jesus christ, its 4:30 am and i just got back from the wildest poker game ive ever played. now i play a lot of goddamn poker but this one takes the cake. what i thought was going to be a very boring nite of grind it out poker became a crazy nite of poker.
so i did my usual wake up around noon, eat, watch tivo and head out to commerce. i left for the office at about 3:30pm so that i could avoid LA rush hour traffic created by the working stiffs (i hope to not be one anymore soon). by 4pm i was in my seat for the usual $200 NL cash game. little did i know, i would be in this same damn seat for the next 12 hours. the original plan was to get there early to avoid rush hour traffic, play some cash games, then enter the tournament at 7pm. tonite was the $300+30 limit event. however, i received a phone call from a friend that i needed to attend to some serious real life stuff tonite at about 10pm. so obviously i cant enter the tournament. so my plan changed to just play the cash game until about 9pm and leave.
so i grind myself up to exactly $1200 ($1000 profit) by 9pm. no spectacular hands, no bad beats, just boring grind-it-out poker. so im satisfied with my day's work and ready to leave when my friend calls and tells me that whatever we had to do had been cancelled. great!! i really wanted to play the tournament but too late now. so now my plan changes again to play a little longer and call it an "early" nite at about midnite since i still havent gotten a decent nite's sleep and go home and maybe play online a little. plus the action is pretty dry on weeknites. i also wanted to wake up "early" tomorrow (by early i mean 11:30am) to either play an online tourney or one of the small daily $20 tourney's at the bike. well we all know how this story goes. i proceed to lose $1000 by the time it is midnite back to my original $200 buy in. once again, no spectular hands, no bad beats, just bad cards, and bad playing. now i coulda left dead even for the nite but i hate leaving even. its all or none baby. so my plan changes again to stay a little longer and see what happens. well, by 1am i am up exactly $1000 again. no joke, exactly $1000, not a dollar more, not a dollar less. now im tired and i decide to be good and leave while im up. im thinking, man this is going to be a short entry into the blog. no tournament story. no big hands. just 8 hours of regular poker.
as im racking up my chips to leave, along comes three absurdly drunk friends that fill up the three empty seats at our table. these guys are totally wasted, loud, obnoxious.....just what ive been waiting for. these guys apparently all busted out of the tournament early, proceeded to get wasted at the bar, and had to get a room at the hotel at commerce since they were too drunk to drive home. one of the guys were even wearing a party poker t-shirt, i kid you not. can you say fish? so i obviously cant leave now rite. i look around the table and see everyone salivating at the mouth getting out their fishing poles. they immediately order 3 more rounds of tequilla shots to be chased with beer. awesome!!! they even say to everyone at the table that they know that we are all staying just to play with their drunk asses, even calling themselves fish. true to their image, one guy goes all in preflop his first three hands. he successfully steals the blinds his first two attempts but gets picked off my pockets jacks on his third one. rebuy!!!
i get my first opportunity when i call a small preflop raise by one of these maniacs with J-10. board comes Q-J-10, scary. so i check and he bets and i check raise all in. surprisingly he had a good hand, A-Q, but i had him dominated. but of course A on the river but luckily he only had $200. but anyways, whatever it is that these guys are doing, it is working. these guys are making ridiculously large bets on the flop and showing total bluffs with like 8-3 offsuit but they are succeeding at stealing pots. and when they get called, they hit their hands. this one guy raised with 7-2 three times and cracked AA, KK, and AK, no joke. on one hand, one of them raised it blind and proceeded to bet $100 on the flop and turn. when he got called down to the river, he finally checks his cards and bets out $200. the other guy reluctantly calls with just AK since the other guy was blind and the maniac turns over 7-2 but has a pair of dueces. these guys were even making very large bluffs against each other when they were the only ones in the hand. at the end of the first hour, they are crushing our table and each have monster stacks of several thousand dollars. but it did cause action. the original solid players were now calling $100 preflop raises no problem. the whole table was caught up in this madness.
to add to it, the dealer was dealing out monster hands. this one hand, maniac raises $100 preflop. three guys in front of me call including some tight ass players. i look down and find QQ. now i would easily call the maniac but a tight player was in there too. i was afraid of walking into a trap that the tight player laid for the maniac. but i call. flop comes down As-Qs-10h. maniac goes all in for $500, guy behind him goes all in for $300, i go all in for $1000, guy behind be with a massive stack calls all in having all of us covered. guess what the dealer dealt out. Js-2s for maniac for flush draw. K-J for next guy for a flopped straight. QQ for me for middle set. A-10 for last guy for two pair!!! of course spade on the river and maniac takes down the main pot. luckily i won a nice side pot.
