The Call

If one were to engage in strictly results-oriented thinking, this would be a post about a brilliant call I made at the Bike this past weekend. But if we think about making the “right” call—regardless of the actual outcome—it might just be a post about a really bad play that I was a fool for making.  I’ll let the reader decide.

Yes, I was at the Bike, in elegant Bell Gardens, CA, playing my usual $2/$3 game with my usual $300 buy-in. For the first hour or so, I was ridiculously card dead.  My first hand, in the big blind, I had pocket 3’s.  I called a raised, saw a flop with all paint cards and folded to a bet.  That was my last pocket pair for that hour.

I got a few hands to call raises with, but never was first in to raise first myself and certainly didn’t have a hand to three-bet with during this time. Never connected with a flop.  I was down about $40-$50 when I finally had a chance to raise.

The hand was King-Queen of spades in the small blind.  After a few limpers, I raised to $17.  Only one player called.  This guy had aggressively played a pair of pocket 5’s when I had first sat down.  He called a raised, then led out in front of the raiser on a 7-8-8 board.  He bet again on a 6 turn and shoved on a 9 river.  He caught the bottom end of the straight on the river but bet the whole way like he had a big hand.  He cracked the preflop raiser’s Aces.  I’m thinking the guy with Aces should have raised the other guy’s flop bet.

The flop was King-Queen-10, rainbow.  I suppose I should have slow played it, but I thought the guy would call a smallish bet, so I bet $20.  He tanked and folded. 

The very next hand, on the button, I got my second pocket pair of the day, Queens.  Again, a few people limped, I made it $17 and no one called.  And so ended my rush for awhile.

I raised with Ace-4 suited (as per Ed Miller’s starting hands) and didn’t get a call.  Then I had suited King-Queen again, this time clubs.  I was under-the-gun and made it $10.  It folded to the guy in seat 5 who made it $30.  This guy was fairly aggro.  He often (but not always) straddled (only UTG is allowed here at the Bike). He had a shaved head, so let’s call him Shaved Head.

It folded back to me and I called.  This is in keeping with the Ed Miller strategy (see here).  If I was on my own, I likely would have folded.  Come to think of it, if I was on my own, I would probably not have raised under-the-gun with that hand.

Heads up, the flop was all red, two 9’s and a 7.  Shaved Head bet $60.  Ed would have me call there, but I folded.  With just overcards, nothing else, and knowing that I could hit one of my cards and still be behind, I couldn’t do it.  Of course, the real reason to call is to try to steal the pot on the turn, but being out of position, I gave up.  But I didn’t forget about the hand.

Then I got my third pocket pair of the session: my old friends, the dreaded pocket Kings.  First in, I raised to $13.  The guy who cracked the Aces with his pocket 5’s shoved for a total of $25 (his luck hadn’t lasted, obviously).  It folded to Shaved Head, who asked the dealer if I could raise if he called.  The answer was of course yes.  I had raised the blind $10, and the guy who went all-in had raised another $12, so yes, I could reraise.  Shaved Head thought about it and folded.  Note: this would have been a pretty good angle to have played if he had Aces, right?  Look afraid of a reraise by asking that question.  I go ahead and reraise and then he comes back over the top.  I’ll have to try to remember that.

But he was out of the pot and I put in $12 to see the flop.  The guy said he needed some luck and showed one card only…a King.  He didn’t show the other card.  The flop had two hearts and was Jack high.  But the King he had shown was black.  Another Jack hit the turn.  A blank hit the river.  He showed his other card.  Of course, it was a Jack.  I had had my Kings cracked by King-Jack.  Again.  However, I haven’t yet blogged about a similar hand I had in Vegas last month, so consider this foreshadowing.  At least this time it only cost me $25.

