Well, the Foxwoods trip was a blast.
The tourney went badly, with two ridiculous beats back to back to knock me out, but I was proud of the way I played. The $60 turbos have quite a few hopeless players who probably watched a little WSOP on ESPN, and figured they'd give it a shot. Easy marks (if you can dodge the horrific suckouts). One guy at my first table called the floor over to argue for three minutes about the dealer calling "blinds up" with five seconds left on the level clock. Really? Are you serious? Play at our table came to a screeching halt for three full minutes while this ancient nutbag argues over losing five seconds in a turbo format. Brilliant move you fucking poser! He kept saying he "didn't appreciate" the dealer cheating him. The TD carefully explained that if the dealer can't begin dealing before time on a level expires, then he can announce the blinds going up. Since the dealer hadn't even started putting the old deck in the shuffler and pulling out the new one, he was in the right. Unfortunately it took awhile to explain this to the offending a-hole while we sat around with the action on him of course. I should have called clock on him! Oh well, by the end of the whole debacle, everyone at my table wanted to shove his stupid scrimshaw card protector so far up his ass that it would peek out of his nose with the rest of his hideous old man nose hairs. Bah! When are they going to open the "under 50 only" casino?
If I thought that guy was bad, I had a shock waiting for me at the dreaded $2-$4 No-Fold 'em limit table. There's a reason I vowed to never play at these! I will not make that mistake again. After a slow torture for an hour, I decided to at least get something out of the trip and start drinking. I'd only drank a couple times in the past 6-7 months, but as soon as I started drinking the cards turned around for me. What is God trying to tell me? Long story short, I had a blast getting hammered at the video poker bar, and held my own at the $1-$2 NL table, which is where I feel like I belong for the first time!
The bottom line of the trip was that I got to spend some great time with my friends (we even got to play at the same tables because Foxwoods was so deserted). I walked out of a casino with only $20 less than I walked in with, and that's less than the money I tipped for drinks! I love live play, and I always seem to do better than online, but internet poker certainly has it's advantages. Quicker play, readily available info (chip stacks, mucked cards, etc), and most importantly, it's a lot easier to block chat. Also, you are protected from the germs, sights, and smells of the casino, as evidenced by the sloppy, career degenerate, who had clearly given up on competing in society and was sitting next to me openly farting and bitching about everyone's play at the 2-4 table. Truly the darkside of brick and more tards poker......
Showing posts with label Foxwoods. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Foxwoods. Show all posts
Monday, January 11, 2010
Thursday, January 7, 2010
OVER THE HILLS.....
Ahhh, the ubiquitous “trip report.” It seems to be a right of passage, so here goes.
I left Eastport, Maine on Saturday morning. A major blizzard was moving in starting Friday. Chance of snow on Friday: 100%, Saturday: 100%, Sunday: 100%. Even I believe the weathermen when they are that sure. The snow started for real Friday night. By Saturday morning it was white out conditions. The little coastal transportation bus showed up surprisingly only ten minutes late, but it was obviously going to be slow going down Route 1. Another woman got on with me, and she made many trips back to a car to load a bunch of junk on the bus. I wasn’t really paying attention, but I did notice one of her items was a broken down oscillating fan. You don’t see one of those that often in the dead of winter. Once we got under way, I heard a weird little sneeze and looked over at her. She had a baby on her lap! Somehow, riding the short bus, in the heart of a blizzard, in the middle of nowhere, with only one other passenger, I had ended up traveling next to a baby! I knew Dr. Pauly would have chuckled.
The baby was blessedly silent the whole trip, and we made our connection in Bangor. I felt like that lone snowboarder in a Warren Miller extreme movie, flying down the mountain barely ahead of a huge avalanche. I was trying to escape Maine before the avalanche caught up. Unfortunately around Augusta, just as it happens so often to the snowboarder, the giant cloud engulfed us. Even the mammoth Concord Trailways bus was fishtailing all over. The highway signs were plastered pure white with snow, and you could barely tell the road from the ditch. Pretty fucking cool, except I was convinced I wouldn’t make it to Boston that night. Somehow, miraculously we emerged from the storm bank, and rode the cusp of it all the way to Massachusetts.
