Saturday poker wise was one of the most uneventful sessions I’ve had in a long time. I sat for 8 hours at the same 1/2NL table, was the last player to leave from the original group of guys that opened it, and exactly nothing happened the entire time. I got involved in no big pots, I never got up a lot, I never got down a lot. I sat for 8 hours and lost a grand total of $15, putting me at around +$120 for the weekend after food expenses. Now under normal circumstances that would mean I’d have nothing to talk about. Thankfully that’s not the case because for the first time ever since the Bad Beat Jackpot was put into effect at Foxwoods, I was there when it hit. Not only that, but it was probably to date the most high profile bad beat jackpot hit at Foxwoods to date.

For those who aren’t as familiar with the layout of Foxwoods the poker room is down stairs in the Rainmaker Casino. There is a group of tables out in the “main lobby” area and then there is another fair amount under the archway. The room stands at near 100 tables and Saturday was a particularly full say, at least from my experiences there. I was at one of the tables under the archway off in the back corner playing at a new table. After about 3 hands, people started talking about the bad beat jackpot and how it was at just under $500K right now. Personally I love the gimmick. The jackpot brings people into the poker room who otherwise would be gambling away at blackjack or slots so there are more inexperienced players sitting around trying to hit that big payday. Also, the promotion only on the 1/2 tables as far as NLHE goes. For right now I am sitting at the game that is the center of the attention for the jackpot promotion given my current bankroll, so I like seeing the extra action and softer games.

Occasionally Foxwoods sees some bigger names swing by the poker room. Paul Pierce was sighted recently playing in the 2/5 games and occasionally some local celebs sit in the games. James Woods happens to be one of these guys. Normally he sits at 2/5NL and 5/10NL and from what I hear is actually a decent guy at the tables. He’s clearly there to have fun and enjoy himself by playing a little poker and I’ve never really heard any complaints about the guy. For whatever reason on this day he decided he was going to play the 1/2NL games and try to mess around for the bad beat jackpot. As the cliché goes, the rich get richer, and Mr. Woods managed to spike a jackpot hand. I’ve heard conflicting reports on how everything went down. What seems to be consistent is that it was quad AA losing to a straight flush, I think a royal but I didn’t actually see the hand myself. More people that I talked to seem to think Woods put the bad beat on the player and earned himself a nice 25% of the jackpot for a quick $125K.

When the jackpot hand hit the poker room erupted. There were 60+ people jammed around Wood’s table, taking pictures with him, calling their friends, tweeting about what they had just seen. This all went down in the main lobby area where the sound was allowed to carry upstairs to the tournament room and slot machines. People just kept funneling over to this table and rightfully so. One of the players at my table had been drinking 3-4 per hour and was pretty drunk at this point. He left our table and walked over into the commotion, looked down at the table and exclaimed, “Oooo piece of candy” and promptly looked over at James Woods to see him snicker at the remark. For those unfamiliar with Family Guy I present the background to that remark http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hbZAo...eature=related

All in all it was an interesting weekend, more for the off table antics than anything poker related for me. Next weekend I’m planning to get into the Live MTT grind back up in New Hampshire so I won’t be able to tell you if Woods pisses away the $125K back next weekend. Regardless of what he does with the money, I get to say I was there when it happened and since I didn’t win the jackpot at least I get to tell a cool story about the guy that won it when I was there. And for those of you who only think online poker is rigged, I dare you to try and top this.

It's been 3 weeks since my last excursion to Foxwoods. I've been largely spending my time getting all my weekend obligations taken care of so that by the time summer gets into full swing I have nothing holding me back from spending the bulk of my summer in the bowels of a casino or card room. As of this moment, I have nothing holding me back aside from the potential lack of money, assuming I run into some ugly variance along the way. I made my way down to the poker room last night around 8PM EST and only lasted until 1:30AM, much shorter of a session than I am accustom to. In that time I made some stupid plays, listened to some of the most bizarre table talk I've heard in some time, and somehow by night's end I found myself +$159. Kind of a wacky time all the way around.

