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#1
09-04-2007, 03:24 PM
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Re: MARCHRON\'S FOUR WINDS TRIP REPORTS
[ QUOTE ]
As I approach, I think that there's a young Asian man in Seat 9, but it turns out to be an older Asian lady named Lin. She was wearing a Cubs hat. I like her already. Whenever she's in a hand, and this was fairly often, she looks like she's doing aerobics in her seat. [/ QUOTE ] Heh, heh, I seem to be getting addicted to your reports. Have you ever considered writing a book ? I would buy it if you did ! By the way, Grats on becoming famous. [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img] 
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#2
09-04-2007, 04:01 PM
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Re: MARCHRON\'S FOUR WINDS TRIP REPORTS
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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#3
09-05-2007, 06:19 AM
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Re: MARCHRON\'S FOUR WINDS TRIP REPORTS
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: [ QUOTE ] 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] [/ QUOTE ] 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.
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#4
08-04-2007, 08:57 AM
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Re: MARCHRON\'S FOUR WINDS TRIP REPORTS
Part 3 of trip report:
FOUR WINDS TRIP REPORT DAY 2 It's Geriatric Day at Four Winds. Bring a bottle of Metamucil, get a $5 comp off the buffet. Why was it Geriatric Day? Because, among other reasons, for the first time I was not coming to Four Winds alone; I brought my stepmom's mom, who insists on calling me her grandson even though she's not. (Shut up, I'm not a nit, it's just a sticking point for me. My mom's husband is not my dad, my dad's wife is not my mom, and my dad's mother-in-law is not my grandmother.) You'd really have to know my step-grandmother to get the full impact of what this means to my trip, but here's what really counts about it: she is a slot player, and a serious one at that. Four Winds has 19 e-poker tables but about seven trillion slot machines. She wanted to tag along one of the days of my trip, and since the rest of you jerks have evidently decided not to show up and holla at your boy or shoot me a "sup bro?" or nothing, I might as well bring her. Not only is Linda a slot player, she takes the [censored] seriously. She's got a whole system, you see, a sixth sense about which machines are "hot" and which are "cold." Explaining to her that machines with identical payout programs cannot possibly be different from one another, and that periods of "hot" and "cold" are simply mathematical variance is like trying to teach a dog to sing opera. You might as well just piss in the (four) wind(s). And when she told me her favorite poker game was Stud Hi/Lo, I bought her Ray Zee's High-Low Split Poker For Advanced Players, and she scoffed at it. I don't think she's touched it since the day I bought it for her. After all, mathematical facts are mere primitive cave drawings when compared to the mighty power of her intuition. That said, there's been a disturbing pattern that's beginning to emerge when she's come with me to the different casinos in our area: she wins money and I lose. When we went to Resorts, I went BUSTO at their 5/10 table (this was before I discovered 2+2) and she made out like a bandit. When we went to Trump, she went broke and bummed $20 in cash off me while I finished my last orbit at 3/6. I finished stuck about $100, but she'd turned my $20 into about $250 in those 15 minutes or so. LOL slotaments. Despite her little idiosyncracies, I really don't mind her hanging out with me. I'm 27 years old and I ran out of grandparents four years ago, so it is nice to have a grandmotherly figure around, especially one who likes to go to casinos and who at least understands what I'm talking about when I regale her with stories of bad beats or gouda-movin'. I wish she'd get off my ass about not having a girlfriend, though. Also, she has a handicapped parking hangtag, so when she comes with I get to park 10 feet from the casino door. Ship it. The first thing we have to do when we arrive is enroll her in the W[img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img] so she can start racking up comp points and become eligible for the three rolling jackpots for club members. With enrollment, Four Winds gives you a $10 credit for slot play, so while I was there I went ahead and got that installed on my W[img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img] card, the same one I use to log on to the poker table. Hey, I may not like slots, but only fools turn down free mobnies. We get to the floor and she sits at the first frickin' machine she comes to. According to her well-honed rules, machines that sit right next to the entryway pay out more often; casinos rig them that way so entering customers will see them pay off and