Boston was a ghost town. It was the second day of the new decade and everyone was broke, hungover, and probably ashamed. 2010 was starting quietly. It couldn’t be worse than 2009 though, right? I met up with my friends in the People’s Republic of Cambridge, and we had a good weekend. Bar trivia one night, and a night at my friend Lea’s place watching old Twilight Zones and playing Personal Preference (a fun board game from the 80’s where you have to predict your friends rankings of random items). I actually worked a couple of days too. I have a really cool boss who lets me fill in at the wine shop whenever I’m in town. You know, for gambling money and what not. Speaking of which, Tuesday morning was what I was looking forward to. That’s when we headed down to……..
THE WOODS
Foxwoods always looms up like a trashy turquoise mirage out of the bucolic Conneticut woods, but it’s the most beautiful ugly thing you’ve ever seen when you are jonesing for some cards! We played in the 1pm $60 Turbo. I took a horrific two-outer beat on the river to cripple me the hand before the first break. I had to wait five minutes to go all-in blind in the small blind. The big blind calls and another guy in the hand shoves. I think “Oh great.” BB folds and the other guy shows 6-7 off! I have no idea what my cards are at this point. I flip 7-8 off. Sweet, right? Of course not. Even the dealer says “You have him dominated.” Thanks, dickhead. Flop is Q-3-10. Turn 4. I immediately predict the 5 on the river and am literally walking away from the table before the five of spades hits the felt. “GL” idiot, and all that happy horseshit my ass.
Time for a cash game. I break my #1 cardinal rule, and head for the $2-$4 limit tables. I have vowed to not play No Fold ‘em Hold ‘em ever again. It is the paper cut of poker tables. Unfortunately, I’m pretty low on the bankroll, and have to play there by necessity. Maybe I’ll hit a couple pots and be able to move up to the $4-$8 tables. Yeah right. I sit down at the table and survey the damages. It is the table of misfit toys. And I don’t mean that in the ironic fun way. Seat one is the retired rock, seat 2 is a fat Edward James Olmos look-a-like with a ponytail, seat 3 yours truly, seat 4 soon to be empty, seat 5 friendly chatty old lady, seat 6 weirdo with a super deluxe sars mask who repeatedly answers his phone and has to be told to hang up every time, seat 7 the grouch who stares at his cards for ten minutes before inevitably folding after the river every time, seat 8 the Russian who bets wrong and has to be told how limit betting works every time, seat 9 my friend G eventually, and seat 10 the old Jewish lady with bifocals perched on her nose who looks up and down, back and forth from the board to her hand and eventually calls with middle pair every time. It is beyond a crushingly slow pace, especially being used to online play. When the 4 seat opens up, the grouch asks to move to it. Dealer says fine. A couple minutes pass and a young kid sits down in 4, pulls cash out, gets chips, gives the dealer his Dream Card to swipe, and settles in. After all this, the grouch says “Can I have that seat now?” So the kid has to get up, move his chips, move his water, get his Dream Card out to reswipe, and slide two seats over. The grouch sits down next to me and actually asks me to move over. Are you fucking kidding me? I tell him in my most restrained Charles Bronson rage filled calm voice that I am directly in front of my seat’s cup holder so he can go blow. I mean seriously, he pulls that shit, unnecessarily moves two seats over to be next to the biggest guy at the table (me), and then expects me to move over?!?? Am I on hidden camera? Oh wait, I am. But not the good kind like Candid Camera. Oops, I’m dating myself. I should have said Punk’d. Everybody at the table is talking shit and analyzing strategy. At a 2-4 table? Stategy? Please. And they all know each others names. They sit here all day, everyday and do this. How depressing. Someone at the table calls 2-4 limit “morphine for heroin addicts,” but I find that very insulting to morphine. After none of my hands hold up to the brilliant “call everything” technique employed at the table, I realize I’m in hell. Poker hell and humanity hell. The absolute lowest point that both could sink to. Now I finally realize why casinos call them “pits.” Edward James Olmos keeps farting, and now there is a putrid, somewhat sulfurus stench to round out the metaphor. I flag down the waitress. If I’m going to be in absolute hell, I might as well start drinking. Ahhh, it tastes so good when it hits your lips! After actually winning a couple pots, G and I flee hell and head upstairs to purgatory.
