Stack-averse is good. I like it. But punter has a visceral...um...kick to it. Like boom! You just kicked your stack to the four winds. Look at all those chips flying away.

#136-137

On Monday, the last day of my 4-day weekend, FWWM and I made a day trip to the Encore Boston Harbor, located a few miles north of Boston proper, in Everett, MA.

I was excited to try the Encore's water taxi service to and from Boston's historic North End, and I'd hyped it to FWWM, though I hadn't yet tried it. I had at least checked in with the Encore thread in 2+2's Venues and Communities forum, and I was assured there that the ride would be running in the winter and that it was free, cool and fun.

Back when I was in my 20's, I used a monthly rail pass to explore Boston's bar scene. I'd get off at a random subway (known as the T) station, walk upstairs and get lost while poking my head into the various neighborhood watering holes, knowing that a T station was almost always nearby, and knowing all of those underground subway lines well enough to navigate while drunk.

But I have never once seen Boston from its Harbor, dotted as it is with little islands: some of them parks, some of them old forts, some of them deserted, and at least one of them a disease vector research and quarantine area, and the waterfront sporting what I imagine to be sweeping panoramic views of the city.

Alas, it was Monday, and I'd skimmed over the part of the schedule where it says that the water taxi only runs on the weekends during the winter.



At some point before discovering that disappointment, we had taken a look at the Encore poker list. The $1/$3 waiting list at that time was 135 names long. Encore, quite apparently, has a serious table shortage. I will not be travelling there again until I hear about some sort of major expansion of their poker room.

We took an Uber into the city and found a couple of decent watering holes, and FWWM had the pleasure of hearing a true Boston accent in the wild, from the random loudmouth who's always standing up behind his friends at almost every bar in Boston.

After that, we decided to extend the road trip to Chaser's Casino in Salem, New Hampshire. Chaser's is an unpretentious blue collar joint, with 15 or so poker tables and a few blackjack, roulette and other table games. Drinks are not free--not even soft drinks--and I blame that on the lack of slot machines, which seem to be necessary, but not sufficient (see Las Vegas 7-Elevens) for the free drinks amenity to exist.

The vibe was casual and a little splashy. The $1/$3 game was good; however, I did not care for the $15 bomb pots that went off 4 times every hour. In a bomb pot, everyone puts in a certain amount preflop--in this case $15--and everyone sees a flop--in this case two flops, as these were double-board bomb pots.

So, I was putting $60/hour into play while trying to navigate through 8 and 9-way pots. This is high variance stuff; the pots get huge, and you cannot just sit back and surrender $60 every hour. The double boards knock down the variance somewhat, as you get chops and quarterings, but it's still gambling, likely with a higher standard deviation per session than my stretch-goal win rate at this level.

On the other hand, if I'm going to move up, then variance-boosting side games: bomb pots, the 72o game, the stand up game, and the like are going to be a part of playing higher stakes, so I might as well start learning them.

I did manage to quarter FWWM in one of the bomb pots. We both had the top board locked up with the nut straight, and I thought that I had top and bottom pair on the bottom board when I flatted his raise when he made it $100 multiway on the turn, but FWWM remembers it as me having only one pair on that board on that turn. He maintains that I hit my second pair bottom board winner on the river.

He's probably right, but only because the memory of the victim of the suckout is always sharper than that of the perpetrator's.

Chaser's Casino $1/$3 poker: 3 hours
+$381.00

Running Poker Total: 123 hours, +$5470.00

Slots: 0 hours
$0

Running Slot Total: 10 hours, +471.50

Grand Total: 133 hours, +$5941.50

This guy?

Yes! As well as Affleck's Southie jamoke.

Thanks suited again for showing me around, that was very interesting, definitely a part of Murica and the world I hadn't seen yet. Although, as I pointed out it reminded me sometimes of countryside Bavaria. Except they had a Dunkin' Donuts on every corner, they seem to have bought up that part of the country.
I'm afraid that part of the trip was a bit short on the nightclubs, hookers and blow part Mr. Colin. We found some dimensional portal though, and surely other depths present in small town Murica but suited cannot disclose too much about it for obvious reasons
Not many outsiders wandering around though, more like a closed circuit. At the weed shop in f*ing Holyoke they found my German ID very funny, prolly would have been worse if I tried the shops in the small town/village where I was staying which was next to suiteds small town/village. Anyways no problems getting some.

As for the pokers, yeah suiteds description of the 1/2 streets at MGM Springfield was pretty accurate, pretty good game and plays relatively deep. Unfortunately I missed the football promo, I blame Morph. That game at Chasers was pretty good too and yeah suited absolutely rivered me on that bomb pot.

The upper board was KQJT
The lower board was all middling cards OTF say, J98 or something like that, and an A OTT, no flushes out there.

Flop was checked through. Some guy who bet too much bet out 50 or 55 OTT, I raised to 200 with A5. suited called which I thought was somewhat questionable, since I almost never have a worse hand there and lots of better ones. But anyway it worked out, I run terrible against him anyways. The river was some card that paired the board on the top, maybe a T, and the 3 on the bottom board which quartered me, that went check check. The pairing slowed down things obv, but I prolly would have checked behind anyway, cos I was scared of suited's cold call, I thought he was stronger than he was.
I would have won moar in that game if I didn't have the brainfart of triple barrel bluffing the dumbest guy on this table who obv called me down with third pair, oh well what can you do.

