Yeah, after thinking about it for a while I've realized that it was likely the dealer would have / should have eventually said "and now the showdown for the main pot" or whatever, so I may not have been as out-of-line as I thought I was.

GcluelessOPTAHnoobG

After a couple small losses in a row, last night I finally booked a decent win, up $860 at 5-card and $150 at 1/3, down $90 at 2/5. I was in a great 5-card game - in the afternoon - with tilted Greek old man going AI blind for a while as expected (I couldn't capitalize) and randoms calling 3! with trash and getting overflushed (by me). Lost a 4! pot with AAcJ7c4 on J-4-2r against reg's A2 which he open jammed $200 into $700, I re-jammed, random called with OESD and I held against him for a small side pot but lost to trips against reg on 2-9 runout. That's pretty much it at 5-card.

2/5 was no action, a bunch of nits at my table. Asked for table change but there was a wait so I just decided to play 1/3. 1/3 opened 22, a few callers including younger/newer Argentinian pro in BB (they're breeding...!), J-3-5r checks through, 2 ott checks to me $20, folds to BB, $65 - F$&K HIM - I snap call for a board-pairing river. River: board-pairing 5. Hehe. He checks, I $90, he calls, MHIG. Poor fellow of course shows A4 for the turned wheel. "Don't cry for me, Argentina."

At one point this Harry Potter-looking dude I've seen around approaches me at the table out of nowhere and asks why I play so many different games since he'd noticed me at different tables today. I said something like "I just play until I'm not feeling it" and "I play different stakes" and he apologized for interrupting and left. I sorta wanted to say "mind your own business/leave me alone, I'm in the middle of a hand," but that would have been unnecessarily rude since I'm sure his intentions were pure and he wasn't just live trolling. :O

Can't really get anything going this month so far, up $100 in poker today, up $250 in lucky table promos. Up $210 1/3, $215 5-card, down $280 2/5 (dusted off a BI at the end of the night iso-ing AdKs MP, three callers to A-Jc-8c flop, $55, utg limper calls, turn 2h, he x/c $110, river is Ac and he jams $110 eff. and I call getting 6:1 and he has T9cc for flopped OESFD that played it entirely passively and still got paid with the worst river in the deck for my exact hand). That's pretty much it. Just been breaking even the past few weeks.

15-hour session for 3rd year anniversary promo, $500 lucky table every other hour, two $500 lucky seats every 10 minutes (every other hour). Didn't hit any myself. Made $240 2/5, lost $270 1/3 (lots of AK/AQmissing, no sets, chopped AA v. 88 AI pre on straight board - again). Running "below EV." Promo made the casino a mad house, no table transfers allowed, hard to take a bathroom break because lucky table drawings were randomly throughout the hour. Probably would have switched to omaha if I hadn't agreed to split the promo with my friends. Not worth it to be stuck at a bad table running bad and not be able to get a change of scenery.

Promo chasing is always tricky. I'm sure it can be done profitably. The thing is I have spent years learning how to play winning poker. I know what winning poker looks like regardless of promos. The second I start adjusting my strategy (including table selection) to chase them, I risk no longer playing winning poker, and could be losing massive EV by chasing promos.

The way hot hands work where I play, by Sunday night a hand like 9's full of 3's might be worth 1 to 3K. Well, when do I start playing 93o? Limped OTB? Suited? Vs. a raise? I don't know. I just know that I am still winning if I'm always folding it, but I can't say the same if I start playing it chasing that hot hand. I'd rather risk passing up some unknown amount of EV, rather than making -EV poker decisions that may or may not get made up by the unknown bonus EV.

Oh yeah totally agree. Promos are terrible and I wish they didn’t exist. I’d rather keep the $2 per pot. Mainly doing it for my friends.

Some runbad tonight at 5-card, ended down just $150 though, mainly due to losing an AI pre with AA. Also lost $100 or so at 1/3. Near end of the night at 1/3, spazzy kid jams $100 over an EP bet into the field, a raise to $30 (in a limped pot mind you) on 3-4-5-2, I let go of 86o otb and find out everyone else had an A for the wheel and I was the only one with a 6. It was time to go.

I love promos. I don't give 2 craps about them personally, however, it attracts the type of players I want to play with at the table.

Yep, thats the thing. I know one guy that will call any suited 3 gapper preflop for a reasonable raise because its a bad beat hand.