I raised to $11 with King-Queen of clubs (King-Queen being my favorite hand of the day) and had three callers.  The flop was Queen-high, rainbow.  I bet $30 and had one caller.  It looked like he was thinking of raising, but he just called. The turn was a blank and I bet $75.  He called again. The $75 was more than half his stack.  I put him all in on a blank river.  He called and showed King-Queen for a chopped pot.

I had pocket 10’s and the guy to my right bet $23.  Now there was a straddle which might have explained the big bet.  I called, as did two others (hey, this is the Bike). The flop was Ace-high and no one bet it.  When the preflop raiser checked again on the turn, I knew I should bet.  But I didn’t.  I choked.  Everyone else checked.  How about betting the river when the preflop raiser checked again?  I should have done that and gagged again.  I guess I was thinking my 10’s might be good.  No one bet and the preflop raiser showed pocket Kings!  Really?  He didn’t bet?  Did I mention this fellow was Asian?  Never bet after the flop.  I said to him, “I guess you were scared of that Ace, huh?”  He said that with three callers he assumed one of us had an Ace.  Hmm….I wonder if he would have called a bet if I had put out some chips?  I think he probably would have made the crying call, but it definitely would have been the right move for me to bet.

Very next hand, with Ace-7 of diamonds, I raised to $12.  There were four callers.  The flop was Queen-Queen-x, two diamonds.  It checked to me and I bet $35.  No one called.

Now, there were a lot of hands that cost me some chips, never a lot of chips on any one hand, but enough small loses to offset all the wins I’ve mentioned so far and then some.  It was getting to be near the end of my session, near time to wrap it.  I was down to about $210-$220.

Under-the-gun, I got pocket 10’s again.  I raised to $10.  Although I don’t usually do this, I actually said, “Raise” as I put out my two yellow chips (the $5 chips at the Bike are yellow, not red).  Not sure why I did this, if I put out two chips totalling $10 and don’t say anything, it’s obviously a raise.  Anyway, I was sitting right next to the dealer and I thought I heard him say “Eighty!”  I was confused….was someone wanting to buy $80 worth of chips?  Then I saw a guy calling me by putting out one $5 chip and three $1 chips.  Apparently the dealer thought I had said “Eight” instead of “Raise.”  So he had said “Eight” indicating my raise was to 8, not 10, which of course was incorrect.  I corrected him and told him I said “Raise” and he corrected himself.  The caller put out two more bucks.  I commented that I thought I heard him say “Eighty” and assumed it was someone buying chips.  A lady at the table said she thought she heard him say “Eighty” as well.

Well, that was all corrected and it folded to Shaved Head—remember him?  Once again, he three-bet me.  This time he put out two stacks of 4 yellow chips each.  The dealer said, “That’s half of eighty.” It folded to me. 

While I was thinking, I joked, “Half of eighty, huh?  I can do that in my head…..that’s forty, right?  That’s pretty good, huh?”

He chuckled as I considered my action.  Pretty standard Ed Miller strategy to call the three-bet there.  Then I looked at his stack.  After he put out the $40, he had around $80 left, give-or-take.  Shaved Head had three-bet before and I didn’t see what he had.  I considered just shoving to see how much he liked his hand.  He hadn’t three-bet a lot, but enough to make me feel like his range was a lot wider than AA, KK & AK.  And as I said, it was the second time he had three-bet me.

Now the thing with the Ed Miller strategy that I’m kind of ignoring is that he is assuming deep stacks.  And that wasn’t the case here.  The other guy in the hand had at least as much as me but I didn’t assume he would call the $40.  So it was probably a really bad call there, but I made it anyway.  The other guy folded.

The flop was King-8-4, rainbow.  I checked, and Shaved Head instantly put out all his chips.  Now, at the Bike, unlike a lot of places in Vegas, they let you keep racks on the table and even let you bet out of the racks, you don’t have to have a stack out to bet with.  He had all his chips in the rack, so he just put the entire rack out in front of him.  I asked for a count.  It was $77.  “So, $77 to call?  Plus the rack?.  But I don’t have a rack.”  The guy next to me grabbed a rack off a drink tray between us and said, “Here, you can use this.” 

