This weekend and next I’m not going to be able to, “live for the wonder of it all” down in the bowels of Foxwoods playing poker, so I think this would be a good time to reflect on what worked as far as last weekend’s trip goes, what needs more thinking out, and just a post mortem on my play over the weekend. This was my first weekend back since October of 2010 so I wasn’t expecting that everything would just fall into place for me. I think the weekend overall was a success though. I finished +$159 after getting brutalized a bit on day two of the trip, but the living arrangements need to be reevaluated if I’m going to continue to make trips down to the casinos.

As far as my play goes I can think of only one major mistake I made. There were some minor missteps here and there where I probably missed some value or gave some value away, but on balance I’m pretty happy with my play. The one spot I had an issue with was a bluff gone wrong. I tried to push a gentleman off what looked like a weak hand, and turned out to be top 2 on a dry board. Having bluffed off a buy in to the player to my left I reloaded for $200 and tried to regroup from there. I was actually feeling pretty good despite the misstep. I’ve never once thought I was immune to fucking things up at the table so the mistake itself didn’t really bother me. I lost, oh well, next hand. A few hands later I got into a wild spot with the same player. I was in the BB with J8s and got to see the flop 7 handed.

The flop came down TAx all hearts giving me the flush.

I checked from EP and saw our previous villain put $10 into the pot, two callers got into the pot before I made the call. The turn came a blank and I checked up front again. The villain again bet out, this time $30 and here’s where the fun gets started. It folds around to me and the dealer mucks the deck and starts pushing the pot to our villain. Once she noticed I still had a hand the floor came over to sort the mess out. The flop and turn are still on board. The ruling came out as I expected it to where the dealer just picked up the top few cards off the deck and we resumed play like nothing had happened. With action on me I made it $100 to go and the villain called. The river was the Ts and I shoved my last $130 into the middle. I got a cautious call from the villain making me think I won the hand. He then turned over KQs for the nut flush and stacking me one more time. At this point I got up and just walked around for a little bit. I wasn’t really angry, but I felt like taking a break after something like that would work preemptively to keep me from doing something stupid. I would come back later that night to dump another $112 in 1/2NL after my flopped two pair lost to the gutter ball hitting on the turn. I made back about $60 playing in the 1/2PLO8 game I mentioned in a previous post and finished off my trip with a winning session.

Now as far as my living arrangements at the casinos are concerned there are some definite tweaks that need to be made. First off, sleeping in my car blows. I have a buddy who has a full sized van that I could put an air mattress in and get some serious sleep with rather than curling up in a ball in my back seat. I think I might have gotten a little carried away with the showering thing as well. I asked the same friend, who has gone on many a camping trip in his day, how he would handle the bathing situation. He was actually quite shocked that over less than 3 days in the casino I would be looking to shower like that. I got a tad over zealous with that part of the plan now that he mentioned it. A tooth brush and deodorant is probably more than enough. The food situation is kind of hit and miss. I brought some fruit with me to snack on while playing, which was a good choice, but I’m not making enough player points to eat for free 3 times a day. I had to pay for a few meals, which isn’t the biggest deal in the world, but cheap is the name of the game right now. Especially since I’m only playing 1/2NL at this stage and a +$159 weekend is a solid time out there. Now factor in a few meals and gas, that money is going to dry up quickly.

All in all, I’d say it was a good start to what I hope will be many more trips like this. My goal is to have a real 1/2NL BR by October, around $4K-$5K, and by year’s end I want to be close to a 2/5NL BR which is around $10K. One thing I can say for sure, it felt great to be back in action last weekend.

I’m going to do my best to give this story justice but I’m not sure if I’ll be able to in text form. Saturday night after I got some dinner I went back into the poker room and there was a pretty sizable list for 1/2 NL. I put my name on it and saw that there was open seating for one table of PLO8 running in the back of the room. I decided to sit down, having only ever played the game online and done well in some micro MTTs before. I ended up making a little bit of my losses back from the day playing 1/2 NL but I got into an altercation at the table in the process.

As most good stories start, someone made a bad play at the table to spark the fire and in this case it was me. I’ll cut to the chase, 3 players on the turn, I have QJT9ds the board reads Q864 rainbow. Action checked to me and I bet $25 into the pot, one player calls, and then our villain in the story makes it $110 to go. I have about $115 behind after the $110 goes in so I think about it. I thought the guy behind me had a good low and would call and our main villain here was trying to push him off of it. He had shown a pure river bluff against me a few hands before so I think he’s just trying to outplay everyone rather than actually focus on winning the pots. I make the call thinking there was a pretty good chance I had the high right now with these two players in the middle, but was wrong about the guy behind calling as he dumped his hand. Our villain shoved dark on the river, an off suit 9h peels and we chop the pot. Turns out the villain had 75Ax for a straight on the turn and had me pretty well hosed. That’s where our story picks up.

