Clueless Wonder

Well I’m back home sitting in front of my Mac writing this after a long and draining weekend. Most of you that were in Vegas already know about my trials and tribulations while on this trip. For those that don’t, I was held up at gunpoint my first night in town. Already having dumped about $700 in the 2-5NL game at Bellagio, this fine fellow proceeded to liberate me of the rest of the funds on my person, which happened to include my WSOP buyin money. So after filling out a police report I was in Vegas for less than 10 hours, minus all of my liquid cash for the trip, and feeling mighty fucking sorry for myself for being so damn stupid as to walk at night with that much cash on me.

I called my girlfriend who was very upset at my predicament but said, ‘At least you’re ok.’ And dammit she was right! So the next morning I got a $800 advance from my bank and put 4 $100 bills into my pocket. I had decided to at least try and have a bit of fun on this trip. So I met up with Jon and Alan over at Caesars for their noon tourney on Thursday. For $200 I don’t think you will get better value or play in Vegas. Levels are 40 minutes and you start with 4500 chips. I also have to say that I love the poker room there. It’s actually a separate room unlike the other rooms around and so you don’t get all the hubub and noise from the rest of the casino. I lasted for awhile and busted somewhere on the north side of 50th I think. Both of the brothers Penner finished much higher, with Jon taking down a nice payday for 7th place! After busting I proceeded to head over and play some 1-2NL, which I had already won about $100 in before the tourney.

This cash game was pretty typical of what you’ll see in Vegas. One or two old geezers who for the most part play pretty tight and like to grumble about aggressive young ‘internet’ players, a couple of younger guys getting wasted, and some that you can tell are just there to play some cards. I had a fine run at the table that night, mostly betting at pots which were uncontested and being aggressive when I did have the cards. Near the end of the session, one of the old geezers that had been whining about me overplaying my cards and betting with nothing raised to $10 from the button after 3 limpers. I thought this was kind of weird for him as he had been betting big when he had good cards. I look down at AJ in the SB. My immediate instinct was to pop the old fart back but decided to see a flop. Two of the limpers tag along and we have 4 players looking at a flop of A 3 5 rainbow. GIN! A check-raise was in order I thought so I check and so do the two preflop limpers. The old guy bets out $25 and I take a few seconds before raising it to $75, which was about half his remaining stack. The limpers bow out and he immediately starts grumbling about ‘internet players’ and people ‘raising with nothing’ before he pushes the rest of his chips in. I beat him to the pot as I knew I held the best hand. He held A7, didn’t get any help, and stomped off saying ‘Go back to the fucking internet’ to my back. Ah yes, that was fun!

Friday I decided to just go across the street to play some more cash at MGM. Hopped into a game sometime around 11 and proceeded to run it over for the next 4 hours until I needed to meet up with Stephanie when she got into town. I hit flops with my bad cards, got action on my good cards, hit the very few draws I was on, etc…. It was just a stunning fucking run when all was right in the world. Here’s the results:

The top one was my tower of power that I was working on while playing while the bottom was me getting ready to hit the door with an $1100 profit. I can’t remember ever being up this many buyins (max was $200) in such a short period of time. Was I on a good run due to my earlier bad karma? I guess I was about to find out.

To be continued….