get eager to sit down at other machines that don't pay as well. Again, you can go right on ahead and tell her that those machines pay out more often because they're sat at more often because they're easy to get to, but she will cackle at your delusions and crazy beliefs in things like, you know, logic. I leave Linda to her slot luckboxery and, despite the fact that she got a map the second she walked in the door, I tell her how to get to the poker room if she needs me. Since the floor is pretty crowded, I point to the ceiling, where there's a blue ring of light that represents . . . oh [censored], I don't know, something symbolic that nobody really gives a damn about but provides the veneer of aesthetics and artistry preventing people from seeing the truth, that it's a house full of seven trillion evil machines that screw old people out of their Social Security checks and pension funds. Anyway, at the four compass points of this big blue ring, there's four other light displays, presumably representing "Four Winds." I point to the ring and tell her to follow it all the way around to the "north" circle, underneath which is the poker room. Pretty simple, right? If not, here's an MS Paint. Linda's slot machine is represented by the red X:  I pop my collar and roll on under the north circle. All right, bitches, Irish Mike has just entered the room; remember, you plebes are forbidden from making eye contact with his greatness. Egotistical? No. I'm beginning to think someone from Four Winds is reading this thread. I bitched about the lack of a state-of-the-art waitlist in Part 1; wham, waitlist shows up in Part 2. I still nitpicked a little about putting the waitlist screen in a bad location, and wham: they put a smaller screen on the registration desk. I scan in to put myself on 3/6, 'cause that's still how I roll, and it's three deep. While I wait I decide to burn off this slot bonus. I find a "Deal Or No Deal" carousel right outside the poker room and sit down. Shut up, it was either those or the Village People-themed machines. I put $10 in to activate my $10 bonus, push a bunch of buttons, having really no idea what I'm doing, and eventually the very small touch screen says I've used up all the bonus. Ship it. The machine spits out a voucher ticket worth $20. Sweet, I don't know what I did, but I broke even on my $10 and tapped $10 worth of house money. Hey, those rolling jackpot screens are everywhere, even above the Pai Gow tables. Now that I'm a full member of the W[img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img], can I win those even if I sit down at a table game? No, gotta be a slot player. Grrrrrr. [censored] slots. When the waitlist for 3/6 gets to six players, another table is opened. By the time it's full, it's become Geezerville. It was like a commercial for the Clapper rolled up and tried to step to me, Four Winds' Ironman Badass Of Teh Three/Six Limit Mafia, Stayin Fly-y-y-yy-y-y-y-y-yyy Til I Di-i-i-ii-i-i-i-i-iiie. I'm in Seat 8. Seat 1 is John, who strongly disliked this whole computer thing and seemed to be in a hurry to donk off all his chips so he could go to some other card room, evidently unaware that you could just exit out; you don't have to stay at the table until BUSTO. I kept on calling him "Tom" because he was a dead [censored] ringer for "Captain" Tom Franklin: same beard, same hat, same penis on some whore's back, everything. This caused tremendous confusion because there was a "Thomas" in Seat 6, who was the least worst player of the bunch. Donald was in Seat 2. "Donald" was my grandfather's name, and he did what my gran'pa used to do, cut a switch and beat the [censored] out of people, including me when my AK was no good against his K3 that flopped two pair. But the awesomest guy there was Chester, in seat 4. A poker host was assisting him with how to operate the touch screen and when action was to him and he looked at his cards, I'm guessing, the host noted his age and said, "Now, you can fold . . . or you can call . . ." not even considering that someone who lived through both Roosevelt Administrations would come in raising on his first hand. Nope. "I wanna raise!" he said, and thumbed the Raise button like he was trying to squish a bug. It gets three-bet, he caps. AKx flop, Chester's jamming it like a slice of toast. The turn comes and Jessica, in Seat 9 to my left, bets and Chester finally calls. Tom raises behind him, Jessica three-bets and Chester awesomely call/caps. Tom figures out his hand is no good and ducks out. The river brings a fourth spade, and Jessica is quite noticably pissed. She bets out the last few dollars in her stack, Chester calls and shows 7x 7[img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img] for the runner-runner one-card flush to wipe out Jessica's KK. Hell yeah, go Chester! Jessica shoots daggers out of her eyes and goes to the cage to reload her card. In Jessica's place sits some middle-age dude, making him a spring chicken at this table. I assist him with how to place his