All,
I know this is really long over due and probably not even relevant anymore. My enthusiasm at writing this report was derailed by the 2p2 forums being down for a bit and I never got back to completing it.
I am going to be posting Day 7 and 8 for my own benefit. It would gnaw at me forever if I did not finish something that I started.
Day 7:
The day starts of at around 10:00 am. I decide to accompany Kay for breakfast in the cafeteria downstairs. I decide to skip breakfast in favor of a nice lunch, which Kay will want to have before she boards the flight back to Houston later in the afternoon. I sit there with my coffee and watch her wolf down two ginormous butter croissants.
After breakfast, Kay heads back to the room to finish up her packing and I head to the Bally’s poker room. I put my name on the list and head to the 3-card poker table. I play a couple of hands before my name is called as a new table is opened up. I end up in seat 8 as I survey the table to see mostly tourist and just one local to my immediate left.
I start chatting with the local to my left and learn that his name is Jay and that he is a bartender. He seems pretty tight but also knocking back drinks so I am sure his purse string will loosen up pretty soon. I run pretty card dead in the first hour or so as I watch the tourist in seat 3 run over the entire table. He was running uber hot catching big hands. To his good fortune the table was catching big hands against him too, just not the best hands. The guy was soon up to $1500 with nary an effort. ‘How come I never run so hot?’, I think to myself.
I step out for a cigarette break and decide to play some 3-card poker while I smoke. I am barely half way through the cigarette before I lose a cool hundo. This would be the first of many leaky cigarette breaks I would take between now and the end of the trip. I stub out the cigarette and return to the game.
Shortly after, I notice that Jay is getting pretty active. Raising and re-raising every hand. I can barely see any cheap flops as he is to my immediate left and every limp/raise is met by a raise from him. I decide to polarize my range and wait it out. I ask him if it’s the drinks and he says no and proceeds to tell me the story. He tells me that he had stepped out for a cigarette break and put some money into a video poker machine. He hit quad As with a deuce, which paid out like $4k. Damn. He is on positive tilt. Very quickly, he starts running over the entire table and is getting super bluff happy and drunk. Thankfully, Seat 3 decides to leave with his big stack and I take that seat to get on Jay’s left and create some space between us.
It’s not long before Jay and I get involved in some big hands. I had noticed that Jay was bluffing every hand. I get into call-station mode. Jay keeps bluffing and I keep calling. Jay bets, I have A-high, I call. I even tank on a K-high river call when the baby straight draws misses but can’t pull the trigger. At the end of this callstationy phase, my stack has grown to $800 most of it from Jay’s stack. He leaves soon after and the table is back to the limp-call business. I play for a few more hours and finally cash out for $900 when Kay comes to fetch me.
We head out to the Mesa Grill for lunch but the restaurant is closed for the afternoon. “Damn Bobby Flay, if only you spent more time working than trying to f**k Ari’s wife’, I think to myself. We walk around some more and settle on Puck’s Spago for lunch. I order a pasta dish while Kay orders some fish. As I take the first bite of pasta, I feel something in my mouth. I dig out a short and curly black hair from the mouthful of pasta. Kay gives me the ‘wtf is it?’ look and I respond with a, ‘I think I just blew Wolfgang Puck” look. I call the restaurant manager and point to the hair, which I had deposited on the white tablecloth. He apologizes and offers to make me another dish. I have lost all my appetite at the thought of having made this unintended connection with somebody’s nether region. I am also reluctant to invite the wrath of the folks in the kitchen lest I end up with a bowl full of pubic hair with some pasta thrown in.
After lunch, we grab a cab and head to the airport for Kay’s flight back. The cab driver is on the phone and gets backed up on Koval behind a mile long line of cars waiting to make a left turn. After sitting there for ten minutes, I point out to him that the right lane is open and he should take that since we are going straight. He gets irritated and gives me the ‘how dare you interrupt my conversation about if Western Union or MoneyGram has the best exchange rates to send money to Somalia?’ look and tells me to shut up since he is the one who is driving. I tell him that he has already lost the tip and he will do as I say unless he wants to be reported to the cab authorities. This gets his attention and he does as I say. He drops us off at the airport and pops the trunk, without getting out, for us to retrieve the luggage. I was on the fence about tipping him but this gesture helps make up my mind. I retrieve our luggage and leave the trunk open as I walk away so the sonofabitch is forced to get out of his car to close it.
After dropping Kay off, I head to PH to play some poker. The place is hopping and there are some hot chicks dancing on the stage. I put my name on the list and step out for a cigarette when I spot some 3-card poker tables. I decide to sit down and soon blow through another hundo.