Whenever I’m steaming, broke, want to get drunk, or maybe all three, I head to the video poker bar tucked behind the racebook. It is one of my favorite spots in Foxwoods. Ya stick $20 in a machine and you get served free drinks by a bartender right there. No more craning your neck around looking for a non-existent waitress in the poker room. G and I get hammered playing video 5 card draw for an hour or so. Good times. I win about $40 profit because of hitting quads a couple times. We then head back downstairs to find my friend Van D who is at a $1-$2 NL table. We find him and it’s open seating, so I decide to jump on the table. My favorite line of the trip came later when I told Van D that the table image I was playing was Drunken Fool. He muttered under his breath “You played it well.” That’s what happens when you don’t touch a drop of liquor for over two months then get wasted at a casino. I kept my wits at the table though, and played super tight. I knew everyone would be dying to call the drunk guy every time. It worked. I won a big pot with big slick against a guy who I had been debating over the merits of buying in under the gun. I was violently opposed to it, while he said it was worth it to try and hit the bad beat jackpot. I got all my money in by the turn with a pair of Kings, Ace kicker, and the nut flush draw. His pocket pair was no good. I had him covered by about $5, but he had a cool hot pink $2.50 Foxwoods chip that he was using as a card protector. I wanted that chip. I don’t think you should be allowed to use a chip with a monetary value from the casino you’re playing at as your card protector! I had just taken about $80 off of him, so I didn’t press the issue. After he left, the dealer said he was one of the better players in the room, and that he was just killing time while he waited for a high stakes seat to open up. That made me feel good. The dealer then apologized for talking about another player. Bad etiquette, but in this case I’m for it!
The bad beat jackpot seems to be all people think about these days at Foxwoods. By the way, they raised it up to quad 8’s minimum that has to be beat. Both hole cards of both players have to be used and obviously it has to be shown down with at least 4 people at the table and a $20 pot.
I left the 1-2 table up $30 or so and we piled into the Lexus and headed up I-95 rocketing towards…….
THE PINK PALACE
Anyone who has driven past Providence, Rhode Island has probably seen the shockingly ugly pink building just off of the highway. Cheaters is probably the most appropriately named strip joint in the country. I say strip joint, but it’s really more of a roadside whorehouse. And even that is prettying it up. It’s the one place I’ve been that still has the wild west, anything goes credo. I’m surprised we didn’t have to check our six-shooters at the door. I always half expect Mae West to come down the stairs. Any place that you walk into and a gorgeous woman rushes up to you and whispers in your ear “I really want to suck your cock right now.” is a cool place in my book. Cheaters is like a virtual reality box that you step into and see what it’s like to be a rockstar for an hour or two. Anything goes (and usually does). I must be getting old, because Van D and I sat at the bar and talked movies while G went to take care of business. As we looked around we realized we weren’t missing anything. It was definitely not the A-team working a slow Tuesday in the dog days of January right after New Year’s (although one of the strippers did look like Mr. T). Christ, it looked like all of their customers had resolved to stop cheating on their wives, and were actually sticking to it for a few days! It was deserted and the talent was…..less than….remotely talented. It’s the first time I’ve ever been to the Pink Palace when there weren’t at least a few knockouts working. We were a little insulted that none of the girls came over to harass us. Not that we wanted them to. They were hideous, and we weren’t interested, but you know, it’s the principle of the thing. The girls were all lethargic, and the music was suicidal. I’m not kidding. It was like Edie Brickell, Depeche Mode, and Sarah McLaughlin. The whole place felt like a deserted opium den as envisioned by Russ Meyers and David Lynch. Speaking of which, the best looking girl in the joint finally came over and started talking movies with us. She must have been bored johnless, and turned out to be surprisingly knowledgable about movies. Just when they finally put my homey Prince on the sound system, G came streaking out of the back room like he had seen a ghost. A slightly overweight, half dressed, gap toothed, glitter covered ghost. It was time to split. The rest of the ride was fueled by Head Band and SoCo (in a tip of the hat to AlCantHang).
We were back in Boston and reality again. I had played cards in a casino for seven hours with friends, I was drunk, happy, and left with only $20 less than I had walked in with. That’s a mega win as far as I am concerned. I can’t wait to go back.
