RETURN TO FOUR WINDS: MARCHRON'S TRIP REPORTS, VOLUME TWO (bitches)
PART TWO: Menace Monday
So Monday morning, CrMenace sends me a PM confirming that he still has every intention of showing up that night. Just to make double damn sure we can spot each other so I don't look like a goober approaching random people in the poker room, I send him a PM to tell him exactly what I will be wearing. This is a pretty radical departure for me, since I usually don't plan outfits, preferring the reliable bachelor sniff test. I conclude by saying "I don't know whether this makes me a nit or gay. I'll go with 'nit' unless you coordinate your outfit to match mine. Please don't wear a blue shirt."
Just before I left, he replied. He'll be wearing a blue shirt. Dammit. Will anything go right on this trip?
Menace's flight arrives at Chicago Midway at 6:30 CDT, so he figures he'll get to Four Winds around 9:00. I chuckled, because between flight delays and traffic leaving Chicago at the close of the holiday weekend, good freakin' luck with that. So again I don't bother leaving until the late afternoon, and since the FIRST-PLACE CHICAGO CUBS were getting their FIRST-PLACE ASSES KICKED, I didn't have to waste any time watching the game and could go straight to poker. Which I did. I get assigned to Seat 8 at a full 3/6 table, but half the people are gone for whatever reason, so we're playing 5-handed. I sit down and wait for the hand playing to end. It finishes with Tina, who's directly across the table from me in Seat 3, winning with a straight flush.
The next hand is my first, and I look down at J8[img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img] in the big blind. This is one of my favorite hands, because I
made a straight flush with it at Blue Chip last year. The table respects the aura of good karma surrounding me, so all five players limp and I check my option. The flop comes A3x with two [img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img]s, SB checks and I bet. It gets called once, Seat 4 raises, folded back to me and I call. Turn doesn't fill my flush but it does pair my J. I check and call. River doesn't fill my flush but it does pair my 8. I check, Seat 4 bets, I check/raise and he calls with A3o FTW. Dammit.
Next hand, I get a suited Ace in the small blind, flop another flush draw, lead and get raised, whiff the flush and fold the river in disgust. Then in the next orbit I get AK and AQ, raise them both, and both times the flop comes all lowballs and says "o look wat i found 4 u, its a grease fire" and my hands die in it. The next big blind, I get J2s and a free look at the flop, which I actually hit this time for a change, as it's something like J8x. But it only happened that way because the flop decided to take a break from owning my ass hard and let its buddies Turn and River have a crack at me for once. They come the Ten and Queen of Every Damn Draw In The World, I bet the river, Tina raises and I fold. Dammit. The next hand in the small blind I get something else I have to complete, call a flop bet and fold the turn and suddenly I'm down to $18. I would reload, but I'm convinced that either 1) I can actually come back from the dead because the two guys on my right are exquisite fish, or 2) I can survive the rest of the orbit until my BB, then sit out and go reload. I don't know why I thought I had a chance in hell of accomplishing either. I should have known this table was a ballbuster when my buddy HYDRO, who was killing the game the day before to the tune of $400 or so, sat back down in Seat 9 to my left and only had $17 in front of him, which he reloaded up for another hundo.
I actually think I have a chance of surviving until my BB when the next few hands are so bad that I don't feel obligated to put money in preflop. Then when I'm second to act, I get 87[img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img] and one of the exquisite fish limps from UTG. Limping good suited connectors has been, even though
SSHE doesn't recommend it, SOP for me here because preflop raises are fairly rare, especially after a couple EP limps. But I decide against it because I have squadoosh for implied odds because I'll only get paid off 3 BB, since that's all I have. I fold and it gets limped behind me until Tina raises, which made me feel a little better. But somewhere in the back of my head I hear the thundering voice of the poker gods saying "hey dummy, watch this," and the flop comes 9[img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img] 10x 6x, which would have given me the nuts. Mentally, I respond to the poker gods, saying "Are you kidding? With my luck at the table so far, that'll get beat," and the poker gods said "O RLY? LOLZ" and the turn and river are 10[img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img] and 6[img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img], which means I would have made a straight flush and caught Tina with tens full and some other sucker with sixes full. I'm actually able to maintain my composure until Sixes-Full Sucker calls to close the river action and get to showdown, at which point I [censored] myself and bitch about folding the straight flush. Nobody believes me, since Tina had just had one, so I hit up the Last Hand feature and ask HYDRO to vouch for me. And if you can't trust a grown man who calls himself "HYDRO," who can you trust?
