers, but I ended up splitting the pot. Grrr. A few hands later, I went all-in preflop with King-Queen of hearts, got called by pocket Jacks, and the dealer ran out five Clubs on the board--split pot again. It seemed that I couldn't win, but then, I couldn't lose either.

I don't remember the details, but I pulled two more quick blind all-ins and got called on both of them, so I doubled up twice, getting me back up to about $130 the next time around the table. I was thinking of cashing out then, happy to only be stuck just over $200 for the night when at one point I was down to the felt.

But I looked down and saw pocket Aces. I raised it to $12 preflop, got a caller, and then the kid who was had the huge stack and was raising every pot made it $27 to go. One other guy called, so I had a decision to make. Normally, I'd smooth-call here and try to make a few bucks, but I was so tired and irritated by that time that I made the angry all-in bet. The big stack snap-called and the other player folded.

He showed me pocket Jacks, but they were no good. My Aces held up and suddenly I was just south of even for the night! Nice... Then I really wanted to cash out and go home, but the other players convinced me to stay a few more minutes because they all agreed to go home at 5:00 am anyways--just a couple more hands.

I agreed to, planning to fold everything and lose my next round of blinds before calling it a night, but just a few hands later, I got pocket Aces again. Same scenario--I raised it to $13 pre-flop, the big stack re-popped me to $30, and another player called. So I said "And a hundred". The big stack called and the other player folded.

For god knows what reason, I turned over my cards to show my Aces, like I was all-in in a tournament. But we weren't in a tournament, and I wasn't even all in, so that's when I realized that I was much too tired to still be playing--talk about a boneheaded mistake. The big stack guy said "Oh, did you just want to check it down?" and having no explanation for showing my hand, I agreed to. I couldn't believe I did that...

The board was all little junk cards, and my opponent said that he wouldn't have called another bet anyways with his King-Jack, but I know better. He would've absolutely called another hundred dollar bet after the flop, so being that tired and out of it cost me some money. Anyhow, I raked another big pot and announced that I was obviously a danger to myself if I stayed, so I was leaving right then and there. I racked up just short of $500, giving me a profit of about $135 for the night after tipping out the dealer and the floorman a few bucks each.

I could not believe my luck--just 45 minutes earlier I only had $37 in front of me, and I parlayed that into almost five hundred bucks. If Wednesday night was all about the skill, well, I will freely admit that Thursday night was all about the luck. I had none early on, but then it hit me with a vengeance that last hour at the table. I survived four blind all-ins and then got pocket Aces twice in ten minutes against a reckless player with a huge stack of chips. NICE!

I drove home, exhausted but keyed up, unable to go to sleep right away. Unfortunately, that kinda messed up my whole weekend because I was unable to relax.

But after the football game yesterday, I finally said enough was enough, and I took a hot shower, turned on the heater, and crawled into bed where I got almost eight straight hours of uninterrupted sleep.

I feel much better today, and I'm back on my normal schedule, too. My website might be a little jacked up, but right now, I'm doing fine.

Mikey