All right. Enough. This writing bullshit is cutting into my poker time.
I left Eastport, Maine on Saturday morning. A major blizzard was moving in starting Friday. Chance of snow on Friday: 100%, Saturday: 100%, Sunday: 100%. Even I believe the weathermen when they are that sure. The snow started for real Friday night. By Saturday morning it was white out conditions. The little coastal transportation bus showed up surprisingly only ten minutes late, but it was obviously going to be slow going down Route 1. Another woman got on with me, and she made many trips back to a car to load a bunch of junk on the bus. I wasn’t really paying attention, but I did notice one of her items was a broken down oscillating fan. You don’t see one of those that often in the dead of winter. Once we got under way, I heard a weird little sneeze and looked over at her. She had a baby on her lap! Somehow, riding the short bus, in the heart of a blizzard, in the middle of nowhere, with only one other passenger, I had ended up traveling next to a baby! I knew Dr. Pauly would have chuckled.
The baby was blessedly silent the whole trip, and we made our connection in Bangor. I felt like that lone snowboarder in a Warren Miller extreme movie, flying down the mountain barely ahead of a huge avalanche. I was trying to escape Maine before the avalanche caught up. Unfortunately around Augusta, just as it happens so often to the snowboarder, the giant cloud engulfed us. Even the mammoth Concord Trailways bus was fishtailing all over. The highway signs were plastered pure white with snow, and you could barely tell the road from the ditch. Pretty fucking cool, except I was convinced I wouldn’t make it to Boston that night. Somehow, miraculously we emerged from the storm bank, and rode the cusp of it all the way to Massachusetts.
Boston was a ghost town. It was the second day of the new decade and everyone was broke, hungover, and probably ashamed. 2010 was starting quietly. It couldn’t be worse than 2009 though, right? I met up with my friends in the People’s Republic of Cambridge, and we had a good weekend. Bar trivia one night, and a night at my friend Lea’s place watching old Twilight Zones and playing Personal Preference (a fun board game from the 80’s where you have to predict your friends rankings of random items). I actually worked a couple of days too. I have a really cool boss who lets me fill in at the wine shop whenever I’m in town. You know, for gambling money and what not. Speaking of which, Tuesday morning was what I was looking forward to. That’s when we headed down to……..
THE WOODS
Foxwoods always looms up like a trashy turquoise mirage out of the bucolic Conneticut woods, but it’s the most beautiful ugly thing you’ve ever seen when you are jonesing for some cards! We played in the 1pm $60 Turbo. I took a horrific two-outer beat on the river to cripple me the hand before the first break. I had to wait five minutes to go all-in blind in the small blind. The big blind calls and another guy in the hand shoves. I think “Oh great.” BB folds and the other guy shows 6-7 off! I have no idea what my cards are at this point. I flip 7-8 off. Sweet, right? Of course not. Even the dealer says “You have him dominated.” Thanks, dickhead. Flop is Q-3-10. Turn 4. I immediately predict the 5 on the river and am literally walking away from the table before the five of spades hits the felt. “GL” idiot, and all that happy horseshit my ass.