I tanked for a good while.  There was something about the way the guy bet instantly, as if he was going to do that no matter what, that made me quite suspicions. I just picked up a vibe that he was c-betting with nothing.  Yes, I thought, a very likely hand for him there was Ace-King.  I knew that.  But I wondered if he would shove with Aces, and I certainly didn’t think he’d shove with a set of Kings; he’d play that slower.  Would he have shoved with Queens or Jacks?  Yeah, maybe.  But the King might have slowed him up in that case. 

I thought some more.  And I did some math.  The pot, with his bet in it, was about $160 (there’s a big rake).  I was getting 2-to-1 for my call.  Which wasn’t very good if he already had me beat.  But…..I had put about 1/3 of my effective stack (against him) in there, making it very tempting to call. It seemed like maybe I should call.  And I figured his range included AQ, AJ, maybe even AT and hands like QJ, J10.

And then I thought, well, if I call and lose, I will call it a day, and I’ll have lost about $200 for the day.  If I fold, and keep my current stack, I’ll be out $120.  In the greater scheme of things, does that $80 make that big a difference?  Plus, I couldn’t shake the feeling that my 10’s were good.

So I did it.  I made the call (which is the call I’m referring to in the title of this post).  I called the $77.  We didn’t show as two blanks hit the board.  He flipped over Ace-Jack.  He had missed, as I suspected.  I flipped over my 10’s, heard a bunch of players say, “Good call” and started stacking my chips. In fact, the dealer gave me Shaved Head's chips still in the rack, so I got the rack too.

I was ahead for the first time all day.  I played one or two more orbits, didn’t get anything playable, and left up around $85.

Because, rightly or wrongly, I had made “the call.”

"I Just Wanna Know Where Her Nipples Were"

Last year at this time I did my Halloween Slut Parade post (see here).  The post opened with this paragraph: “If you ever hear that I’m not in Vegas on Halloween, you’ll know I’m dead.”

Since all evidence seems to indicate that I am still breathing, that must mean I was in Vegas for Halloween this year.

“Every day is Halloween in Vegas.” You hear that a lot, especially from the locals.  But actually, Halloween in Vegas is Halloween squared.  Or cubed.

Once again Hakkasan (the club at MGM responsible for The Slut Parade), was having a “Sexiest Costume” contest.  Incentivizing the young ladies who go to the club to show some skin is a bit superfluous.  It would be like paying me to watch the aforementioned slut parade.

So of course my plan was to play some poker at the MGM.  Now, I had been in town for awhile and I knew that the group Phish was performing at MGM the entire Halloween weekend.  What I didn’t know was that Phish was such a big deal.

Halloween was on a Friday and I arrived at MGM at a little after 7PM—long before the club opens.  As soon as I exited my car, which I had parked in the massive MGM parking structure, I noticed a certain aroma.  It was extremely strong.  I believe the technical name for what I was sniffing is “cannabis.”  It was so overwhelming, I expected to have a bad case of the munchies by the time I got to the lobby.  You mean to say that folks are still smoking weed at rock concerts?  Can’t they come up with anything new?  They were doing that when I was a kid.

When I got to the lobby, I was in shock.  I had never seen the place so crowded.  Never.  Not on New Year’s Eve.  Not on a Saturday night when they had a big boxing match there. Never.  And to my amazement, most of the people in the casino were in costume.  Huh?  It was way too early for the Hakkasan costume contest.  It was later explained to me what I was witnessing was all the Phish concert attendees, who had decided to show up in costume since it was indeed Halloween night.