bets, but after the guy in Seat 10 leaves he moves there so he can see the center console better. Jessica rearrives, and even though Seat 9 is open, she takes Seat 3, to Chester's right, presumably so she could wait until he wasn't looking, break her rum-and-Coke glass on the side of the table and shove the jagged edges in his eye. With both Seat 7 and Seat 9 open, I start wondering if I applied enough Degree Antiperspirant and TAG Lucky Day body spray. I didn't have to worry much longer, because another Donald sat down in Seat 7. He looked like 2003 WSOP ME finalist Tomer Benvenisti, only thinner and dorkier. To differentiate them, I will heretofore refer to Donald #2 as "Donkald," to easily reflect his playing skills. I also have to help him figure out how to play, and this is how he repaid me: his first hand, he limps, I raise AQ, flop QTx, he donks, I raise, he calls. Turn blank, check bet call; river 10, he donks, I lolcall, your T4s is good, nice hand Donnie. Jessica picks up on the fact that, as the Four Winds veteran at the table with three days of logged play, I've become associate table host, helping the fish get acclimated to these waters so I can scale and gut them. She says, "You know, you should work here!" and a floor hostess who was dropping by agrees. I respond that if I work here, I can't play here, and she says "Well, you can still play the slots." Grrrrrr. Just for that, I'm not toking the house on the next pot I win. But I think I'm picking up on a trend here: with no dealer there's a certain air of democracy and cooperation at these tables, like we're all in this together, just tryin' to get by in this crazy mixed-up world where you can play casino Texas Hold'em without a dealer, cards, or chips. And even though I look like a complete toolbag with my sunglasses and ten whites for shuffling, I'm being helpful and my usual chatterbox self, and I think it helped me get paid off a little more. It certainly helped in a sick three-hand rush I hit. First hand, I have 22 in the big blind and flop my first set of the trip. I miss out on a couple river bets, though, because the 2K8 flop turned into a 2K888 board and I didn't have the balls to value-bet four opponents when any other piece of the board had me whaled. Next hand is A3[img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img] in the SB, where I complete and then lead into the family pot on a flopped four-flush; Tom raises, and was thoughtful enough to stick around when I turned the nuts, check/raised him, then bet the river. Then I get QQ on the button, Chester limps, Tom raises, Donkald cold-calls, I make it three and Tom caps, and similar ridiculous postflop action, but somehow my QQ survived UI. Ship it thrice like cheese and mice. Starting with $100, I hit the mid-$250s at my high-water mark before Jessica coolers me with her AA vs. my KK. After that, I start taking stock of the table. Chester BUSTO'd, reloaded, then BUSTO'd again Donald is bolting for the O8B 4/8 Kill game, and Donkald's beginner's luck has worn off and he's down to the e-felt. Looks like I've squeezed just about all the juice out of this lemon. Wonder where my next challenge will be? Right on cue, 'cause I'm a mother-[censored] P.I.M.P., a host comes around and asks if anyone at the table wants to get into the last two spots in a $50 cash SNG. Yesterday I had been on the waitlist for the $50 Tier One WPT minisatellite SNG, but stopped when I did the math: $450 buy-in to the big satellite as the prize, $50 buy-in times 10 players minus the juice = winner-take-all. No thanks, I'd rather crush the donks in my 3/6 'hood, yo. But later I had a long conversation with the Poker Room Manager about his new place, and, according to him, the decision to go digital was made out of a casino-wide commitment to provide the best value for the players. As if he were trying to sell me a car, he added, "That's why I'll never charge more than 10% rake in a tourney." And he's right: the $100 cash SNG is $90 + $10, where the $100 tourneys at Majestic Star are usually $85 + $15. He was a good salesman, and I gave serious thought to buying in for that if I had a little more of OPM to play with. And here a hostess came around giving me that chance for half the price. Donkald jumped up and said "I'm in, I just have to reload," making nine players. Well, if there was any doubt left about whether I should take the plunge, it's gone now: Count Donkula over there sucks so much I'd take his action if he wanted to play HU4SOULZ. Without trying to sound like I was too enthusiastic about sitting down with Donkald again, I signed up. Bad move. While the manager's policy on tourney rake is certainly commendable, in return for the reduced juice, we got a blind structure that was retardedly awful. Starting stacks were 1,500 and the blinds started at 50/100 — FIFTY and ONE [CENSORED] HUNDRED — and went up every fifteen minutes. If a starting M of 10 doesn't suck enough, in half an hour it's 2.5 if you break even until then. Maybe the $100 cash