Posted by Johnnymac 5:30 PM
Update from Vegas -

The 1-2 NL game at MGM has killed this trip for me. In about 10 total hours of play this weekend, I've lost $700, with $500 going on just three hands: KK, AA, and KK, getting cracked by AK, 33, and Q3, respectively. All three times it was the other guy who came over the top of my big bet to put me all-in and all three times I was ahead when we turned over our cards. I know it's "just poker" but my confidence is shot and I'm not heading back to that game again for this trip. I can take the occasional bad beat and any one of these alone isn't that bad, but three big hands like this grouped so close together with no big wins interspersed just sucks.

What's really bothering me is that this is one of the best games I have seen in a very long time - this game is chock full of tough guys and drunks ramming and jamming with shit like KJ and J9 and A-anything and I can't seem to get any piece of it. For example, the final piece of the troika happened late this morning after I came back from breakfast (which itself was a break from the AA getting cracked 5 minutes after I sat down).

My final nemesis was a very drunk black guy in a white velour track suit with a handtowel over his shoulder and munching on a pastrami sandwich at the table. He was on tilt and just pouring money into the game - from what I understand, he cashed out last night for about $3000 and came right back early this morning and started giving it back - people at the table were taking turns taking his chips in whole-stack increments. Hell, in one orbit of the table he re-bought 4 times and 3 of those times he was all in for his full $200 preflop. I was praying for a playable hand while this was going on and was psyched to finally see that KK peaking back at me from the BB. I reraised to isolate him, he called and the flop was QJ6 rainbow. I led out for $100, he said, "I'll put you all in big boy," and I called and he turned over Q3. Queen-fucking-three. SWEET.

But, as Bill Simmons says, "If I have to tell you what the next card was, you've never been to Vegas."

Dammit.

That particular hand was simply the last and most excruciating kick in the nuts; the other two were pretty bad themselves. I know that the right thing to do is just sit there and keep working, but I'm playing scared now, so I just got up and came back down to the Bally's sports book to watch football for the rest of the afternoon. If I play poker again tonight it will be the $2-4 limit game at Flamingo just because that's about all I can stomach right now. Geez.

That's all for now.

2 Comment(s):

Posted by  Junelli, at 9:39 PM, September 11, 2005  

That's why the game is so good. Because the buy-ins are capped at $200, nobody gives a shit them. They move all-in with junk like Q3.

I know how you feel, but losing $700 in a $1-$2 NL game is very easy to do (even if you're the best player at the table). Keep plugging away.

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Posted by  Johnnymac, at 1:09 PM, September 12, 2005  

I know, but I'm not a high roller like my fellow bloggers. $700 is a lot for me, especially in light of my wife's on-the-record opinion of poker playing.

But I did alright at the $2-4 game (I really did play) and my sports betting for the weekend, so my other activies hedged out some of the NL losses.

I would love to get back into that game with a proper bankroll someday.

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