This made it very tricky to make the long walk from the lobby to the poker room.  It wasn’t just the sheer quantity of people—it was the fact that most of them were wearing costumes.  And the costumes were taking up a lot of space themselves.  Let me explain.  The people attending the concert in costume were, by and large, not wearing the skimpy costumes that would later show up for Hakkasan.  There were very few sexy costumes at this hour.  But they were elaborate.  And they took up a lot of space. I wasn’t sure what most of them were—I don’t get a lot of pop culture references these days—but there were a lot of costumes. And it was a real challenge negotiating through that mass of costumed humanity to get to the poker room.

But I made it and was told that there was exactly one seat open at four different tables, and I could have my choice of any one of them.  Ordinarily I might size up the stack sizes or look to see familiar faces—the fewer faces I recognize, the better.  But this time, I had different priorities. I noticed that not only was one of the open seats at one of the tables right up against the rail—ie, closest to the walkway headed to the club—but that the open seat there was seat 1, right next to the dealer, facing said walkway.  In other words, it was the best seat in the house to watch the costume parade.  Of course I picked that seat.

During the first hour, there was a ton of traffic walking by the poker room; apparently it was mostly the folks there for the Phish concert.  Most were in costumes, and most costumes were not particularly titillating.  A few were.  One thing that was interesting though was that this particular crowd was really into interacting with the poker players.  Almost every group that walked by had one person in it who would shout poker-related terms and phrases to us.  “He’s got Aces.”  “Fold.”  “Go all-in.”  “There’s a flush out there.”  “He has the Ace.”  It was rather odd.

It was rather distracting though.  Even though there weren’t many half-naked girls, it was hard to pay attention to the poker.  The crowd eventually thinned out and quieted down, and for about an hour things were calm.  Then the Hakkasan crowd showed up.  And so did the half-naked ladies.  I must say, I was rather enjoying the “show” at the time.  However, I did hear some complaints from some of the veterans of Vegas Halloweens past that it was disappointing.  And you know what?  In preparing to write this post, I reread my post from last year and realized that this year really does have to be considered a bit disappointing.

I mean, there just weren’t very many costumes (or, ahem, bodies) that I remember from it, just a couple of weeks later.  And hardly any really unique (or ultra-sexy) costumes like I described last year.  But that said, I was thoroughly enjoying it at the time.

There were of course your sexy nurses, your girls with cat ears and whiskers, your slutty accident victims.  And Waldos.  There were lots and lots of Waldos.  Really, there was a shitload of Waldos.  I think there was one group of about 15 guys and every damn one of them was a Waldo.  If you couldn’t find Waldo there, you were really hopeless.  A lot of Egyptian and Pharaoh costumes.  A Cleopatra or two.  There was the Pope. There was a guy who was Jack (from the Jack-in-the-Box burger joint) next to a guy who was Colonel Sanders.  I pity the guy playing Jack, having to wear that thing on his head the whole night. 

And there were tons of super-heroes and super-heroines.  Tons.  That was the most dominant theme, I think.  And of all the super-heroines, the most prevalent, by far, was Wonder Woman.  I swear, not five minutes would go by without another Wonder Woman walking past me. I don’t remember anywhere near this many Wonder Women last year.  I dunno why there were so many this year, but there were.

OK, so I have to whisper this next part, so get in close.  But folks, we all know what Wonder Woman is supposed to look like.  They drew Wonder Woman a certain way in the comics, and they did that TV show in the 1970’s and they found Lynda Carter to play Wonder Woman because she was smoking hot and looked like Wonder Woman as drawn in the comics.

And folks….Wonder Woman has big boobs.  Don’t blame me.  I didn’t create her.  I didn’t hire Lynda Carter to play her on TV.  But let’s face it…..Wonder Woman has big boobs.

And almost every single Wonder Woman I saw on Halloween was sadly lacking in the boob department.  Seriously, I saw a whole bunch of….well….under-endowed Woman Women.  If you were looking for flat-chested Wonder Women, you were in the right place.

