Hello folks, a trip to Morongo

Long time, no post!  Admittedly, there has been a severe lack of poker content to report. Despite the abundance of casinos in my immediate area, I've been unable to really make it there due to pressures at work and other things completely out of my control.

I still have not made a deposit on Bovada since 2009, and I still hold a pretty sizable stack of chips there, although I haven't had wins like the 11 K i scored in 2012. A lot of up-and-down , but as it remains my only online outlet, I continue to grind away there.

My last live casino poker session was in late October last year, but I've had a good win rate at some local home games in LA. But as we all know, the casino is where the big money is. So, on a quick trip about 90 minutes east, Morongo Resort and Casino was the place where I would make my return to the tables. My aim? Get back to basics, pay attention, and try to end the day with at least a double up.

Morongo is one casino I had.not yet visited in the four years that I've lived in the area. At first glance, it isn't a very attractive room in that it is completely enclosed in glass... about 13 tables, and a relatively sterile environment. As I stated before, the limits and blinds in California leave a little bit to be desired, but at Morongo, the limitations were a bit more liberal. The 1/2 tables have a max $100, while 1/3 is 100-300. There were five names on the 1/3 list, but there was a seat open at 1/2.  Begrudgingly I headed there.

My 15 minutes there was another snoozefest. No real money was going to be gleaned. Tighter than a hipsters pair of pants. Sensing this, I immediately made some $10 bets that prompted folds every time, but after collecting a few pots, I took notice at the rake being collected by the dealer, and I saw two red chips and one white chip on the cap. Well this certainly looks like $11 to me. An $11 rake? This can't be possible. Well, it turns out that even though I saw none of them in play, these were actually $2 chips, so the max rake was $5. The $5 chips were actually a confusing deeper red, which I would encounter shortly as my name was called for 1 / 3 after about 10 minutes. $20 up, I move to the 1/3 table and add on another hundred dollars.

As I usually do, I stayed out of the action for a good 10 minutes. Barring a superior hand, this is always something I do to get an idea of the competition. Immediately I noticed one spewy guy two seats to my right. Two seats to my left, a guy with a big stack yelled in unison with me "string" when the spewy guy made a string bet. I made a preliminary conclusion that the guy two seats to my left had a modicum of Poker knowledge, and might be somebody I should avoid early on while I gathered more information.

To alleviate any suspense, I was at the table for about 1 hour , as I achieved the aforementioned goal earlier in the post. I chipped up and down for about 30 minutes , missing a late position set-mine here, raising a king-high flop with sevens there. I didn't sense anyone at the table being particularly strong, and I probably should have stayed longer than I did. But, this was my first trip back to casino land in a while, and I wanted to record a win.

Up and down like this would not be enough, however. I needed a big hand. I woke up with JJ, and here comes a pretty decent story.

A guy one to my left, who.has been pretty quiet up to this point was the villain in this instance. I believe there were some limps ahead of me, and i made it $15 to account for them. $8 or $10 had been standard here so far.  Villain calls my $15.  The flop comes 8 10 3 rainbow.  I make it $22 villain calls. A black 6 makes a.club draw.  I now pop it to $36.  He calls again. The river bricks, i think it was.a red 2. I count $50 out and bet.  Villain pauses, and almost too quickly says, "All In."

He has me covered.  I eliminate a better pair, he seemed competent enough to 3 bet me with qq-aa on the flop.  A set seems unlikely...with the club draw there a made set would almost certainly raise the turn.  66 is a story i could buy, but i could also buy a hand like AQ-A10. 

Then I see it.  The telltale neck vein.  Beat beat. Beat beat.  I look him up and down.  It increases (it was already fast). Now, in my experience this has meant two things- the nuts, or nothing. Or at the very least, nothing that he feels can beat my hand. We all look at tells and reads and you're never 100% sure that we can trust them. However, the neck vein and the overall body language gave me a lot of confidence that villain was bluffing. An overpair here is relatively well disguised, and it's entirely possible that he isn't incorporating it into his thinking. After about 30 seconds I decided to call.

He sees the JJ and promptly mucks his  hand.  A round of 'nice call' from the gallery, and i ask, "AQ? A10?"  he replied, "i figured you had AK and kept missing.  I had an 8."