Time for a cash game. I break my #1 cardinal rule, and head for the $2-$4 limit tables. I have vowed to not play No Fold ‘em Hold ‘em ever again. It is the paper cut of poker tables. Unfortunately, I’m pretty low on the bankroll, and have to play there by necessity. Maybe I’ll hit a couple pots and be able to move up to the $4-$8 tables. Yeah right. I sit down at the table and survey the damages. It is the table of misfit toys. And I don’t mean that in the ironic fun way. Seat one is the retired rock, seat 2 is a fat Edward James Olmos look-a-like with a ponytail, seat 3 yours truly, seat 4 soon to be empty, seat 5 friendly chatty old lady, seat 6 weirdo with a super deluxe sars mask who repeatedly answers his phone and has to be told to hang up every time, seat 7 the grouch who stares at his cards for ten minutes before inevitably folding after the river every time, seat 8 the Russian who bets wrong and has to be told how limit betting works every time, seat 9 my friend G eventually, and seat 10 the old Jewish lady with bifocals perched on her nose who looks up and down, back and forth from the board to her hand and eventually calls with middle pair every time. It is beyond a crushingly slow pace, especially being used to online play. When the 4 seat opens up, the grouch asks to move to it. Dealer says fine. A couple minutes pass and a young kid sits down in 4, pulls cash out, gets chips, gives the dealer his Dream Card to swipe, and settles in. After all this, the grouch says “Can I have that seat now?” So the kid has to get up, move his chips, move his water, get his Dream Card out to reswipe, and slide two seats over. The grouch sits down next to me and actually asks me to move over. Are you fucking kidding me? I tell him in my most restrained Charles Bronson rage filled calm voice that I am directly in front of my seat’s cup holder so he can go blow. I mean seriously, he pulls that shit, unnecessarily moves two seats over to be next to the biggest guy at the table (me), and then expects me to move over?!?? Am I on hidden camera? Oh wait, I am. But not the good kind like Candid Camera. Oops, I’m dating myself. I should have said Punk’d. Everybody at the table is talking shit and analyzing strategy. At a 2-4 table? Stategy? Please. And they all know each others names. They sit here all day, everyday and do this. How depressing. Someone at the table calls 2-4 limit “morphine for heroin addicts,” but I find that very insulting to morphine. After none of my hands hold up to the brilliant “call everything” technique employed at the table, I realize I’m in hell. Poker hell and humanity hell. The absolute lowest point that both could sink to. Now I finally realize why casinos call them “pits.” Edward James Olmos keeps farting, and now there is a putrid, somewhat sulfurus stench to round out the metaphor. I flag down the waitress. If I’m going to be in absolute hell, I might as well start drinking. Ahhh, it tastes so good when it hits your lips! After actually winning a couple pots, G and I flee hell and head upstairs to purgatory.
Whenever I’m steaming, broke, want to get drunk, or maybe all three, I head to the video poker bar tucked behind the racebook. It is one of my favorite spots in Foxwoods. Ya stick $20 in a machine and you get served free drinks by a bartender right there. No more craning your neck around looking for a non-existent waitress in the poker room. G and I get hammered playing video 5 card draw for an hour or so. Good times. I win about $40 profit because of hitting quads a couple times. We then head back downstairs to find my friend Van D who is at a $1-$2 NL table. We find him and it’s open seating, so I decide to jump on the table. My favorite line of the trip came later when I told Van D that the table image I was playing was Drunken Fool. He muttered under his breath “You played it well.” That’s what happens when you don’t touch a drop of liquor for over two months then get wasted at a casino. I kept my wits at the table though, and played super tight. I knew everyone would be dying to call the drunk guy every time. It worked. I won a big pot with big slick against a guy who I had been debating over the merits of buying in under the gun. I was violently opposed to it, while he said it was worth it to try and hit the bad beat jackpot. I got all my money in by the turn with a pair of Kings, Ace kicker, and the nut flush draw. His pocket pair was no good. I had him covered by about $5, but he had a cool hot pink $2.50 Foxwoods chip that he was using as a card protector. I wanted that chip. I don’t think you should be allowed to use a chip with a monetary value from the casino you’re playing at as your card protector! I had just taken about $80 off of him, so I didn’t press the issue. After he left, the dealer said he was one of the better players in the room, and that he was just killing time while he waited for a high stakes seat to open up. That made me feel good. The dealer then apologized for talking about another player. Bad etiquette, but in this case I’m for it!
The bad beat jackpot seems to be all people think about these days at Foxwoods. By the way, they raised it up to quad 8’s minimum that has to be beat. Both hole cards of both players have to be used and obviously it has to be shown down with at least 4 people at the table and a $20 pot.
I left the 1-2 table up $30 or so and we piled into the Lexus and headed up I-95 rocketing towards…….