I thank the poker gods for not giving one of my opponents quads, which meant I would have not just folded the hand that would have probably netted me $70 but also forfeited a jackpot hand, which would have resulted in me going on a complete and utter rampage. In return for my gratitude, I beg the poker gods to let my UTG hand be trash so I can reload with the last shreds of my dignity intact, but the poker gods are sadistic bastards and I get black nines. I raise and warn the table that I'm going to the mat with it, hoping that through some sort of reverse psychology they'll all call my raise so I can eleven-tuple up, but of course nothing is working for me today, and everyone folds to Exquisite Fish in the BB, who defends. Flop is JJ4 with two diamonds, check bet call. Turn is like 3[img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img] and he donks. I stack-off raise my last three bucks and he calls with K2[img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img], and naturally I miss my four-out full house draw for BUSTO. I manage to keep my cool until I leave the poker room, whereupon I ordered about 73 alcoholic beverages and took them to the craps table. I count what's left in my pocket, and it comes to $150. I reserve $90 for when I get back to poker and $20 for the buffet, so I have $40 left for a $5 craps table. I can kill time here until Menace shows up at 9:00.
I lost it in three shooters, one of whom was me. Dammit.
I sit, and sulk, and watch the FIRST-PLACE CHICAGO CUBS load the bases in the ninth to start an improbable comeback, but naturally they dork it up in embarrassing fashion. Final score: 11-3. Eventually, I get done steaming and go back in. My seat's still open, which is good because I kinda liked it there, but by the time I reload my last $90 onto my card, somebody's taken it. You ever look at somebody and just know they're a complete tool? Michael was that guy. Not the flush draw-donkin' Michael from previous days; that guy looked like an old New York cop. This Michael looks like a cross between Prahlad Friedman and a douchebag.
I actually manage to not lose all my money in less than three orbits, so I have the time to develop some reads from Seat 4, on Tina's left. Michael is a donk. He has some preflop standards, but his default mode is aggression. I learn this when I get QQ and three-bet his EP raise. The flop is J-high and he donks, I raise, he calls. Turn is a blank and he donks again, and not knowing his tendencies yet, I just call. River is another blank, he bets I call and he shows KJo. MHIG. Finally! Gimme that goddamn pot.
Michael's having pretty good luck bullying around the rest of the table. His main nemeses are me, of course, but especially Tina, who's turning out to be quite the LAG. In one hand she three-bet his EP raise with A9s and took it down. Tina's having trouble hanging on to her chips against the rest of us, but she routinely punished the crap out of Michael, who would always incorrectly guess her hand, be wrong about it, but lose anyway. In one hand the turn paired the flopped Queen; Michael donked, Tina raised, Michael said "I know she's got three Queens," but calls anyway and calls the river as well. He was wrong: she had FOUR Queens. Great; now I have to fight for my fish dinner against a donk on the other end of the table and a LAGgy card rack on my right. No problem.
After a while a really interesting hand develops where the guy on my left, an older fellow named John, checked the turn on a 987J board and then folded when it came back three bets to him. He was going to dinner right after this hand. The river paired the Jack and he reacted angrily to it. I quietly ask him what he folded, and he said a pair of Jacks. Well, LOL, trips aren't any good on that board with that action. "No, I had a pair of Jacks in the hole." No [censored]? He was telling the truth; he folded top set. I checked. Well, I'm off the hook now for folding an eventual straight flush preflop. Eventually, Joshua from last night shows up and I tell him he's off the hook for the Dumbest Play Of The Weekend Award for just flat-calling a straight flush.