Its just tough when you flop a gutter to a royal flush and its checked to you. Do I semi-bluff like I should, or take the free card because the bonus for clubs royal is at $2500 so i need to see if I get there.

Noticing my attitude lately has really taken a hit for the worse after over three weeks of breaking even. Big pairs not holding up this month (or getting bluffed), few big hands. Also getting annoyed at dealer blunders (some justifiably, but still). Other night at 5-card in an AI the dealer shipped V my entire stack even though afterwards I realized I had him covered by around $20. Dealer didn't count because I said I thought he had me covered, then when I realized the mistake shortly after the hand was over the dealer said he though I had him covered too (but didn't bother counting). :/ On another occasion, a dealer said I raised the pot too big pre (by $5) and then subsequently allowed a rec player to raise over the pot without correcting him, and later misread the same player's hand to his benefit in two separate pots. Smh. I don't like to think there's dealer favoritism, but . . . .

Going to try to change up the scenery a little and hit up MD Live for a while, see if that helps at all.

I mean you basically told the dealer to not bother counting. Not sure how you can blame him for that.

Last night a fun (wealthy) regular player asked me to lend him some money as a favor. I told him that I don’t lend anyone money as a policy. Should I have?

Without any other info the answer is an easy no. Wealthy people generally don't ask to borrow money at casinos, your perception of him might be off. What he's really asking for is probably not a loan but more like a rebate that he might intend to pay off in his mind but won't actually follow through with, especially if he sees you as a winning reg, you can afford it, you don't need it is what he'll tell himself. People who borrow money immediately think it's theirs and have a hard time paying it back.

Bad idea to loan anyone money that you don't know personally away from poker. And it's often a bad idea to lend money in general.

Hard no, imo.

I've been asked to lend money 3 times in my poker history. 2 times were incredibly lolable situations in that I hardly knew the guy at all inside the poker room, and 0% outside of it. The one other time I kinda had a connection to the guy outside the poker room (we knew some of the same people in real life) but not to the point where I'd ever dream of loaning him money.

I've only played with 2 people in a casino environment that I would ever think of loaning money to: one of my brothers, and my cousin (who was best man at my wedding). Loaning to anyone outside that circle in a gamblerholic environment is just stoopid, imo.

GcluelessmoneylendingnoobG

Last night had a decent session for a change, but nothing groundbreaking. But hey, I'll take it. Up $500 5-card, +$100 1/3, -$100 2/5 (QQ open UTG got 3! OTB by reg who as I'm tanking says, "C'mon, you know me, I know you." This seemed like a friendly suggestion between by her to fold, which I did. 77 VPIP in SB multiway got squeezed out by BB 3! Limp/called 22 against rec BB raise and missed.)

At 1/3, this dude who makes "cool," "grinder" mannerisms (of the melodramatic sort) in the middle of hands to show how good he is criticized my play at one point. I opened AhKs UTG, BTN and V in BB called. Flop ($30): K-9-3cc. $20, fold, V calls. Turn: 9c. X/x. River: 4h. X/think about going for value but end up checking back since we were quite deep and I didn't want to get x/r. MHIG and V says, "no thin value? I would have bet the river" and tables Kx. I just smiled. Thinking about it, I like my check because my range was capped ott and if V was thinking enough (?) he could have annihilated a thin value bet otr with a big c/r. Against a more straight-forward opponent I would have bet $30 or so, but not against a semi-decent reg who isn't a complete drooler.

Later, coolered a ss multiway who opened KTdd on TT6 (I had 66). Sadly, no deep stacks had Tx, but I'll take what I can get these days.

Near end of the night, sat at what I thought was a good 5/10 with a few 5/10 regs, an occasional gambooler visiting from out of town, and an unknown, and right after I started to pull out chips saw the plaque said $10/$25. Oops. *Tail between legs.* I strongly considered taking my first 10/25 shot but then shuddered at the thought of paying $35 an orbit off a min-buy in of $1,500. Plus it was around 3:30 a.m. and I didn't want to mess with my schedule too badly.

I make the bet. I played a hand in the past few months online in my (extremely) small player pool NJ site, nitty reg villain CRAI on a river where we both probably couldn't have a ton and I made a thin call and was correct. It's kinda like the rest of it, if they were all geniuses we wouldn't be playing, but even against geniuses, if you end up in a leveling war you can always just be on the right level as a solution. And this guy doesn't sound like a genius to me, so I'd probably bet like 1/3-1/2 pot and call a check-raise assuming it's not oversized.

sitting there checking back strong hands because you are terrified 1/3 casino geniuses are going to exploit Check raise bluff you lol

It's February 2009. Barack Obama has just been sworn in to his first term as POTUS and I am a 21-year-old senior at Cornell. My then-girlfriend and I are in fabulous Las Vegas where she booked our room at MGM Grand. We got a room upgrade when she told the concierge that we were celebrating our engagement. (She lied.)