THE PINK PALACE
Anyone who has driven past Providence, Rhode Island has probably seen the shockingly ugly pink building just off of the highway. Cheaters is probably the most appropriately named strip joint in the country. I say strip joint, but it’s really more of a roadside whorehouse. And even that is prettying it up. It’s the one place I’ve been that still has the wild west, anything goes credo. I’m surprised we didn’t have to check our six-shooters at the door. I always half expect Mae West to come down the stairs. Any place that you walk into and a gorgeous woman rushes up to you and whispers in your ear “I really want to suck your cock right now.” is a cool place in my book. Cheaters is like a virtual reality box that you step into and see what it’s like to be a rockstar for an hour or two. Anything goes (and usually does). I must be getting old, because Van D and I sat at the bar and talked movies while G went to take care of business. As we looked around we realized we weren’t missing anything. It was definitely not the A-team working a slow Tuesday in the dog days of January right after New Year’s (although one of the strippers did look like Mr. T). Christ, it looked like all of their customers had resolved to stop cheating on their wives, and were actually sticking to it for a few days! It was deserted and the talent was…..less than….remotely talented. It’s the first time I’ve ever been to the Pink Palace when there weren’t at least a few knockouts working. We were a little insulted that none of the girls came over to harass us. Not that we wanted them to. They were hideous, and we weren’t interested, but you know, it’s the principle of the thing. The girls were all lethargic, and the music was suicidal. I’m not kidding. It was like Edie Brickell, Depeche Mode, and Sarah McLaughlin. The whole place felt like a deserted opium den as envisioned by Russ Meyers and David Lynch. Speaking of which, the best looking girl in the joint finally came over and started talking movies with us. She must have been bored johnless, and turned out to be surprisingly knowledgable about movies. Just when they finally put my homey Prince on the sound system, G came streaking out of the back room like he had seen a ghost. A slightly overweight, half dressed, gap toothed, glitter covered ghost. It was time to split. The rest of the ride was fueled by Head Band and SoCo (in a tip of the hat to AlCantHang).
We were back in Boston and reality again. I had played cards in a casino for seven hours with friends, I was drunk, happy, and left with only $20 less than I had walked in with. That’s a mega win as far as I am concerned. I can’t wait to go back.
All right. Enough. This writing bullshit is cutting into my poker time.
Friday, December 18, 2009
MIXING IT UP
Yeah, yeah. I know what you're thinking. Another poker blog. Great. The world needs another poker blog like Tiger Woods needs another Bennigan's cocktail waitress. Well, this blog may very well morph into a movie, sports, or food blog. Who knows. What I do know is that half of my miniscule bankroll is gone due to apathetic play, outright stupid play (when am I going to learn to fucking stop slow playing sets?!? Or slow playing at all for that matter), and a few bad beats mixed in. Time to take a break and mentally prepare for my Foxwoods trip. In the meantime, I will continue my dedication to entertain you, my loyal readers, with jokes, pictures, and witty observations. So here we go:
Guy is at a poker game. He hits bottom two pair and hears a voice in his head "Go all-in." So he does, everyone calls and his two pair hold up. The voice says "Play a tournament." So he takes that money and enters a tourney. At the final table he has the Hammer in late position and the voice says "Bluff them." So he does and wins a huge pot. After winning the tourney the voice says "Go to Vegas." So he goes to Vegas and enters the Main Event. Halfway through the tourney he is dealt two black aces! The voice says "Go all-in." So he does, and gets three callers! The flop comes 10h-Jh-Qh and the voice says "Oh shit."
****************
"No officer, I absolutely have not been huffing paint. Why would you ask that. I have definitely, 100 percent not been....why are you holding up that mirror...ohhh. Yeah. I've been huffing paint."
*******************
Last, just a shout out to my beloved Vikings, who appear to be back on track after a rough loss to Arizona, and the rougher loss of E.J. Henderson. Is this their year? I can only hope. I've been down this road many times before. I know better than to take anything for granted. Go Vikes!
Thursday, December 17, 2009
ANTICIPATION
"You're dealt a five and a ten in hold'em. What's the only straight you can't get by the end of the hand?"
-Trivia question an old timer asked me during a dealer change on my last trip to Foxwoods. Answer at the end of this post.
I'm getting really psyched for my upcoming Foxwoods trip. I'm going right after New Year's and got a sick deal on a room at the Twin Pines. I will definitely spend more money tipping the waitresses for tiny watered down drinks than I'll spend on the room! Online poker is fine, but it simply can't compare to live play. I'm also looking forward to playing Pai Gow for the first time and sitting at the video poker bar for a drinking session with some friends I haven't seen in awhile.