About 30 minutes later i rack them up with $427. Trusted my read, clocked a win, and now to the pool and a pina colada.  Not a bad return.

$50 bucks in rides, and I get $20

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Back to the Normandie

A little extra cash this month, so back I went to the Normandie for their weekly $30 tournament, which this week reached a total prize pool of $3,600. Not bad for 30 bucks!

I finished 37th out of 127 and it paid 12.  I call this an achievement because the best hand I saw all day was pocket 9's.  I cant remember a day of more card deadness.  Beyond some suited connectors and a couple suited aces, nothing.  So In reality there were very few spots where i got involved.

I'd have to say my table (table 2, so i never moved) was more active than previous tables here, lots of raising and wacky bet sizing. But, at 100/200 I call a 450 raise with 5 people in with Qs8s in the bb.  Flop comes 8 high and i check, two bets and i call. Turn brings another low with some straight draws and a second diamond, i figure i'm ahead but play a small pot, check call.  The turn completes the diamond and i decide to make a stab at it and (whoops) two callers. One tables an a10 whiff, and the other j8....my hand holds and im up to 10k.

One bad play, i take a6 all the way to the river and am outkicked by a10...but as i said, it was one of my better hands!

Q5 in the bb and Im at about 15bb at 200/400.  Queen comes, i shove, all fold.

Then my lucky hand, the pocket nines.
At 500/1000/25 im at 6000 i shove it, get called by qj.  The flop, 8qj. The turn is a beautiful 10 for the straight and i double up.  The guy, who was new to the table, took it well.

And then, more and more deadness.  Not even a face card.  With my stack dwinding down at 600/1200/100 i take Jd7d for the shove against kq and although two diamonds came, i didnt hit the third and was out.

Of course, j7 was not the right hand to shove, but it was the first face card i had seen in an hour and i was at 5bb or so.  To say i was thrilled with my play would be a gross overstatement, but i did what i could with what little opportunity i had.

Vegas, Sept 18-21, Part 2. The Flamingo

As I said in the last post, I expunged the Venetian demon effectively, so I decided I should keep that Mojo going by revisiting the Flamingo, where I've had such wonderful bad beats as AA vs. AA.  Need I say more?

One plus, and something happening more often in Vegas and elsewhere, the neat USB outlets to plug in your devices.  I had no idea when Melissa would be done, so I needed the phone charged, but my aim was, quite simply, to leave up.  Kill the bad Flamingo mojo.

And I did.

First off - the table I sat in might have been the tightest table I have ever sat in, save some friendly home game.  It was so tight that I started raising to $8 with even marginal hands late - fold, fold, fold, fold.  People seemed miffed that I was quickly captainning the table, but no one seemed to want to do anything about it, either.  To add to that, this one dude who I was swear might have had some sort of mental defect kept getting up and leaving, to the point where a lot of the players were asking the floor to remove him. He was immediately to my right and was making some ridiculous bets, so I mostly just stayed out of his way, lest I get sucked out on - of course, I couldn't resist raising him with 27off in the BB and showing him when he folded.

I wish I could say something interesting happened, but I just hit a lot of flops....set of 4's, set of 6's, typical trap, rake in the pot.  Couple that with the tightness of the table, it was all too easy.  I got a call that it was time to go after about 2 hours when I came up with AsJs, I made it $11 and got one caller.  Board comes out all low, two spades.  New guy at the table, with PokerStars/EPT jacket (but still just as tight as everyone else) donk bets the flop for $20, and I call.  Turn is no spade, but a Jack. He checks, and I bet out $25, and he calls!  The river is an Ad and gives me two pair.  PS guy thinks for a fee seconds, and rolls out $50.  While I thought he might have hit a set with ne of those low cards, I read that he really liked that ace.  I had him covered by about $100, so I shoved.  So did he - and he tables AQ.  Cha-ching!

I play nice and fold for a few orbits to make sure no one blames me for a hit and run, and I'm gone, with a profit of $250.  I cast thee out, demon!

All in all, a fun couple of days of poker.  I'll be probably be back right before Thanksgiving in November, but I'm sure I'll have something else to talk about before then.

edge

Vegas, Sept 18-21, Part 1

Rather last-minute, but my new lady friend Melissa(yes, in the romantic sense) was working a job in Las Vegas, and we've reached a point where it was totally unspoken that of course, I would join her.