SNG is better because you're paying more, but I'm certainly not going to find that out the hard way. I played all of four hands. First hand, 65s in the small blind, and even though the implieds probably didn't justify it, I completed into a four-way pot, bet 300 into a Q65 two-tone flop and took it down. Next hand was after I'd paid two orbits of 100/200 blinds, when I shoved A9o over a few limpers and successfully squeezed them out. Next hand was at 200/400, when the guy on my right shoved for 600 UTG, I overpushed with AQ[img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img], and his T8[img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img] flopped seventy-three outs twice with x[img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img] 9[img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img] 7x and rivered an 8. Then three hands later I had 65s in the SB and openshoved into the chipleader in the big blind (who got the chip lead when he bluffed with KQ UI and Donkald called off three-quarters of his stack with Q4s for a naked wheelshot — damn you, Donkald, you were supposed to chipdump to me, you douche), who called with whatever and flopped his whatever and Jesus [censored] Christ I'm such a [censored] moron for not following my own [censored] rules. I went outside to calm my nerves, and discovered that happily, the commitment to patron value extended to the bar, too. Basically, unless you order the tippity-top shelf superballa [censored] like Grey Goose, any drink is a buck-fiddy. Barkeep, Absolut and Diet plzkthx. A quick aside, while I was drinking I still had all the chips from craps yesterday since the cashier line was seven miles long, and since they'd gone to all the trouble to tell me about Pai-Gow Poker, I thought I'd play it. If you've never, it's a pretty cool game. You play against the house, getting seven cards. The object is to make a five-card "High" hand and a two-card "Low" hand that both beat the dealer. The coolness comes in the fact that if you only win one of the two, it's a push; the dealer only wins ties if hands are exactly tied, i.e. you both have AQ up front. House edge is a shade over 5% because of the tie factor and all wins pay out 100-95. That's a 5% vig, but since you can cobble together at least a push most of the time, you usually won't go broke in a hurry. I knew all that going in, but what I didn't know was that "Pai Gow" is evidently Chinese for "You're [censored]." If you think it's not real poker, think again: my first hand I got 9875432 for the nut low. Awesome. Later, I had a straight and AK and lost to a flush and a pair. Then I had J-high and 9-high and somehow pulled out a win. Sometimes good hands get beat and crap wins. That sounds like real poker to me. I come back in and find that Donkald has reloaded for more 3/6. Hotness. I'm in, and this time you owe me one. But there was a problem: the ten $1 chips I was keeping for shuffling had somehow become nine. This is not good. Did I leave it at the bar? At the Pai-Gow table? I've already pissed $50 away due to stupidity, I can't have something [censored] up my qi right now. Sure enough, I dropped a couple hands early to fall to the $80 range, when right about then Linda walks in, needing to follow security because despite my instructions and a map, she made two complete orbits of the big blue ring without seeing the poker room. LOL can'tfindherasswithbothhandsaflashlightandabloodho undaments. She asked how I was doing, and then announced she was up over $200. [censored]. She can't win! If she wins, I lose! [censored] [censored] [censored] [censored] [censored]! I'm screwed now. Damn, and I was up like $110 before I paid for that stupidass tournament, minus $50 minus the $20 more I'm stuck at this table means I just gotta stop the bleeding before I lose $40 more. No problem. K9[img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img] OTB, somehow everyone else finds a fold and I openraise on Donkald's BB. He calls, naturally. Flop A[img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img] K[img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img] Brick:house:, check bet call. Turn blank and he donks? Probably not an Ace. King-rag two pair leaves me with outs, so I call. River 9[img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img], he bets. Not like him to bet into the obvious draw getting there. I call, having no idea what he has, and of course the one time he decides to do anything but check/call with a draw, he has QT[img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img], missed his royal but hit the nuts anyway SOAGDB HY(ACHx5) Right about then, the guy in the tournament who doubled through me with T8s came up to me and said "Is this yours?", holding out a solitary $1 chip. Duhhhh, like there's anyone else in here who's dorky enough to need real chips at a digital table. Gimme that. You're going down, Donkald. *cue "Eye Of The Tiger" . . .