♠ Sunday, March 14, 2004
The Streak is Broken at Last
I finally won money in live play, for the first time in at least eight sessions (the streak goes back at least as long as I've been logging my sessions). Gil and I went to the Trump casino in Gary on Saturday, after Dave and I went down there on Friday. Friday I didn't lose the farm, but it was a down session, losing $55.50 at $3/$6 after going up $7 at $5/$10. I remember the $5/$10 table; I won a single pot when my KK held up. But on the $3/$6 table, even though it was a better table in terms of the game itself, I didn't get much in the way of cards, and so I folded my way to a $55.50 loss. I did get some respect for my raises late; people told me several times that they "knew" I had AKs or AQs when I actually had nothing better than K♣J♠ just because I hardly ever raised.
Then on Saturday, Gil and I returned. I brought along a change of shirt (and underwear and socks), expecting that we'd want to spend the night. There weren't any seats for us when we got there (which is unusual that early in the day), so we got to wait for twenty or thirty minutes before a seat opened on $5/$10 for me, and they opened a new $3/$6 game for Gil. They pulled me off the $3/$6 list when I sat $5/$10, which I wasn't sure how I felt about, but I didn't complain.
Gil happened to draw a dream table, almost entirely loose-passive with at least one total newbie on the table at all times. Good cards help him take advantage, and he goes up well over $200 before cashing out +$175.
I, on the other hand, get horrid cards. I get AKo once, but that's the best starting hand I see; I had a small pocket pair a couple of times but didn't flop anything out of it. As I did the day before, I got a lot of respect for my raises, and was able to buy a pot or two because of it. In one hand, I had (let's say) K♣J♦, and the board flopped Q♥8♥2♦. It checked around, and when the turn was the 10♥, I immediately bet out. The two players in middle position folded, and the player in late position paused for a minute, looked at his cards, looked at me, and then mucked, saying, "Well, even if you're buying it, I can't call you." Immediately, the players on each side of him said, "No, he didn't buy it." One said, "If he didn't just make the flush, he made two pair." This turned out to be a great opportunity to use my poker face, because of course I had no such thing. All I had was a straight draw with a three-flush on the board. But hey, I'll take respect any day if it means I get money for it.
All in all, a $59 win with horrid cards is a good day, approximately 1BB/h for the six hours we played. I'm a little ticked that Gil wanted to go home rather than stay overnight and play again Sunday, because I knew he'd want to play somewhere on Sunday, and I am sick of the two- and three-hour car rides each way just to play a couple of hours of poker. More and more, I feel I have to move to Las Vegas, even though I can't afford it yet.
Of course, Gil wanted to go play poker again in the morning, but he should have listened to me the night before.
This has been a poor week overall; I'm booking very few wins even if I'm not losing a ridiculous amount of money. However, earlier today my Q♦10♦ managed to get a board of A♦-x-K♦-x-J♦ for my second-ever Royal Flush. Last time, I think it was spades, but I also had two cards of it in my hand.