I head back to the poker room already tilted. I am soon seated in Seat 6 at a 1-2 table that seems pretty standard. A couple of tight old ‘pros’ (TOPs), a couple of drunken tourists, a couple of Asians, a couple of young 10NL ‘internet pros’ and me. I win a few small pots here and there and start chatting up the table. I learn that one of the drunken tourists is a marine. On hearing this, one of the TOPs wakes up from his nap and starts berating the marine about some s**t the marines had recently supposed to have done in some village in Afghanistan where women and children were killed. F**K. The drunk marine starts getting worked up and starts berating the TOP about how hard it is out there and how we don’t know s**t since we are sitting in the comfort of our homes. The TOP does not back down and they start going at it. I am thinking of ways to bust up this party and blurt out, ‘I ate foie gras the other day and hated it’. To my surprise, this ploy of blurting out random s**t works and the marine disengages with the TOP and starts telling me about his own experience with eating foie gras. “I ate foie gras once and it tasted like a fat chick’s p**sy”, he tells me. That doesn’t tell me if he liked foie gras or not but I want to keep the conversation going so I blurt out, “so did you like foie gras?”. This seems to irk him. “What do you think?”, he asks irately. I pause not knowing how to respond since I myself have never had the pleasure of dining on fat chick p**sy (FCP) but realizing that this guy could kill me with his bare hands, I start playing along, telling him fictitious stories of my own experiences with FCP dining. The stories seem to lighten up his mood and I am soon able to steer the conversation away from foie gras and FCP.
Shortly after that exchange a seat opens up on another table where his marine buddies are playing and he leaves to join them. This girl who is extremely pretty in a nerdy, Renee Zelleweger (before all the plastic surgery), kind of way takes his seat. I christen her, Ms. Merry for reasons that will soon become apparent. She seems to know the poker room staff and is wearing those large, poker pro headphones. Another pro, I conclude. Meanwhile, the action at the table is heating up as seat 4, a tourist who is here to celebrate his brother’s bachelor party, is getting drunk and starting to splash around. Seat 3 is taken up by another female with a fairly decent rack. In between all these happenings, I have chipped up to $500 and soon get involved with Seat 3 when I call her PFR in position with AKo. I brick the flop and she c-bets. I raise hoping to get folds from most of her range. She shoves over the top of my raise and I fold with a whimper. She shows middle set. I am down to $400.
I decide to take a break and step out for a smoke. I sit down at a 3-card poker table as I light up. Bad decision. Within a matter of 20 minutes I lose $300 while everyone around me seems to be hitting big hands. I head back to my seat incredibly tilted.
The very first hand after I return, I raise QTo to $16 (straddled pot) from the button, Seat 2 a young Asian dude who has been pretty active doesn’t like me raising his straddle. He 3-bets me to $50. We are heads up as the action turns to me. I 4-bet him to $120. He has me covered and calls. Flop comes AJ2r. He checks to me, and without hesitating, I shove the rest in. Seat 2 thinks for a bit and folds. I show the bluff. The spewy play gets Ms. Merry’s attention as she starts texting furiously.
Shortly afterward, the seat to my immediate left is taken up by a Dominic Monaghan lookalike (the actor who plays Merry the hobbit in the Lord of the Rings trilogy) in a Titleist cap. A golfing hobbit, I conclude. I soon start playing Pippin to his Merry. I ask him who he likes for the Masters and he says, “Tiger” but then proceeds to tell me about the Vegas odds on different golfers. “Ah, another local 1-2NL live pro, I see”, I think to myself. I ask him if he knows about 2p2 and he gives me a vague response, which leads me to believe that I am the mark, and he does not want to give too much away about his ‘pokering’ skills. He goes back to listening to music on his ‘poker-pro’ headphones which is a clear signal to me that he is working.
Meanwhile, ‘ the drunk brother of dude celebrating his bachelor party’ in Seat 4 is self-destructing with ridiculous and ill-timed bluffs. Ms. Merry is the beneficiary of his largesse as she busts him on two occasions while holding the nuts. Pretty soon all the card sharks in the room are dying to get an open seat at our table. I can count at least 6 ‘pros’ at our table.
The drunken guy, another tourist and I are the only ‘fish’ left at the table when I get involved in the hand of the trip with Merry. I am in the cutoff and look down at AcAd. First time I’ve been dealt rockets this trip. The straddle is limped to me. I raise it to $20 and Merry calls on the button, as do the other limpers. The pot is ~$80 and we see a flop of 3c9c2c. It’s checked to me and I bet $70 with absolutely no intention of folding my hand to any action. Merry shoves over me for another $200 on top. Everyone folds and the action comes to me. I look at Merry, he gives me the, “I know you are only going up to Rivendell, so fold” look, I respond with the, “No mothaf**ka, I am going all the way to Mordor” look as I call. Turn brings 3d and I cringe as I realize that he may have filled up. The river brings Kc and a gasp from Ms. Merry. I table my hand while Merry looks at his cards a number of times with a pained look. I ask him what he has but he does not respond and mucks.
I collect the $650 pot while Merry gently chides me for making the call. “I just smoked a $300 cigarette and he thinks I am going to fold AA with the nut flush draw (and the right odds to call) for another $200? This boy does not know his fish.”, I chuckle to myself. Meanwhile he blows his 2p2 cover as he explains the play to Ms. Merry. I overhear words like ‘polarization’, ‘made hands’, ‘combo draw’ , yada, yada.
Later, I chip up some more as I bust the drunken tourist. He leaves and I decide to call it a night. I cash out for $1100. I can still overhear Mr and Ms. Merry discussing the hand as they are waiting in line to cash out. “Their sex talk must be like dwan and galfond discussing a hand”, I think to myself.
I head back to my room after I grab a bite to eat at the Margarita place in Bally’s. I have to check out tomorrow to head back to Chicago but not before a few more hours of poker.
Poker +1510
Craps +600
BJ -100
Slots – -God only knows - $200
Roulette -400
Michael Kors -450
Video Poker +50
Guy Laliberte -$350
3-card poker ~+0