a few hands later, i get dealt 9-10 spades and call a maniacs small raise with three others in the pot. i flop an open-ended but with a diamond draw on board. everyone calls a small raise by the maniac. the turn is a lovely 7 of clubs giving me the nuts, a straight. however, im sure people are on the diamond draw with this many people still in the pot so i make a large bet. everyone folds and the maniac thinks for a long time. then he calls and tells me that he will only bet if a diamond comes on the river and if not, he is going to throw it away. now a few other times, he has done this. he is of course drunk and joking around but he has actually shown his hands to be telling the truth. of course, freaking diamond on the river. he goes all in having me covered (i still have a thousand in front of me). i think for a long time trying to decided if he was full of shit or not. but $1000 is a lot of money to be calling for. so i finally decide he is telling the truth as he has been doing and fold. he turns over nuthing as he takes down the pot. played me like a goddamn fiddle. i fell for the oldest trick in the book. damn did i feel like a fool. if i had called, i woulda been up $2000 for the day. now i am suspecting that these guys are putting on an act. these guys are some freakin team like on the espn show tilt or something. acting drunk while take us sucker's money. i mean was the party poker shirt and blind play in the beginning all just a ploy to sucker us in? but i can tell they are clearly drunk and they are catching monster hands while making well timed bluffs.
a few hands later, i get dealt 2-2 and call a small preflop raise by the maniac of course. board comes down K-J-8. i check but somehow it gets checked around. turn is a 2 giving me a set. now im first to act and bet out a decent amount. maniac suddenly goes all in having me covered (i still have a thousand in front of me). everyone folds to me. it is just impossible to put this guy on a hand or a bluff. he has constantly done this making massive over the top bluffs and showing them. he is also telling me to lay it down since i am a nice guy and the same nationality as him. either way, i just cant lay it down and call but he did have 8-8 for a higher set. so 10 hours of hard work down the drain in one hand.
i could go home with my tail between my legs but my pride gets in the way. i refuse to let these guys play me like that. so rebuy and start with a measly $200 compared to the monster stacks that the maniacs have. one of them has $3000 by this point. but perseverance paid off and i was able to claw my way back to about $800. it was about 3:30am by this time. the alcohol was wearing off on these guys and it was apparent by now that they were not some professional scam artists but just drunken maniacs. i mean they werent the usual drunken maniacs that didnt know how to play. these guys knew how to play and i suspect that they are pretty damn good players when they are sober. they were just having some fun while drunk and caught some monster hands making them look like geniuses. but now their bluffs were getting obvious and they had stopped catching monster hands. in they end, they pissed away all the money they stole from the table and one of them rebought in 6 times for a total of about $1200.
finally, they announced that this would be their last hand of the nite at 4 am. i look down to find two lovely red aces. maniac raises to $30, two others call, and i reraise to $100. maniac calls and other two fold. the maniac is down to only $500 in chips by this time but i can just feel the 7-2 bad beat coming. the dealer is opening the flop and i see an A rite of the bat and whistles are goin off in my head. but when she opens the whole flop, there is not just one ace, but two black aces!!! i hit quad fuckin aces. now i wish i didnt reraise preflop and let everyone in. but you hardly get any action when you flop quads, especially aces. i mean who the hell is going to bet. obviously no one else has an ace. so i do my best acting job like goddamn it, how could 2 aces flop when im holdin KK. i check. much to my delight the maniac bets $200 i guess trying to represent the A. im like fuck, of course an A flops, and im pretty sure hes convinced i have KK. i grudgingly call. turn is a blank. i check again and he pushes all in and i instantly call. everyone else of course expected me to have an ace but not two aces... not that i needed both of them. i have never hit quad aces before but to get paid off on them is just amazing.
anyways, that was an amazing last hand to an amazingly crazy nite. i dont know if i have effectively communicated just how crazy the action was as i obviously cant write about all the hands. i guess you just had to be there. but in the end, one of the maniacs walked off with $2500 and the other two left broke. so if they were indeed a team working out of one bankroll, they only broke even, maybe even down a little. as for the other original players at the tables, some of them got raped for thousands but had their chips redistributed to other fortunate ones at the table that profited several thousands. but guess what i ended up at the end of this session. exactly $1400 for a profit once again of $1000. no joke. well actaully like $1420 but i tipped the dealer $20 for the quad aces. i went up and down $1000 three times today. it really should have been a $4000 nite for me but what are you gonna do. in the end, the last three times i decided to stay were all a waste of time as i ended the nite at 4am up only the $1000 i was already up by 9pm. i guess im lucky to leave there up after that crazy action.
damn i need to sleep. tomorrow is another $200+20 no limit event in heavenly holdem. im surely not gonna miss this one. peace.
+ $1000 by 9pm- $1000 by 12am+ $1000 by 1am- $1000 by 2am
+ $1000 by 4am
+ $1000 profit for the day
running total for the vacation: $2000 profit