* QJ OTB, openraise his BB again, he calls. Flop Q98, check bet call. Turn 9, check bet call. River 9, check bet call YOUR 8 IS NO GOOD SHIP IT. KQ in EP, raise, he coldcalls, we're HU to the flop: AK5. Bet, call. Turn like a 7, bet call. River like a 9, bet, he folds 42s face-up SHIP IT. He is just hoping I could give him some insight into the evolution of the market economy in the early colonies. His contention is that prior to the Revolutionary War the economic modalities especially of the southern colonies could most aptly be characterized as agrarian precapitalist. I say of course that's his contention. He's a first year grad student. He just finished some Marxian historian, Pete Garrison probably, and so naturally that's what he believes until next month when he gets to James Lemon and gets convinced that Virginia and Pennsylvania were strongly entrepreneurial and capitalist back in 1740. That'll last until sometime in his second year, then he'll be in here regurgitating Gordon Wood about the Pre-Revolutionary utopia and the capital-forming effects of military mobilization SHIP IT HOW DO YOU LIKE THEM APPLES? I was crawling closer and closer to the $100 breakeven mark when suddenly William, an older bald guy with glasses three seats to my right, decided he'd had enough of me running over the table, which had suddenly nitted up except for Donkald, and I was cutting in on all of their action with him. They were getting outdrawn by him, and he was paying it all right to me as cab fare to Valuetown. To keep Donkald from noticing the rising stress level of the table, and to keep the other guys in a good mood, I came up with a really clever backhanded insult by calling Donkald "the MacGyver of Texas Hold'em," because he could make something out of anything. "Yeah, Donny over there, he can make a four-high straight. Give him a ballpoint pen, a sock, a 9-iron, a bowling pin and a roll of duct tape and he can make a flush out of it." Donkald was proud of his new custom title, and the rest of the guys knew what I was really thinking. Anyway, I open QJo, way too early to do so, Donkald finds a preflop fold and William three-bets me from the big blind. Flop TT9, he bets, I freecard, he calls. Turn 8, he donks, I raise, he three-bets, I tank. I've hid my straight pretty well. For all he knows, I have an overpair, maybe JJ with the OESD. But he's tight. Would he really be doing this even with AA? Or trips? It's not like him to overplay a hand. 99? 88? [censored]. I call. River K and now pocket Kings got there. Bet, call ZOMG HE TRIED TO RESTEAL FROM ME WITH 98o HAHAHAHA I HAVE $116 NOW THANKS FOR PUMPING A WORTHLESS TURN CARD SHIIIIIIIIIIIP IT. Donkald goes BUSTO in the next couple of hands, and I lie and say the buffet is calling me, when in reality I'd be playing a 10/20 table for 3/6 stakes, and I'm not interested. I walk outside and bump into Linda, who was able to find the poker room without a GPS navigational system this time, and confesses that she lost it all and she's hurting all over and she's hungry and she wants to go home. I'd like to LOL, but I've been there. To add insult to injury, we have to make reservations at the buffet WTF? and when I tell her I broke even to clear my slot bonus, she started ranting and raving because she never got no goddamn bonus. So in the intervening time, I have to find her a wheelchair and take her W[img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img] card and figure out why she couldn't get no goddamn bonus. The chair was easy; the goddamn bonus, not so much. The computer at the W[img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img] enrollment booth said she never got it, so they re-installed it. I brought it back, with the chair, and when she tried to use it the panel display rejected her PIN, and when you put a "wrong" PIN in three times, it locks it out entirely. So I had to go get that fixed, and they said they wouldn't do it unless she authorized it. So I had to go get her, wheel her back there and get the card fixed, then take her back to the floor so she could clear her goddamn bonus. But she was out of cash, so she used my $20 voucher. Where I put $10 in, broke even, and got $20 back, she put $20 in and when she cleared it the voucher came out for $20.30, meaning she lost $9.70 of the $10 goddamn bonus play. LOL. Sorry, Grandma. Jesus Christ, it's almost 9 AM. [censored] it, sleep is overrated. To the Four Winds!
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#7
08-04-2007, 12:30 PM
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Re: MARCHRON\'S FOUR WINDS TRIP REPORTS
Most entertaining posts I've read. I am following the adventures (and misadventures) of "Irish Mike" as though he were the new Harry Potter of poker.
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#8
08-04-2007, 03:42 PM
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Re: MARCHRON\'S FOUR WINDS TRIP REPORTS
[ QUOTE ]
the new Harry Potter of poker [/ QUOTE ] New title b/c no one gets the Snakes on a Plane reference anymore.
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