Let the poker commence!

The first night we met up with some of her friends that happened to be in town at Caesar's.  We ate at Trevi in the Canal Shoppes, quite good, then made our way to Fizz for some cocktails, where I think we were both propositioned and invited to a swingers party.  But I digress....

I woke up a bit later than I wanted, but the afternoon was fairly free until Melissa was done, so I headed over to the new Caesar's room that I have yet to see. We were staying at Bally's, but I hate the low ceilings in that room, so I would not be going there.  This was a bit of a frustrating first session, where I re-learned the '1/2 player betting te river probably has it' rule, being bested with a two pair a7 from my AK.  After a bit of up and down I left $32 down at $168.  We ventured over to the Venetian where we met her friends again, all USC fans, to watch the game at LaGasse's.  I have no investment in this game, so I bowed out and headed to a place where I haven't had much success historically, but I wanted to blow that hex out - at the Venetian's snooty poker house.

Within four hands I was dealt the dreaded pocket Kings. I was in the hand with a fellow who was talking to the man to his left - the man to hs left, we've all had this guy before ---"Oh yes, I stone bubbled the Collossus/Jonathan Little and I had coffee/I normally dont play these limits..." you know what I mean.  The other guy was foreign from the accent I couldn't place, but he had Beats headphones and obviously fancied himself quite the player as he inserted comments with this fellow about all the wonderful WSOP stories he had. Trying to contain the vomit in my mouth from all this banter, I raised three limpers to $15.  One caller across the table, as well as Foreign guy.  WSOP talker, out of the hand, took his typical Im-oh-so-serious-im going-to-look-for-your-tells pose.

The flop is a relatively harmless J58, with two hearts, and I have the heart K.  Foreign guy leads out for 25.   Hm.  I quickly make it $70.  He asks how much that is, thinks for a second and calls.  Turn is a brick, and he pushes out $50.  I shove it.  He tanks, then folds.  A tidy sum that broight me up north of $300.

The demise of foreign guy came about 20 minutes later, when I check my option in the BB with j9 off. The flop came k8T, two hearts.  I check, foreign guy bets out 15 I believe, and I call.  The turn is another heart, I dont recall what, but it was low.  Now Foreign guy bets out 25.  If he has teo baby hearts, good for him, but I didn't read him there.  He limped - then donk bet again like he did before. He hadnt played many hands since KK so I had little concept of his range, but I thought KT might be likely.  I've still got the up and down draw, so I call.  The river is a beautiful 7, masking my straight perfectly.  He bets out 60, and I start the talk.

Me: "Can you beat a straight"
Me: "You don't have hearts."
Me:  " I mean, I have the straight.."
FG: "It does not matter."

That's all I needed. I raise him double, he calls, and mucks. He later said he had pocket 8's, but I doubt it. He left soon after.  I'm now around $450.  I think I flopped a set somewhere in there and won a small pot, and was north of $500 when I made what I thought was a major error.  A very beautiful African-American girl sat down - she seemed to know what she was doing, but in the few hands I saw, she seemed pretty straight forward.
I have black AKos and call her $8 bet(I dont tend to 3bet AK in Vegas).  Flop comes A63, two hearts.  She checks, I bet $17, she calls. The turn comes a heart K.  So, now I have two pair, and she bets out $35 bet.

Me: "Hearts?"
Her: smile
Me" "You have Hearts."
Her:" You can pay and find out!"

Hm.  I smelled a rat, so I said "This is what I'm folding." and showed.  She asked if I really want to know what she had, and she turned over black deuce 5. Why is she raising that?  Maybe she was 25 or something, but she bluffed me off successfully.

I left with $467 from $200, the voodoo successfully expunged from that room.  The next post will involve exorcising another demon at Flamingo....

edgie

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They are testing my brain playing poker...

So, no actual poker hand content, but Ive been selected to take part in a neurological study at USC where they are going to test my brain activity while I play poker.  Should be interesting.

I do it on Tuesday morning, so I will report back with what happened!

Vegas is a no-go.

I hate to say it, but I'll miss my first WSOP trip in 4 years. this year. the car accident deductible, plus a wedding I have to go to NYC for at the end of the month, makes it completely irresponsible to put $ at risk at this point. For now the weekly Normandie tournament and every cash opportunity I can reasonably take will have to do. :(