First things first, I've talked at length about good sessions I've had in blogs past. With that said, it wouldn't be right of me to leave out the details of my donkish behavior as well. I'm not perfect at this game, hell some days I'm downright awful, and the front half of last night's session was one of those nights. In the early going things were pretty straight forward. A new table had just been opened and I came in as one of the alternates so I haven't missed any serious action. The table layout was pretty interesting from my 9 seat. To my immediate right I had two players who seemed pretty experienced and solid and across the table were three players that were a casual as poker players get. One of them was a woman from the Naval Academy who will come into play a little later. The game itself was pretty soft, but for some reason I just didn't have my best game that night. Things started off solidly, I picked up a couple of hands and was able to make some good value bets to extract a little extra value. Things seemed to be going well until I started getting involved in pots with some of the players across the table.

One player in particular seemed like he was uncomfortable in the game. He appeared to me to be one of those guys who didn't try to really understand the nuances of what his bets mean or when to make them. He made a couple of donk leads light into multiway pots and had air each time. I managed to get involved in a 5 way pot with him in it. I had AJs on the button and for some reason felt possessed to limp. Not a move I normal make nor a move I would advise making but oh well. The board came out QJx rainbow and like clockwork our villain bet out $10-$11 like he had been prone to do. Action folds to me and I call and we see a T on the turn. The villain bets out $40 and I had to think about it for a minute. I don't think he's doing this with just a T, and he's been aggro with his draws before so it's reasonable to think I've still got the best of it, but I just don't see that T ever being a blank for him and unless another straight card comes off on the river I have to call a third barrel (at least that was my logic at the time, I don't see why I'd call this turn to fold to a 2 river, if someone has another thought about it please leave it in the comments or message me some other way cause I'm curious about this play). I end up calling the turn and calling $80 on a blank river to see him show up with 98 for a gutterball straight. I'm not totally sure if it's a bad play overall or just an ugly spot. Yeah I know raise pre and I avoid this in all likelihood but in this particular spot I didn't. As expected when I started playing more aggro preflop and on the flop I started having a much better session, but that comes later.

I was stuck around $150 when the table talk started picking up at the table. For a while we all had that awkward silence about us, this was a brand new table, no one wanted to be "that guy" and start a conversation when seemingly no one else wanted to talk so we all just sat there. The table started opening up a bit after a few bigger pots were one, a few AAs held and about $1K changed hands in 4 pots. It was then that the chatter began, all for the most part friendly and positive. Then the talk turned into a few of the big winners in the game "teaching" people how to properly play as though the fact that their AA held up was license to say you were good at the game. Regardless this lead to a phenomenal hand for table talk. Action before the turn was pretty big. Three players were in the pot, including our Naval officer from earlier, and the pot had swelled to about $135. The turn was a J making the board read QT8Jtt. A bet of $50 took it down and the player turned over AK for the nuts...well sort of. As I was about to learn apparently QQ is the nuts on this board, or at least that's what the lovely lady in seat 4 wanted us to believe. She had QQ and mucked it on that turn, which to be fair is not a laydown a casual player makes so I'll give her some props for that. When another player at the table said, "AK is the nuts" she got belligerent about her hand. "No, QQ is the nuts there. AK can still get drawn out on so it's not the nuts." I really wasn't sure what to say or how to react. I've heard stories about conversations like this, but I've never been so close to one in my life, at least not in a casino. I imagine this is what it's like to be up close to an endangered species, you may not care all that much about the specific creature, but you know you're seeing something rare and you should tune in to savor the moment. The table promptly started making fun of her, which actually made me feel bad for this woman. She's just here having fun, not everyone cares about the jargon of the game no matter how basic the term is. That said she was up in people's grills about how QQ was the nuts so I just put my headphones in and let her take the mocking, which again to her credit she took in stride. She was wrong for sure, but carried herself pretty well at the table.

The rest of the night was actually pretty uneventful. My session turned around on the back of a cooler and a TP hand holding v a flush draw. I called it quits after only 5.5 hours at the tables, less than normal but I was beat. I figure I can just put in some longer hours on Saturday to make up for it before I head back home Sunday morning. A couple of things I'm doing differently this time, I borrowed my buddy's van so now I have space to sleep in, hell I can fit an areo bed in the back now and sleep like a normal human being which is always awesome. I scrapped the whole bathing here idea as well. I can make it one full day without a shower. There are still some kinks to work out of the system but so far it looks like I'm in line for a promising summer. I'm gunna go grab some food and hit the tables in the early afternoon today. Feel free to bug me on twitter @DTools22, I'll put up my next session results and stories tomorrow morning. Good luck to all the grinders out in Vegas right now for the Venetian Deepstack and the WSOP and big shout out to my buddy Noah @PokerPlaying on twitter, good luck at the Venetian today.

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.