Jun 17
In the 5 days that I have been back in Las Vegas I’ve spent just under 24 hours playing poker. I expect to push that number to 30 hours by tomorrow morning. Despite this week being both a financial and emotional rollercoaster I have generally been enjoying the grind.
I marked my return to Vegas with a sizeable win during my first session at the tables. Unfortunately the cards turned against me and for two days I couldn’t catch a break. The most frustrating part of those two days was the knowledge that I was playing generally well, but simply couldn’t outrun the deck. In 9 hours I gave back almost all of my initial profit, and though I hadn’t actually lost any money (my low point was a $50 profit), the poor showing left me frustrated and anxious. Back where I started, I set some time aside yesterday afternoon to regroup and recoup. Rather than go directly to the card room I relaxed around the apartment for a while, playing video games and watching tv. For good measure I popped in my Rounders dvd and freebased some lab-quality inspiration.
Before I moved to Las Vegas I definitely was not a superstitious person. Wearing a rally cap in little league is as far as I would go. Out here though I just can’t help it. I laugh at myself for being so silly, but put on my lucky bracelet anyway. I had lost two nights in a row wearing khakis so it was time to try jeans. Collared shirts don’t work, let’s try the tee. The necklace was good, but now it’s bad. Shoes vs sandals, watch vs bracelet, maybe wear a rubberband… Do I chew gum? Wallet in the right pocket or the left? Pick the 7-seat or the 1-hole? When you are catching a shitty run of cards you find yourself willing to try almost anything in an effort to turn things around. And likewise, when you are running particularly well you don’t change a thing. Getting dressed for yesterday’s game became an adventure in Voodoo.
I finally sat into the game at 830 and expected to play until about midnight. Nine hours later I walked out of the casino into the dawn’s early light, barely conscious and staggering on atrophied legs. From the beginning of the game my cards were immediately better. Sadly, my luck was not. Instead of losing with bad cards I was now losing with good cards. Early on I flopped a set of 2s and got run down by a flush. That diamond hit me with a $100 loss in the opening minutes. Fortunately I turned things around when I trapped a lady after I flopped trip jacks and called my way to a double-up.
The first five hours of the game were pretty typical and I rollercoasted regularly between +200 and -100. The real fun began around 1 am. Showing a small profit after five hours of play I was ready to go home when a new set of players sat into the table. The guys were all young, between 21 and 24, and I had played with one of them late into the morning the night before. It is always more fun to play with people you know so I decided to hang out a little longer (it’s not like I had anywhere to be). The game immediately became interesting. It’s a little hard to explain to people unfamiliar with the feel of a $1-$2 game, but the dynamic of our table shifted away from the norm and effectively became what I would consider an aggressive $3-$5 table. Hands were aggressively contested and preflop limping became the exception rather than the rule. Pots became large and chips were moved with an almost uncomfortable frequency. I made a point of demonstrating to the table that I wouldn’t be pushed over by throwing in several check-raises and reraises when people tried to run over my hand. Most of the time I made those moves with pretty marginal hands. The point was made though and rather than becoming a target I joined in the hunt myself. I played out of the 5-seat and all the aggressive players were seated to my immediate right, forming another Murderer’s Row from seats 1 through 5. It became an unspoken alliance of Our Side vs Their Side of the table. Our side clearly won.
Beyond merely attacking the players in 6 – 10 our side of the table straddled every blind that we could. When new dealers sat down, and seeing the straddle called out ‘Straddle!’ as they are supposed to, we would politely but jokingly inform them that they might as well not even bother announcing it. “Man, you’re going to get tired of saying ‘straddle.’” When a new player took the seat of someone who had just busted I would point across the room to the other no-limit table and say “Yo man, that’s the 1-2 game over there. We’re playing $1-$2-$4 here.” The new player would laugh at the comment but he would then invariably stop laughing when, after the third or fourth consecutively straddled blind, he realized I was serious. It was great fun for Our Side, but Their Side didn’t seem very happy about it. One player actually complained to the dealer and asked if there was a rule about how many times we could straddle the blind. The dealer only shook his head and then laughed while explaining to the man that there was nothing he could do to stop us. In retaliation for the complaint Our Side took the assault one step further by playing a $1-$2-$4-$6 game when possible. There would be a small blind, a big blind, a straddle, and then a blind raise. The blind raise only lasted a few hands before we realized that without an extra pre-flop option the blind raise was a pretty stupid idea (The straddle has the last option, so he can always reraise his initial straddle, the blind raiser doesn’t have that chance. His only counts as a standard raise, the only difference is that it’s made without ever looking at his cards.). We weren’t trying to ruin the game, but we were making every effort to change the pace of the game and put Their Side on the defensive, a tactic which clearly worked. The players across the table began the New Game with about $350 each, but after three hours of $1-$2-$4 every one of them was broke. Meanwhile, the chip stacks in seats 1 through 5 each continued to grow.
One man in particular became a serious target. He tried his best, and I don’t fault him for being such a sucker, but he might as well have worn a bullseye on his mustard-stained t-shirt. After only a few hands of play I quickly labeled the man as my primary target at the table. I wanted to get involved in as many pots as possible with him; I figured it was only a matter of time before I got all his money. I feel a little bit like a bitch giving this description but the man was clearly, though unsucessfully, trying to project the image of a serious, unreadable player with an arsenal of dangerous moves. He almost certainly plays poker online and says stupid things to sound cool and knowledgable about the game. BIG SLICK!! He plays any suited cards and bets into the raiser in an effort to outplay the table. The only real problem is that he isn’t at all good at poker.
In addition to becoming my atm last night I think I made an enemy of the man. I don’t have any ill feelings towards him, but I am quite sure he doesn’t like me. (By the way, he was the man who complained about all our straddles.) I am usually a very polite player, but in my defense it was getting pretty late and the guy was getting on my nerves. A hand arose where the blind wasn’t straddled and a few players including myself had limped into the pot for $2. Facing a $2 blind and a total pot of about $7 the man checked his cards and immediately raised to $50 straight. I couldn’t fight it, I started to laugh. My laughing was noticible to the man, but he ignored it. As each player folded their hands to the ridiculous over-raise I started talking to the man in between giggles. “Wow, you really like those jacks, huh?” He said nothing. “It can’t be anything other than jacks, dude. You might as well just admit it.” Again, nothing. When it was my turn to fold I looked back at my cards and said, “Nope, I can’t beat jacks. You win man. Good bet.” The other players started laughing and making comments of their own about the guy’s jacks. Finally, while pushing the $7 pot the dealer said, “Hey, I don’t blame you. That’s the only way jacks can win.” Though the rest of the table thought that was pretty funny the man clearly did not. “Keep your comments to yourself!!” Not quite ready to back down I made one final remark. “Alright. Well then prove me wrong. Show me that you didn’t have jacks and I’ll apologize… Go ahead, just show it.” The man slowly pushed his cards across the felt face down and into the muck. I stopped smiling. “Yeah, I didn’t think so. Good hand.”