Daytime T-Bird

Saturday at the T-bird was......interesting.

The only time I've played casino poker during the day is when I've been there all night. This was the first time I've walked into a casino during daylight and tried to get a seat.

I say "tried" to get a seat because when I arrived around noon (work took three hours instead of 30 minutes) to see one table of $3/$6 going, and it was full. I put my name on the list and went to the old standby, 100 Play Video Poker. Deuces Wild. I prefer Deuces Bonus, but this casino's machines don't feature the Deuces Bonus or the Triple Double Bonus games....not coincedentally the best games for the player who plays correctly.

After 10 minutes and $10 at the video poker machine, which felt strangely like a monkey pressing a button for a pellet of food, I heard my name, along with three or four others, called for my poker seat.

They had started a $1/$2 No Limit game, because apparently 70% of the people playing $3/$6 were actually there to play No Limit. We started with just four players, but it soon filled up and we were nine strong.

I played for almost exactly two hours. In those two hours, I got Aces, Kings, Queens, Jacks and Tens, once each.

The Aces held up for a small pot when everyone folded on the turn.
The Kings Got Cracked by A7 when an ace flopped.
The Queens Got Cracked By J8. Two ladies (ironic?) stayed despite the raise with J8 and flopped top pair with the Jacks and rivered two pair with an 8 to split the pot.
The Jacks got Cracked by J9. He flopped a straight.
The Tens got cracked by 89, he rivered two pair.

That was all my big hands for two hours, yet I still doubled my buy in of $100. In fact, I got up to about $180, lost my way back down to $105, then won up to $200 and quit.

Sure I got beat with my big hands, but with so many players in the pots I didn't expect to win them, so I minimized the damage. But there were also so many players on the pots I did win, and they chased all the way down to the river so often, the pots were HUGE. Some dipshit was raising with any two suited and then getting destroyed. So he was just constantly building pots for someone else. That someone else was often ME.

Plus there was a guy at the table who kept saying "I call....I have nothing." That is the most incredible phrase I hear at live poker, and I'll never get over it. Does he just want to see your cards SO BADLY that he can't fold? Of course he even did it with multiple people in the pot, so that doesn't explain it either. I could understand "I raise....I have nothing," but what do you get with calling? I used to call this "The lesser known 'Call Bluff'". Ridiculous, but I'll take his money. And so will everyone else. I don't recall this guy winning ONE POT in two hours. For a guy that plays every one and calls almost all of them down to the river, that's almost impossible.

So that's another round of monkey poker I ended up positive. Twenty-three more to go and I'll think I'm pretty good at limit poker. If I really thought these wins were sustainable and I were single, I'd go every day! And change my name to Shelly.

Oh yeah, after the poker I decided to play out the string (My ticket had $10 left on it) at video poker, and I held three to the royal (AJT) and drew a natural royal, paying $40 on a one penny bet. I figure the odds are around 2200 to one on that draw, but since it pays 4000 to one, you gotta take it. I took my 50 bucks and ran.