And honestly, I don’t get it.  I understand that very few women look anywhere close to the way Lynda Carter did when she was filming the show.  I get that.  And I’m not asking any woman to get surgery just to fill out a costume for one night of the year (or ever, for that matter).  But please, please, ladies, if you are going dress up as a character who is known to have big boobs, get yourself some big boobs.  I mean just for the night, just for the costume.  It is my understanding that there are all kinds of things a woman can put in her bra to make her bust look bigger. This is not rocket science.

There’s nothing wrong with small breasts.  But if you have them and want to play Wonder Woman, stuff something in your bra to sell it.  And if you have small breasts and don’t want to put anything else in your bra but what Mother Nature gave you, perhaps you should consider dressing up as Queen Amidala from Star Wars (see here). Just a thought.

Where was I?  Oh yeah, the costumes.  A lot of them were super-heroine type outfits.  That meant that the ladies were wearing essentially bathing suit-type bottoms.  Now, I guess the girls were going with sexy over accuracy because these bottoms were rather high on the butt.  Very high.  Very, very high.  The average costume of this theme showed at least 1/3 of the wearer’s buttocks. Plenty showed at least half, and some showed well over half.  So there was a lot of bare butt-cheek on display. Sure there was plenty of cleavage, sure there were lots of legs, but the night was best for guys who like to watch women walking away from them.

At our table, there was this Asian fellow—I’ll talk more about him when I get to the poker—who had his back to the parade.  He offered the guy in Seat 9 (the other best seat in the house) and/or me $5 to change seats with him.  I said I’d do it for $1,000.  He laughed and did not take me up on my offer.

Another player at the table was a woman I’ll call Sarah.  Sarah is a pal of mine; I’ve played poker with her in various rooms around town.  Recently she started coming into MGM a lot.  Sarah had her back to the walkway but she was constantly turning around to see the costumes.  And of course, whenever she would see us guys react to the sexier girls walking by, she would turn around to see what our jaws were dropping over.

There is no doubt that women are much harder on women than men are.  She obviously felt that some of the girls were not wearing outfits that flattered their figures, shall we say.  She didn’t object to the girls showing too much skin, but it would be fair to say that she had a problem with some of the girls showing too much, well, flesh.

In particular, Sarah seemed to have higher standards for female derrieres that the guys did.  A couple of times, as we were noticing the ladies walking away, she would comment, “Where are their friends?” Or, “Don’t these girls have friends who tell them not to wear that?”  One time the guy next to me said, “That’s a cute butt,” and Sarah disagreed.  “No….that’s not a cute butt.”  Apparently she felt it was a bit too, umm, plump.  But later, when she saw another woman walking away, in a very butt-revealing costume, she said to the guy next to me, “Now that’s a cute butt! That’s a nice butt.”  I was amused that a young guy and a (not quite as young) woman were debating the merits of the various tushes on display.  I do love Vegas.

Then all the guys gasped when this one girl—very tall, as I recall (might have been the costume)—walked by with breasts that make Kim Kardashian’s ass look tiny.  Seriously, the tits on this girl were enormous, and the top she was wearing was cut to expose a good ¾’s of them.  I have no idea what the costume was supposed to be, other than “Girl with humongous ta-tas.”  There was so much boobage exposed and yet so much still covered that it was pretty hard to figure out what they might actually look like. The girl noticed us all staring at her and she waved and shouted something to us, but I couldn’t hear what.

The boobs were obviously fake, but we weren’t sure exactly how they were fake.  Were they just implants—the extra super deluxe plus size model—or were they actually part of the costume?  Were they possibly prosthetic boobs that she was wearing just for Halloween, that would go back in the closet when she got home?  We all debated this important subject at the table. The consensus was that they were real, honest to goodness implants.  But I can’t say for sure.

But after we had all more-or-less agreed they were implants, Sarah chimed in with, “I just wanna know where her nipples were.” This amused all of us.  It was indeed a good question and one we’ll never know the answer to.