We go to Planet Hollywood to see Armin Van Buren. The show is fantastic, a cocaine-fueled chorus of deep beats and crowds of 20-somethings high on life. I am several drinks and bumps deep already. After the show I stumble upon the poker table and take a seat. I have "target" written all over me. The regs are salivating and can't wait to stack me. I didn't know any of this at the time, of course - I didn't know I was a wounded impala in the middle of a pack of hyenas. I was just there to have fun.

My girlfriend arrives at the table. She's wearing a cheetah-pattern mini-skirt and puts her hand on my shoulder as she stands behind me. I feel like I'm in a scene from Casino Royal and I'm f*ckin' James Bond. One 40-year-old white dude raises and I call with AA in the BB. I probably don't even know I have the best hand in poker. I check/call him down and call all in on the river. He shows KK. I am so high and drunk and yet I somehow table my hand and the dealer pushes me the pot. My girlfriend says we should go, and as I get up t leave V says, "you're lucky." I reply, "then I guess I'm lucky in more than one way" and we leave.

It's 2019 and President Trump is calling the impeachments proceedings against him a lynching. I am at MGMNH in an overnight 2/5 game. A 20-something dude sits to my immediate right and drops $1k on the table. He's visibly intoxicated. We play a bomb pot. He doesn't know what this is (or what day of the week it is, for that matter), but likes the idea of putting in $25 without looking at his hand. He has 97hh (he flashed me his hand after I mucked). The flop is 4h-8h-Qh. He bets $50 into $450. One nit calls him. The turn is a black deuce. He bets $100. The nit calls. The river is the 3h. He goes all in for $825. The nit, who has him covered, double-checks his hole cards, looks at the board perplexed, and says "I call...?" and tables the rivered A-high flush. He mucks and walks away.

"That hand shouldn't have happened," I tell the dealer, feeling some empathy for the guy. After all, that was me 10 years ago. The dealer shrugs and we go on playing as Mr. 20-something fumbles with the ATM, attempting to withdraw another buy in. (He never did.)

It's almost 7:00 a.m. and I just got home after staying late for one of the best, if not the best, 1/3 I've ever played in. Ended up $1,650 in that game, a record single-session win at 1/3 for me. Lost $700 at 5-card early on with top set a couple times and nuts plus redraw, and a nuclear wrap versus a set, but still a good profit today that I NEEDED.

Grats on the score. Also, noice comparison post. Guy might be lucky that he didn't get hooked on the pokers there...

/\

Good point above

I'm left wondering, what would DT's life be like right now if he lost that hand 10 years ago?
Greenstein was right, the butterfly effect.

Ha, would love to hear how you handled slinking away from the table when you realized how big it was! Just a simple awkward "whoops, my bad" or were there some lols?

GcluelessawkwardmomentsnoobG

Aliens would have been uncovered in the Area51 raid and Jeffrey Epstein would have been president of the USA.

A couple hands from last night's 1/3 session. First hand I open A5ss, get four callers, flop 5-A-5cc. Checks to btn OMC who goes $40, two callers including me. Turn: Kd. X/x/$55, c/c. River: Qh. I open jam $140, btn calls with AK. The next 20 minutes consisted of V needling me (somewhat good-naturedly) for not playing any hands and trying to get "his" money back from me.

Biggest pot was when I l/rr KK in straddle over fun SB raise to $27, two calls, I make it $185, UTG2 limper calls, three more callers (one ss AI for less). Straddler is very fun player who has VPIP'd/called raises and 3! with hands like T6o, J8o, etc. Flop ($800): 9-5-2hh. Straddler open jams $650, I re-jam $850, thankfully the deep stacks behind me who had me covered both fold and I ask straddler if he has 2p or a set, he shakes his head no and I hold on a Th-7c runout. I tabled and V mucked. I lost a smaller side pot to the short stack who had J8o. That's pretty much it.

Better question is what will DTs life be like in 10 years from now when he regrets wasting his 30s sinking 8 hours a day into a futureless empty activity like casino poker for minimum wage