Some more orbits pass and I get 54o in the CO after a million limps. I limp knowing that John's on my left, currently lecturing the table on why you shouldn't draw to an inside straight; Exquisite Fish is to his left in the SB, and in the BB is the tightest guy at the table, a guy named "DeanerJ43" or something like that. So of course, I limp in with my absolute favorite hand, John folds, EF completes and Deaner raises us all. Great. We all call and the flop is A2T rainbow. Deaner checks. Hmmmm. Michael donks, it gets called a few times and I call too, even knowing that there's the possibility that Deaner will check/raise, because I'm getting like 17-1 so it's actually almost +EV to call even if I know Deaner will raise. But he calls to close the action, and as John is still lecturing us all about the danger of drawing to gutshots, I turn the wheel with a 3. Michael donks, couple calls, I raise, then Deaner springs to life with a check/3-bet. Too late now, Deaner. Michael and everyone else finds a fold and I make it $24. I remember that because I didn't realize Deaner and I were HU and I thought that would be a cap. Deaner makes it $30, and after that it's a blur. I'm almost positive I six-bet, then Deaner made it $42. I don't remember if I called that or raised and called a 9-bet. Obviously in almost all circumstances I wouldn't have called at all, but bankroll considerations dictated that I had to slow down, even with the nuts. If Deaner has AA I could go broke on this hand, and if I do it's BUSTO. I have $20 more for the buffet and $10 in shufflin' chips and that's it. If I go broke, all I'll be doing is sweating Menace whenever he shows up. I have no more money. I left my ATM card at home, partially to protect myself from going on ballistic psychotilt and withdrawing real-life money for poker (which I try not to do), but also because there's like a 5% fee for casino ATMs and I just don't want to pay it. Actually, thinking more about it, I'm pretty sure I just called a seven-bet because on the sixth bet, the computer display of the bet in front of each player changes from five stacks of $6 to a $25, two $5's and a $1, so when I made it six bets I finally saw that I was now dealing in green-chip territory, which means I was quickly approaching about half my 'roll riding on this hand. So Deaner made it seven and I called. The river is a blank and Deaner led again. At this point, excitement has given way to pity; I probably shouldn't even have played this hand, I just caught a gutshot after agreeing with John that gutshot-chasers are the lowest form of life in the known universe, and I have someone who's actually a good player caught in a steel trap that will seriously [censored] him up. So the betting round after I did something I've never done before — intentionally flat calling with the nuts because I feared losing — I did something else I've never done before, and that's quit taking someone's money when I felt sorry for them. That was a $161 pot I'd won, though, so that put me back above breakeven for the night, so my bloodlust to avenge my BUSTO earlier was sated.
Menace arrived a little while later. I'll get to that in a bit, but the first story I tell him was about that hand and how I was both a wuss and too nice, but sorry Menace, there's one thing I didn't reveal that I saved for this TR: Deaner didn't have AA. He had Ace-Ten suited for top two. Which means he wasn't the good player I thought he was and I'm a moron for not taking every nickel he had.
In the next few hands I had AK and took the last bit of money from a random old dude who was stacking off blind with Q4o, then beat another pot out of Michael when I isoraised Tina's limp with KJo and he three-bet me from the blinds but couldn't beat me on a K-high flop. I've got $289 in front of me when I hear "sup bro?"
Maybe Menace will chime in here with his first impressions of me, but the only thing I could think about when I looked at him was that I had no idea whom he could be a menace to except maybe a croquet match or an art gallery. BUURRRRRRNNNN. I kid, of course; we explained the etymology of our screennames over an IM convo earlier in the week. His is easy; mine was so complicated that he told me he didn't really get it until the flight in. LOL.
As they're setting up his card so he can log in, I show him how the system works on one of the HU tables, which had been set up for a play-chip demo. I remember two things about that play-chip hand: one, that I three-bet him blind on the flop, called his turn bet because I HAS A GUTSHOT, and that that was the second-to-last hand I stood any chance of winning that night. Seriously. He puts his name on the list, deposits money onto his card at the cage, and sweats me from behind (insert "expected, consensual and pleasurable" joke here) and watched me do nothing but fold hands like 73, 82, 64. Wait, I think I had T2s once in the big blind and saw a free flop.
Eventually he sits down in Seat 10, to HYDRO's left. Now that Menace is here I can re-tell all the bad poker jokes everyone's already heard once, mostly revolving around how bad my hands are: "Man, those cards were so bad they had fractions in them!" "Hey, that's a good card, but I can't play it because if I pair it my kicker is a negative four." "Dang, that's a good double-down hand but a crappy Hold'em hand." And on and on. Menace, however, kicked ass and took names. IIRC, he only really played two hands. I'll let him fill in the details, but in one he had 92s and flopped two pair in a big blind special, which I bitched at because every time I had nine-deuce, all I wound up with was a double-down joke. In the other, he introduced himself to both Michael and Tina when he flopped a King-high flush.
