Quote:
Originally Posted by BulltexasATM
Was looking forward to your Legends write-up as I saw you playing there over the weekend.
Yeah, I'm absolutely behind here. I've got a couple of sessions in at Legends since my last post, and I'm at Harry Reid right now about to fly back to Houston from my Vegas trip. I guess I'll go chronilogically here.
Last Saturday and Sunday, I decided to grind at Legends after avoiding the area in large part due to safety concerns. It is located in an area of downtown Houston that is quite rough. To my knowledge, this room still has the best action in Houston. A couple of mentors I have in the poker world each separately recommended that I make other rooms a part of my grinding routine instead of just grinding at TCH Spring while I'm in Houston.
I arrive Saturday morning at 9:45 AM. The mustard yellow walls and black finish don't do a lot in way of brightening up the dreary atmosphere in the room. It's not a dirty place by any means, but even the most jovial whale yucking it up at the table with a big stack would be overshadowed by the unmistakable aura of degeneracy and shadiness. Lee, the floor guy, says I have to wait a sec - the three tables are full. I step outside to the smoking patio to find three dudes and one of their girlfriends rolling a couple grams of weed into a Backwoods.
One of them catches me blatantly oogling. "What's good, potna?" They all glance over.
"They don't **** with y'all here about that?" I inquire.
"Naw. We keep it respectful and so do they," another one replies as he finishes up his rolling job.
Fair enough.
I head back in, and there is a seat ready for me. I sit at a table with three empty seats from players on break. Hmm...
Sure enough, five hands later, the gentlemen from outside emerge from the smoking patio doorway and all leisurely, stoned-ly, take their respective seats at the table. I'm in seat one. Of the three guys, only two appear to be playing loose. Sadly, these two each kept falling asleep at the table, so any loose play they would typically do was negated by their exhaustion and how high they were. I request a table change, but when I am finally moved, the table I end up at is even tighter than the original one.
"It's Sunday morning, dumbass," you're probably thinking. One of the Greeks in the stable grinding there had told me Sunday mornings were just as good as any other day. Mind you, we are talking about a place that has 5 PLO games going by noon on a weekday.
Sunday was better and felt much more like the TCH Spring game. Plenty of loose passive regulars and a few loose aggro guys that I'm quite comfortable playing against and exploiting.
I have As10s9d7d in the cutoff, $1100 in front of me. There is a $6 button straddle. It limps to UTG+2 who makes it $35. He has been raising over half of his hands preflop. I 3b to $115. I am doing this lightly in late position when s person who is raising too much raises in EP. Do I need to exclude suited A, connected xxx from this kind of play; do I need a stronger hand? Or is this something we can be happy about doing against someone raising pre too much from our position?
The floor and management were professional by all accounts, but I still have security concerns. In about 13 hours there, I only witnessed one altercation that required security. Two guys at a separate table were exchanging words and one of them stood up and was being held back by the floor manager. Of the five-man security team that seems to constantly be there, only one member was consistently inside, posted at the front. In this instance, I witnessed him watching this altercation occur, only to intervene when someone at another table shouted, "Security, what are you doing?"
I still don't feel great about playing here. It's 20 minutes further away from me than Spring and from what I have seen, the action isn't different enough to warrant this trip, even seldomly. These trips contributed to my string of losing sessions, but I am confident I'm not being nearsighted and would feel the same if I was up big.
I was just informed my plane has a 4 hour delay, so I'll be doing my Vegas write-up soon!
Last edited by Wilfram; 03-19-2023 at 01:37 PM.