Returning the Favor and other Slices of Life

Returning the Favor
Returning the Favor
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Monday, November 19, 2007

Tired

Way tired. I'm back from Orlando and still trying to figure out why I always think I'll have a bunch of downtime at these trade shows. Because I'm an idiot, I guess.

So I got to Orlando around 3ish, and it was right about 5 by the time I dealt with bags, rental car and got to Tampa. The Tampa Bay Hard Rock is a much better place to play now that it's nonsmoking and the games are different. Used to be, the poker in Florida was a max bet of $2, which made for some of the worst poker in the world that doesn't feature games like Anaconda or Follow the Bitch. Well, the Florida legislature passed laws allowing poker rooms to have no limit poker, but now the deal is you have a max buy-in of $100.

And they spread $2-5.

With a $100 max buy-in.

Let that sink in for a sec. Because they also spread $1-2.

With a $100 max buy-in. Not sure why you would bother.

Oh yeah, the minimum buy-in is also $100 for the no limit games.

So I lost my first buy-in on the second hand in truly unspectacular fashion when I thought I was willing to take a $100 coinflip and really I took an 80-20 dog to a gunfight and got the shit shot outta me, but I played for about 5 hours and managed a $250 win. The game was very loose, but I felt like I played well, except for one big hand where I lost a shitpot full of money.

I'm in the big blind and there are a million limpers. I look down at Kd-Jd and rap the table, because Tony G says KJ sucks, and I knew I wouldn't really thin the field unless I threw out more mobneys than I wanted to invest in KJ in early position.

Flop is K-K-2 and I hear sirens, choirs of angels and all that shit.

I check, because I figure no one limped with a better King than me, so let's be a little trappy. Guy in MP bets out $10, one other guy calls, and I call. Turn is a 6. I check again.

MP bets out $15, other guy folds, and I call. River is an 8, and I lead out for $50. I'm stacked with about $400 at this point in the hand, and the MP guy goes all in. It's about $160 more to call, and I think very briefly about what he could have.

All too briefly.

I call, table my trips, he shows pocket deuces for the flopped boat, and stacks my chips for what seems like an hour. I'm very happy about 20 minutes later when he loses a suckout to the lucksack on my left who catches a straight on the river to double through him, because the lucksack is awful and I know I have a much better chance of getting my chips back from him than the rock that took them in the first place.

Which I do when I get all my money in with two pair against lucksack's top pair and it holds up. Not a terribly eventful session, but one moment of blindness turned a $500 profitable session into a $250 profitable session. But at least it was still a good session, just need to make sure that I'm paying attention to all the information I'm given, because the old guy that took all my chips gave me every indication that he was very strong with his river bet, and I didn't take it, so more fool, me.

There was a trade show, too, and I'll give you a little bit about that later, including the fatass karmic payback I experienced on the plane and why I hate leaving Orlando. Not that I particularly like being in Orlando, I just hate leaving it.

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