Meanwhile, all I wanna do is win one pot. One [censored] pot. I just want to bellow out one good hearty "SHIP IT!" Is that too much to ask? Evidently so, because the poker gods noticed that they fell asleep at the switch when I scooped that monster pot with the wheel and decided to punish me for my cowardice and generosity after the fact. Finally I get something worth playing: 33 in EP. After a couple more limpers, Michael raises us in position, and I give him hell about this because the few times I limped in the last hour or so, he raised every time. "What, do you have it out for me?" I asked. "Is it because I'm a Mike, too? Is this like
Highlander or something? THERE CAN BE ONLY ONE!!!1" He just grinned. The flop comes AT3 with two clubs. It gets checked to me and I donk because I know Michael will raise, and he does. Everyone folds except for one guy who goes all in for $6, I reraise, Michael four-bets and I smooth-call. The turn pairs the Ace, I check/raise him and he three-bets. [censored]. Michael is a donk, but he's not a complete idiot; normally when someone plays back at him, usually Tina, he shuts down. Three-betting my check/raise means he has at least an Ace, and four-betting me on the flop means AT is definitely in his range. I just call the three-bet and the river brings a third Ace. I [censored] myself a little, check and just call Michael's bet, which was complete tilt because my hand is basically worthless. But I forgot someone else was all-in and just wanted to see his lucky suckout with quad-Aces. Of course, he didn't have an Ace. Didn't have a ten, either; the all-in guy had that. Michael had pocket fives. POCKET [CENSORED] FIVES TO BEAT ME BECAUSE THE [CENSORED] RIVER COUNTERFEITED MY [CENSORED] HAND. I show my losing boat and go from zero to lunatic in nothing flat. He looks at me fuming, and says something like "Sorry man, I'm new at this, I don't know what I'm doing," which just puts me further into Full-On Berserk Mode.
But I can honestly say I didn't tap the aquarium. Nope. I beat the [censored] out of it with a [censored] sledgehammer: "Well, here's a [censored] lesson for you: when someone goes four bets on that flop and three more on the turn, THEY'VE GOT [CENSORED] POCKET FIVES BEAT!" I take my chips and my sunglasses and quit after the next hand to leave the room before I strangle him with his own entrails. I notice it's almost 11:00 and the buffet of awesomeness closes at 11:00, so I go back and tell Menace, doing my best to not even look at Michael because if I do I'm knocking his teeth in. He decides to call it a night as well, and we both cash out. He's got $300 and change for about a $100 profit in an hour; and I've done this one better:
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That is a quality trip report.... all the more so since you played all day and ended up 1/3 BB [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]
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I QUADRUPLED that win on Day Two. I ended up with $190 for a 1 2/3 BB profit for the entire weekend.
Dammit.
We go to the buffet, Menace decides not to drop $18 on it because he ate on the flight, and this depressed our server. She was named . . . [censored], if I name her I might get her in trouble, and I've already dealt with something like that from my thread earlier. Anyway, she either had a giant crush on me or she was just overly touch-y. "Awwww, you brought a friend with you tonight," she said upon seeing Menace. She did a hand caress on my back when she walked away from the table to get me a Diet Coke. I'd already told him she was a toucher (not that I mind; I'm not one of those people who get huffy about their "personal space," just that it's not what I expect in the server/diner relationship), but that surprised him. I said hell, that's nothing: on Sunday night I had soup on my hands and she offered me her hips to wipe them off on. I had a napkin on my table. Uh . . . yeah.
So anyway, I had to hustle because they started removing food at 11:00 sharp, so I wolfed down a spinach salad and like four slices of prime rib. While I ate, we made fun of all the n00bs and lurkers and cracked on some of you guys. You won't get anything from us, though; we're taking that [censored] to the grave. <font color="white">LOL, just kidding, we didn't make fun of any of you. Well, okay, maybe DavidC.</font>
I hope this convinces more of you to come up and play Four Winds' e-poker. You can make a C-note in an hour and watch me completely lose my [censored]. Me in Cranky Bastard Mode is much funnier in real life than online. Menace can vouch for me on that.