Our villain asks me if I mentioned that I was good at this game earlier. I said I didn’t remember saying that when I was talking earlier and then the sparks started flying a bit more. The villain decided now would be a good time to educate me on how to properly play PLO8 in that spot. Before he got too far into his description I decided I was going to have some fun at this guy’s expense now since he was being a pretty big tool about everything. As he started to explain what I should have done I stopped him and pulled a note pad out of my pocket and started taking notes (I usually have one anyway to make note about big hands for later posting in the forums). At this point the villain, a little taken aback by my prop, just kept going with his explanations of not only the last hand but his bluff hand and why he was able to own me as badly as he did. At this point the table is starting to laugh because I’m actually taking notes as this guy is talking and the absurdity of the situation isn’t lost on them.

After about a minute of this our villain went for his big finish. He says and I quote, “And just one more thing I want you to remember…Steven sucks.” I guess he thought he was smart having looked at the dealer’s screen at the table and seen my name there. Unfortunately he just set me up to tee off on him.

Me: Really? After all that that’s your big close?

Villain: Yeah.

Me: That’s kind of a letdown, I was hoping for something at least creative.

Villain: I liked it. I just kinda decided to tell the truth.

I was in the 1 seat and at this point I leaned into our dealer, who was a woman for this shift to ask her a question.

Me: I have a personal question for you. Do you happen to have an extra tampon, because I think this guy needs one?

The table lost it at this point. Our villain tried his best to maintain his stance of superiority, but sadly for him he had been eviscerated already at the table. He left probably an hour later after declaring to me he was going to take all my money before he left. I stayed for about another 5 hours at the table before packing it in. When I left I was commended by a few players at the table for handling myself as well as I did. I didn’t set out to fight with this guy, I was just going to let him blow off some steam and try to get a few laughs out of it to lighten the mood. I ended up owning him pretty well. I don’t for a second think I made a good play here by the way. I have no trouble admitting I was way wrong with my read and I did my best in the hand to donk off my stack. Having said that, no one is really going to remember that hand but the villain and I, it’s how I handled myself and how badly I made him look that those players and dealers will remember. I can’t always play like a champion, but I can ALWAYS act with grace and dignity in the face of some dude teaching his mark how to play. Just in case he’s a P5er I have one closing thought. Sir, don’t teach your marks how to play you fucking moron. The way you make money in the game is by taking advantage of those mistakes. Just a heads up :) .

Last night was my first session at Foxwoods since the World Poker Finals last October. I had a plan going into the evening to play until the sun came back up, find a quiet spot outside to sleep assuming it was nice out, come back Saturday afternoon and evening refreshed and recharged to play again. Well…that didn’t happen. To be fair, these first few trips I expect are going to be the ones where I test out a lot of these ideas and figure out which ones are good in practice and which ones are half baked and brain dead. All that said, it was a pretty fun night.

I sauntered into the poker room at around 7:30PM and saw that it was open seating for 1/2NL. I was pretty shocked given the number of people in the room and it being a Friday night but I wasn’t going to complain. When I first sat down I was a little concerned that I’d be rusty, that since it’s been a while I’d start making live poker specific mistakes like looking at my hand too early or sloppily so other people can see the cards or acting out of turn. For the 8.5 hours that I was there it was as if I’d never left the poker room. I fell right back into my old routine, except now I was actually smiling and being social. Normally I wouldn’t talk to people at the table but this time around, especially if I’m going to frequent Foxwoods for many more weekends to come, I don’t want to be pissing people off. I was trying to be Negreanu-esk minus the whole Canadian and being an elite world player thing. I was just trying to make sure everyone was having some semblance of a good time, particularly the three really bad players at my table that looked as though they had never been in a live casino before.

I did get into a minor altercation during the session, despite my cheery outlook. There was a gentleman at the table who was short stacking. He bought in for $60, and was noticeably not used to playing short stack poker. During a dealer change he thought the button hadn’t moved and that he had to pay the big blind twice. The gentleman who was the button now claimed to be the small blind last hand, and I agreed with him. The short stacker didn’t take too kindly to me backing the button up. After about 10 minutes of him periodically saying how wrong the two of us were and how he would prop bet us for thousands because he’s, “Never wrong in this spot, EVER” I finally spoke up.

Me: Do you really want the dollar back dude?

Player: No it’s not about that…

Me: If I just give you the dollar back will you stop talking about it?

Player: (Shakes his head) Two dollars.

Me: (Tossed him a $5) I want change.

The table got a kick out of it and even the player in question was happy with the result so I don’t mind tipping this guy to stay quiet. Poker wise everything went my way up until the last 30 minutes of the night. I wrote down a couple of hands to talk about in the next blog but I’ll cliff notes some of the spots here. I win AKs v AKo on KxxJ with the flush draw on turn, hit runner runner straight on a paired board with a made flush out and it was good, called down $80 on turn and river combined with A-high and it held. Final tally, +$659 on the night, and that’s after I dusted off $80 on one of my last hands because, “the dude HAD to be bluffing there.” Regardless I’m happy with the results and my play, now I’m going to get food and get another session going.

DTools22 on twitter if you want to bug me while I’m playing.