I've been reading all the updates from the blogger get together this past week in Vegas. Derek's recap is particularily entertaining. Can't wait for my first trip to Vegas. Maybe next year I'll make it out for the WPBT. It would be great to get to party with some of these crazy characters that I've read so much about. Vegas for the first time, and meeting that crew might be overload though!
Well, it's back to PokerStars in a few minutes. I've been playing like shit. Maybe some time off would help recharge the batteries. Sometimes it's easier to handle my poker addiction when I have a really bad session. It seems a lot easier to log off and do something productive like getting some writing done, or cooking, or even just watching a movie. When you're winning it's so much harder to shut the laptop down and do something else. After all, as Jefferey Tambor says in The Hangover, "You ....NEVER... leave the table...when you're on... a heater." Well that's the nature of the beast.
Trivia answer: You can't get the 5-9 straight because in that case you'd have the 6-10 straight instead.
-Trivia question an old timer asked me during a dealer change on my last trip to Foxwoods. Answer at the end of this post.
I'm getting really psyched for my upcoming Foxwoods trip. I'm going right after New Year's and got a sick deal on a room at the Twin Pines. I will definitely spend more money tipping the waitresses for tiny watered down drinks than I'll spend on the room! Online poker is fine, but it simply can't compare to live play. I'm also looking forward to playing Pai Gow for the first time and sitting at the video poker bar for a drinking session with some friends I haven't seen in awhile.
I've been reading all the updates from the blogger get together this past week in Vegas. Derek's recap is particularily entertaining. Can't wait for my first trip to Vegas. Maybe next year I'll make it out for the WPBT. It would be great to get to party with some of these crazy characters that I've read so much about. Vegas for the first time, and meeting that crew might be overload though!
Well, it's back to PokerStars in a few minutes. I've been playing like shit. Maybe some time off would help recharge the batteries. Sometimes it's easier to handle my poker addiction when I have a really bad session. It seems a lot easier to log off and do something productive like getting some writing done, or cooking, or even just watching a movie. When you're winning it's so much harder to shut the laptop down and do something else. After all, as Jefferey Tambor says in The Hangover, "You ....NEVER... leave the table...when you're on... a heater." Well that's the nature of the beast.
Trivia answer: You can't get the 5-9 straight because in that case you'd have the 6-10 straight instead.
Saturday, December 12, 2009
GAMBLOR LIVES!
I used to live in Boston, and Foxwoods was the first casino where I ever played poker. I will always have a fondness for it because of that. Here's a note I wrote last spring about one trip. What's that? Too early to be hitting up the archives? Well screw you! It's my blog and I'll do whatever I want! Now read:
Artie Lange wrote in his recent book that the best part of doing coke was the ride to go get it. The same can be said of the two hour drive from Boston to Foxwoods Casino. Everything is optimism as you fly through Rhode Island, past the pink palace and deep into the Conneticut woods, where the casino rises up through the trees like a pre-fab Native American Disneyworld designed by Chief Uses-ToomuchTurquoise. After we drop off the car at the free valet (“Free??” we say; “This isn’t Vegas” sneers the surprisingly cheerful valet), we head through the outer casinos with the droning, chiming, mantra of thousands of slot machines whirring away. All the coins have been replaced by voucher tickets, so the metallic harbinger of jackpots is the only thing missing. Seeing people smoking indoors (that’s right, inside a building) is shocking and sooo retro. We play poker for a few hours, and then Gene heads back to Boston and I head to the Twin Pines hotel (it’s actually called The Two Trees, but Twin Pines sounds much more like something out of a David Lynch movie). Let me tell you something about the Twin Pines: they have heat/sun lamps built in to the ceiling of the bathroom. The feeling of that warmth beating down on you after you get out of the shower is….is…..well, I’ll say indescribable because I can’t think of anything else to say. I simply don’t think I can go back to my peasant existence devoid of bathroom heat lamps. I play in a tourney the next morning, and do pretty well, but bust out when my pocket aces are all in against ace-jack of diamonds. Yeah, of course three diamonds came out, but you don’t want to hear my poker sob stories. The only thing more boring