Between the costumes walking by and the debates about who had a cute ass and which girls needed their girlfriends to tell them they had fat asses (paraphrasing here), it was tough concentrating on the poker.  I more-or-less abandoned trying to use the Ed Miller strategy (see here) I’ve been trying to learn and just kind of went with my more normal, nitty play.  I considered just cashing out and walking around to get better looks at all the people, but honestly, I was having too much fun at the table with the group we had, reacting to the costumes.  So I just settled in, hoped for a hand here and there, and enjoyed the show and the commentary.

I already mentioned an Asian fellow, who definitely was on Crazian side of things, very aggressive.  There was an older gentleman who was very nice but a really poor player.  Early in the night I had pocket 5’s in the big blind.  The guy to my immediate left (who had a much broader definition of “cute butts” than Sarah) raised to $13, the older gentleman called, another player called, so I came in as well.

The flop was 7-6-2, rainbow.  I checked, the preflop raiser checked, and the older gentleman bet $15.  Into a $50 pot? Not nearly enough.  The next guy folded and I called.  I’m calling more flops these days than I used to, and the Ed Miller strategy is to call most flops, especially when you have any possible part of it.  In this case, in addition to the pocket pair, I had a back-door straight draw.  Not much, but with such a small bet to call, it made sense to me.  The original raiser folded.

The next card was a 3, giving me the gut-shot.  Ed Miller would probably say I should bet there, and bet big, trying to steal.  But I checked.  He bet $20.  Again, too little for me to fold.  I probably should have check-raised, but I just called.

The river was not a 4 but a 5, giving me the set on a board that screamed “Straight!”  I checked, the other guy bet $25.  Worried about the straight—and also distracted by the semi-naked girls that were walking by at the moment—I just called.

He flipped over the dreaded pocket Kings!  Wow. He played that hand horribly to say the least.  Didn’t three-bet preflop with them.  Bet too small to protect his hand on the flop and the turn.  During the evening, I was able to notice that he also stayed with hands that were obviously beat way too long, which would come into play later.

But between the distractions and the cards not cooperating, I had drifted down to about $90 from my $200 buy-in.  I didn’t add on chips. I wasn’t paying enough attention to be willing to risk more money.  I figured if I lost that money, I’d just give up the poker and concentrate on the checking out the costumes.  By this time of the night, the place was packed with club-goers, a huge percentage of them female, and most of those ostensibly trying to compete in the sexiest costume contest.

My pal Brent came to deal, and he dealt me a pair of 10’s in the small blind.  One player had limped. Ordinarily these days, I’m raising with that hand, but not this nite.  I just put in a buck.  The big blind checked and three of us saw the flop, which was K-10-2, rainbow.  I decided to slow play it because the Asian was one of the players and I was assuming he’d bet.  I was right, he bet $6.  I made it $18 and he called.  The turn was a blank and I bet half my stack, $35 or so.  He called.  The river was another brick and I put out the rest of my chips.  He tanked for a long time, but eventually called.  I showed my set, he mucked.  I assume he had a King.  I didn’t write down the hand too carefully (distracted) but there was no flush draw, just a straight draw I wasn’t really worried about.

The very next hand (I was still stacking my chips), Brent sent me pocket 8’s on the button.  There was a limp or two and I made it $10.  Four us saw the flop, including the older gentleman who had poorly played his pocket Kings against me much earlier in the evening.  The flop was King-8-6, two spades.  Neither of my 8’s were spades. Said older gentleman led out with a bet of $15 (I guess that’s his flop bet no matter what the size of the pot is).  It folded to me, I made it $40, and he called.  Everyone else folded.

He checked the turn, which was a blank, and I put out $75.  He snap-called.  The river was again a blank, and he shoved.  I didn’t ask for a count.  The board was pretty dry, and I wasn’t folding my set.  He showed a King and either a Queen or a Jack to go with it.  Just top pair, pretty much what I expected. After the count, he had $3 left.  Brent had quadrupled me up in two hands.  I said to him, “Where have you been all night?”  I thanked him for not only the two good hands back to back, but for the right opponents each time who would pay me off.