Since suited was asking I might as well put it down here, so I went to stay near Mohegan for two days after that. First night I was around all day and tired, just played the 1/2 there. That was a supersoft game, but it played small compared to the MGM Springfield and others, buyin 60-300, but many peeps on the shorter side.I also ran superaidsy in it but that's a different matter. Next evening I had enough of playing for couple nickels at the time, I regeed for the 2/5 at Foxwoods, played a few hands of 1/2 before I got my seat by the looks of it, same than the game at Mohegan, sam buyin, players short, but game supersoft. The 2/5 at FW was great too, both the must-move and the main game. They had like 1-3 decent/good players at a time, the rest was just awful, same level or worse than the 1/2 players, all fishy-limpy, calling or not calling based on strength of the hand a simple PFR and fit or fold flop. Rarely a 3bet and if there was, it was usually the good ol limp-reraise presumably with AA/KK/AK. Won heaps in that game. However there was a special dynamic going on as Mohegan recently extended their hours back to 3:45am last hand, whereas FW was still 12:30 last hand. I went to Mohegan around midnightish as our table was disintegrating and tested the 2/5 streets there, and that game was not good. I won smallish mainly cos I called down a guy two streets with A high and was right, but there was not much easy money in that game. I suppose it makes sense that the more serious players would gather at Mohegan under these terms. All sample size one though, so what do I know...

It was great hanging out with you, Fire. Thanks for the Foxwoods and Mohegan preview.

I've skimmed their cardroom threads in Venues & Communities and I've seen a lot of complaining in both about reg infestations, but one person's reg is another person's standard/bad player.

I can trust your judgement, as we've played together at the same tables and made similar assessments of the same players, though I tend towards being more forgiving. We all make mistakes. It's the frequency of mistakes that draws my attention.

Part of that is laziness. At $1/$2 I don't have to make the mental effort of keeping tabs on everyone; I can get away with merely focusing on the biggest profit centers. When I move up I'll have to make more of an effort with more players in order to chisel out the harder-to-reach value.

M******* Dunkin’ Nuts

When I first moved to Las Vegas back in '98, I felt the loss of something intangible, but I could never put my finger on what it was. After a while I pegged it on the lack of the color green outside.

In New England, everything that isn't a building is either trees or lawn--mostly trees--with a few scattered farm fields adding to the overwhelming green press.

Las Vegas had patches of lawn, but was predominantly tans and yellows.

Perhaps, though, the colors I was truly missing were the orange and magenta of Dunkin Donuts.

Ha where I’m from kind in a midpoint between New England and Dunkin’ and Canada and Tim Horton’s. I’m a Tim Horton’s guys and in the 90s and 2000’s Horton’s was in the lead. Since then Dunkin' has been slowly taking over.

Your grammar is getting better. Good job!

There you go. And it's totally understandable that you missed the color green.

There's plenty of green in Las Vegas.

Sure the inside is all green with $100 bills. The casinos shear them off people like human wool. The trick is that people regrow their $100s and come back for more.

Not that I should be moralizing. Poker pros do the same thing.

My (ninja-edited) text is like James Joyce, basically. I blame Morph

Yesterday's session saw much manna dropped down from the football promo gods, as my floundering Patriots were thoroughly scored upon by the Bills. There's always next year for the Pats, and their loss was my $325.00 promo gain.

I played all right. One of the okay regs there apparently has a good read on my value raises, as he made nitty folds to two of them. I'm going to have to bluff raise him a few times until he adjusts.

My fellow slot grinder was also making the rounds. I haven't seen him playing any Cashman Bingo yet, and that's good, as that machine has been doing quite well for me in the short run.

MGM Springfield $1/$2 poker: 4 hours
+$450.00

Running Poker Total: 127 hours, +$5920.00

MGM Springfield Slots: 1 hour
+$71.39

Running Slot Total: 11 hours, +$542.89

Grand Total: 138 hours, +$6462.89

is this still $1-2 with a $8 drop?

Nice results SJ.

That is correct, with the exception of 3 hours of $1/$3 in New Hampshire.

Thanks Da_Nit! 'Results' is the right term. As I've mentioned, I'm not going to look at a win rate until I hit around 350 hours.

I still haven't had an extended downswing. That is coming, sooner or later. It waits for every player; good or bad, nitty or maniacal.

Nothing like waking up and finding traces of puke on my rug and toilet, and having to fire up my laptop and phone to find out what I posted last night.

Looks like I played an interesting 18 minutes of 10nl zoom. My pokertracker is on the fritz so I don't have the hands.

Are there empty whiskey bottles on the floor?

I mean, interesting in that the buyin is $12.00, and it looks like I lost a couple of those and then got them back in short order.

There's a 2/3 empty 1.5L handle in the freezer. I guess we can also see that as 1/3 full.

Thanks for the TRs Mr Suited and Fire. Those $15 bomb pots sound like the worst.

Thanks for reading, Colin! It was fun playing vs Fire, and we'll always have the quartering story, which the bomb pots made possible.

Good job, everyone. In our exploration of Boston-ness, we now have Affleck working at a Dunkin Donuts.



Apparently, he's making a commercial for them.