than poker bad beat stories are baby and pet stories (“…then little Tad spit up on the concierge. It was so precious…..” “Fluffy did the cutest thing this morning….”). Lunch is on the casino. That’s right, there is such a thing as a free lunch! I use my Dream Card at Fuddrucker’s and all is good! Imagine that; you drop a few hundred bucks here and they give you a free sandwich. I don’t know how they stay in business. The Dream Card used to be called the Wampum Card, which I found much more delightfully un-PC. I thought they should have gone full out and called the gift shop the Indian Giver. I hit the race book to bet on some horses and kill a couple hours, and end up having the most fun of the two days hanging out there drinking complimentary cappuccinos and strawberry shakes (if you’re ever at Foxwoods, do yourself a favor and get a strawberry shake) and screaming at 70-1 longshots on the big screen. Now it’s time to head to the bus lobby and go home. If there is a more miserable, bedraggled murderer’s row of DNA and societal wrong turns than a casino bus lobby, I don’t want to see it! I’m craving a Dr. Pepper, but at this point in the trip I don’t really have that kind of money to throw around. It’s either a soda or a trip home, but not both. I choose the trip home. I pay the driver my last crumpled $21, and settle into my seat, tired, disoriented, broke, and a little strung-out on bad air and cappuccinos. As we pull out of the Rainmaker parking lot I think to myself; I wonder if Gene wants to come back next week………….
Artie Lange wrote in his recent book that the best part of doing coke was the ride to go get it. The same can be said of the two hour drive from Boston to Foxwoods Casino. Everything is optimism as you fly through Rhode Island, past the pink palace and deep into the Conneticut woods, where the casino rises up through the trees like a pre-fab Native American Disneyworld designed by Chief Uses-ToomuchTurquoise. After we drop off the car at the free valet (“Free??” we say; “This isn’t Vegas” sneers the surprisingly cheerful valet), we head through the outer casinos with the droning, chiming, mantra of thousands of slot machines whirring away. All the coins have been replaced by voucher tickets, so the metallic harbinger of jackpots is the only thing missing. Seeing people smoking indoors (that’s right, inside a building) is shocking and sooo retro. We play poker for a few hours, and then Gene heads back to Boston and I head to the Twin Pines hotel (it’s actually called The Two Trees, but Twin Pines sounds much more like something out of a David Lynch movie). Let me tell you something about the Twin Pines: they have heat/sun lamps built in to the ceiling of the bathroom. The feeling of that warmth beating down on you after you get out of the shower is….is…..well, I’ll say indescribable because I can’t think of anything else to say. I simply don’t think I can go back to my peasant existence devoid of bathroom heat lamps. I play in a tourney the next morning, and do pretty well, but bust out when my pocket aces are all in against ace-jack of diamonds. Yeah, of course three diamonds came out, but you don’t want to hear my poker sob stories. The only thing more boring than poker bad beat stories are baby and pet stories (“…then little Tad spit up on the concierge. It was so precious…..” “Fluffy did the cutest thing this morning….”). Lunch is on the casino. That’s right, there is such a thing as a free lunch! I use my Dream Card at Fuddrucker’s and all is good! Imagine that; you drop a few hundred bucks here and they give you a free sandwich. I don’t know how they stay in business. The Dream Card used to be called the Wampum Card, which I found much more delightfully un-PC. I thought they should have gone full out and called the gift shop the Indian Giver. I hit the race book to bet on some horses and kill a couple hours, and end up having the most fun of the two days hanging out there drinking complimentary cappuccinos and strawberry shakes (if you’re ever at Foxwoods, do yourself a favor and get a strawberry shake) and screaming at 70-1 longshots on the big screen. Now it’s time to head to the bus lobby and go home. If there is a more miserable, bedraggled murderer’s row of DNA and societal wrong turns than a casino bus lobby, I don’t want to see it! I’m craving a Dr. Pepper, but at this point in the trip I don’t really have that kind of money to throw around. It’s either a soda or a trip home, but not both. I choose the trip home. I pay the driver my last crumpled $21, and settle into my seat, tired, disoriented, broke, and a little strung-out on bad air and cappuccinos. As we pull out of the Rainmaker parking lot I think to myself; I wonder if Gene wants to come back next week………….
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