In my last article, I wrote about a chop gone horribly wrong in a Sunday noon tournament at Caesar’s Palace. The weekend after that, I hit Vegas on a Friday night and ended up going to play cash games at Caesar’s with most of the rest of the Casa Bodog crew. They had five or six $1/$2 NL games going, but somehow truesyalose, iLLNuGWichee and I ended up together at a newly formed table. I was a little bummed, as having at least two good players at a $1/$2 NL table is a worse percentage than you should reasonably expect. <READMORE> But it worked out fine, because I was in seat #3, Trues in #7 and NuG in #8, so we were separated as much as we could be at the table, and I ended up with these funny little tales for your amusement. Or not. Maybe they suck. I don’t know. You can be the judge.

“C” #1 – Cuervo

As the table started up, sitting to my left was a young Asian guy who was pounding down Coronas (hey, another “C”!), and obviously had been getting his drunk on for awhile before hitting the poker room. After an hour or two, NuG, being the life of the table, offered to buy shots for everyone. My Asian friend immediately piped in with “Hell, yeah! We should do some tequila! C’mon, man, Cuervo 1800! That’s the best tequila there is!” I make it a general rule not to argue with people at a poker table, especially not about quality agave tequilas, and five of us ended up doing a shot. Within 15 seconds of his glass being drained, the Asian kid said, very forcefully, “I’ll be right back, I’ve gotta go throw up” and ran out of the poker room. He was gone for long enough for the floor to start talking about what to do with his chips and open up the seat. Fortunately for him, a couple other seats opened at our table and they didn’t have to boot him while he was, well, booting.

“C” #2 – Celine

When my Asian friend finally did return, a couple shades paler than he started out, he moved from the 4-seat to the 1-seat. Why? I have no idea. But shortly after the move, he started keeping his $200 or so in chips in stacks of five or six $5 reds each. Many of the reds in play in the Caesar’s poker room are Celine Dion picture chips, commemorating her “A New Day” show in the Coliseum. My Asian friend became obsessed with having each one of his mini-stacks topped with a different picture of Celine Dion, to the point of trading chips with other players at the table if they had one he didn’t. He had no inclination toward this Celine fetish before the tequila shot, which I guess is an important lesson to learn. Tequila and skinny butterface Canadian songbirds just don’t mix.

“C” #3 – Collapse

OK, this last “C” is a stretch, but I wanted to keep the “C” gimmick and tell this story. I lost a $200 pot early at this table when my top set got cracked by a turned straight. After that, I made a couple of big laydowns (two pair, then another set when there were 4 to a straight and 4 spades on the board), and made them face-up. I’ll rarely do that in a tournament, but I also find it to be good advertising in a cash game after the table sees you take a tough beat. If everyone thinks you’re scared money, gunshy, weak-tight, etc., they’ll play back at you. It doesn’t work for everyone, but it’s worked for me before, and worked on this night as well. Several people at the table were talking openly how they could just raise me out of pots, talk I did very little to discourage.

One of the guys talking was a Caesar’s regular. At least he seemed to be, judging by the dealers and floormen he called by name, although why you’d go out of your way to show you hang out in poker rooms I have NO idea. Anyway, George was sitting on my right in the 2-seat, and when he wasn’t talking about my folds, he was telling me stories of all the bad beats he took earlier in a $2/$5 NL game for $500. You could see the steam coming off his shaved head. He was playing a lot of pots, but not getting anywhere with me and generally treading water with his buy-in. Meanwhile, I’d taken advantage of my image and gotten paid off on some hands, getting back to slightly ahead on the night. When Trues left, George decided it’d be better to have someone with more action on his left, and moved his $150 or so to seat #7, on NuG’s right, from which he played the following hand with me.

I had A-4 offsuit in the small blind. George limped, a rock in seat #9 limped, I completed the bet, and the big blind checked. The flop was AQ7, rainbow, giving me top pair with a bad kicker. I checked, the big blind bet $10, George called, seat #9 called, and I called. The turn was a 4, a VERY good card for me, and I bet $25. The big blind folded, George insta-called, and seat #9 folded. After the river was a 3, I thought about what George could have for a few seconds before I checked. The only hands that made sense that had me beat were A7 or, very unlikely, a set of 7s (I think with how much he’d been firing, he would have raised pre-flop with any pocket pair). I knew that George figured I’d just lay down like a Naked City hooker if he made a big move. The table had been talking about it for half an hour. If I led out big on the river, he might give me credit for a monster and fold. If I value bet, he might just call. The best the move was to check and count on him betting strong into my fold-o-rama image. And he did, pushing in for his last $101…I remember the exact dollar amount because of how convincingly he said the number. I thought back for a minute, reviewed my facts one more time, and called. If he had A7, he had A7, and I’d be back down overall. Worse things have happened.

I called and flipped over my aces up. George obviously just put me on the Ace, and even more obviously didn’t see my 4, because he did one of the strangest things I’ve seen in live poker. He said, “Well, I’ve got a 7…” and flipped one card over, paused for a second, then said, “…and the Queen,” flipping the other card over and grinning from ear-to-ear with his certainty that his night had just turned around. That smile dissolved as the dealer said, “Aces up wins the pot” and pushed me the mound of chips. I’d never seen anyone slowroll with something that weak, and certainly never once a better hand had been displayed. George almost knocked over the chair standing up in disbelief, and I couldn’t help but tell him as he walked past, “If you’re gonna slowroll, you need better than middle two pair.”

As I saw him take a seat at a neighboring $2/$5 table, I smiled knowing that I was going to be the subject of one of his stories to the next poor sap on his left. About 45 minutes later, the whole room was startled by what could have been a falling cinder block, but was clearly the sound of someone slamming their fists on a poker table. I didn’t even have to turn around to know who it was, or that his 6 buy-in collapse was complete.
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