stevesbets

I decided to go to the Borgata in Atlantic City yesterday to visit a couple of my friends from college who happened to be there: Rat and Shallow. As it turned out my buddy from NYC, Stone, also showed up there so it was a fun night of catching up. In the process of seeing my friends, I also discovered a 25 50 NL game going that was pretty good so I decided to play. Some of the things I witnessed throughout the night in this game were pretty impressive.

Early in the night the game was full of mostly regulars and semi-regulars, some of whom are solid and some of whom are not. One guy, Chris, who I played with at Commerce in LA last year was there. We had a bit of history, in LA I pegged him as kind of an arrogant jerk but last night he seemed overall like a pretty cool guy. In LA we had played a hand at 20 40 nl where I had 33, and he decided to limp reraise me to 2k with a5o, i called with 33 and flopped a set, and I won a pretty big pot when he turned an ace. In LA he got so pissed and challenged me to Heads up and all the usual crap that aggressive Alpha types do when they lose a pot. He informed me early on in the game last night that he wouldn’t quit as long as I wanted to play short handed so we could be playing a long time.

As the night went on the game began getting short and eventually it was down to just the two of us. It was 3 am or so and I kind of wanted to leave, but he was stuck and I can’t really turn down a heads up challenge. We upped the blinds to 50 100 and started playing. Within about 30 minutes, two players from the 10 20 nl game came over saying their game broke and they wanted to play 25 50 with us. One was a quiet asian guy (QAG) and the other was a garrulous middle aged guy (GMAG). Chris told them that we were playign 50 100 now which was obviously way more than either of them felt comfortable with, but never underestimate people’s desire to gamble, they both sat down with 3k and 6k stacks respectively.

Very soon after they sat down it was obvious that GMAG had zero shot to hold onto the 6k he had in front of him. He played one hand that was perhaps the worst I’ve ever seen a hand played. he raised under the gun 4 handed and Chris reraised him to 1k from the big blind, GMAG called (bear in mind he had about 4500 in front of him total before the hand). Flop t86 rainbow, Chris checks, GMAG checks. turn Q, Christ checks, GMAG bets 400 (into a 2k pot), Chris calls. River J making the board 68TQJ. Chris reaches for his chips as if he’s going to bet about 1000, but before he can even put his bet out GMAG declares I’m all in, so Chris takes his bet back and mucks, GMAG turns up his hand anyway, it’s 66…I don’t think I need to go any further with why that is utterly bizarre.

Soon after that hand GMAG busted and left so it was 3 handed with Chris and Qag. Qag had some huge holes too including but not limited to calling 1k preflop with about 1200 behind and then folding on the flop. He soon busted too and Chris and I were heads up again.

Overall I ran super hot and was up a good amount on the night, Chris was still stuck and wanted to keep playing despite it being about 6am. This is why I don’t play live much, I couldn’t say no. It was really amazing, he had about 10k in front of him and I had him covered, overall we played heads up for about 5 hours and he didn’t get all in once, it really is so different from the online game. When 9am rolled around he asked if I wanted to switch it to PLO so we did. Finally the big pots started coming, I continued running hot and eventually busted him. Overall i think Chris is a solid player and I think a good guy who has finally been humbled by running bad (I remember in LA he told me that since poker is a skill game he believes its possible to basically never have a losing session and in fact that he hardly every does, I bet if you asked him now he would retract those comments). So overall it wasn’t the best spot in the world (except when GMAG and QAG were there) but hey, I was running hot.

The ride home at 11am was actually terrifying because I was so tired and uncomfortable. I luckily narrowly avoided Eagles traffic, got back to my place by noon and promptly fell asleep on the couch. I forced myself to wake up around 530 so that I could go to sleep at a reasonable hour tonight and finally be among the living in terms of sleep schedule.