Suddenly ahead, I stayed through Brent’s down to see if he had any more magic for me.  No, as it turned out.  I decided to book a nice little win (after being down for most of the night) and explore the costume contestants more closely.

I spent quite awhile (but no more than five, six hours tops) roaming the casino looking at all the costumes.  Now I know my readers want me to try to get pics of the ladies in their sexy outfits.  It’s really awkward to even attempt it.  But I tried.  I would sit by a busy walkway and just kind of hold my cell phone and have it record video (so that no one could see what I was doing).  The hope was that when I’d play it back some interesting costumes would be captured and I could convert them to pictures for the blog.  But no such luck. 

I swear, before and after I would record, there were tons of interesting costumes and hot young ladies walking in front of me.  The moment I hit record, it seemed like nothing but middle aged fat guys walked in front of me.  Unbelievably bad timing.

So the pics I’m including were not pics I took, or costumes I personally saw this night.  I just found these on the web.  But it will give you some idea of what Halloween is Vegas is like.

It’s like every other night in Vegas, In spades.

Two Good Hands Were Enough

My first day back in Vegas last month.  It was a Thursday.  As I arrived in Vegas in the middle of the afternoon, I suddenly remembered that MGM had extended its football promo to include the Thursday night game.  Hmm….I was catching up on my Twitter feed over lunch and I saw that the game this night was Denver vs. San Diego.  Intuitively I felt that would be a high scoring game.  That mattered because of the way the promo works---they pick a random poker player every time there’s a score in the game, winner draws between $100 and $500.  The more scoring, the more money they give away and the more likely it is that a random person playing poker—me, for instance—gets selected to win some money.

I decided to make sure I was playing poker at the MGM by 5:30PM, the time the game started (here on the West Coast).  I had had a late enough lunch so that I could hold off on dinner until after the game.

I got into a game just a few minutes before the football game started.  Note: to save you some suspense, although there were 8 scores in the game—all TD’s—yours truly was never selected for a cash prize. 

For a good hour or so I was totally card dead.  I had two playable hands, Ace-Jack suited both times.  I raised preflop and didn’t get calls either time.

I managed to drip down to about $110 from my $200 buy-in.  One hand that hurt was when I turned a straight and lost to a rivered flush.

Then Max came to deal.  Max is my all time bad beat dealer.  When you’re a regular in a room, you start to notice that some things happen more regularly with certain dealers than others.  Some dealers seem to bring you good luck; others just the opposite.  As well documented here, the dealer I call Michelle is the dealer who rarely pushes me a pot.  But she doesn’t usually cost me a lot of money.  Most of the time, she just never gives me any cards to play, or gives me hands that I can get away from easily.

But Max is different.  I can win pots with him dealing.  Small pots.  Very small pots.  But as soon as the pot gets big, I’m in trouble.  If I’m all in on the turn with the stone-cold nuts and Max is dealing, you can be sure that the other player is going to hit his one-outer against me.

More often than not, when I’ve talked about big pots that I lost, if I didn’t mention the dealer’s name, it was Max.

So Max dealt me pocket 10’s and I raised to $8 in early position.  Two others called.  The flop was 10-8-5, rainbow.  Hmm……I decided to slow play it.  I checked.  The next player checked.  The last player to act was Asian.  Not really a “Crazian,” just borderline more aggressive than your average 1-2 player.  He started to grab some chips to bet……but after thinking about it some more, he checked too.

The turn was a 3, a second card of one of the suits already out there.  I had to try to get some value for my top set now, so I put out $15.  The next guy folded, but the Asian made it $30.  He had me covered. Hmm.

Did he really, really like his hand?  Or was he trying to get me to fold for cheap?  I thought about just calling, but decided against it.  I put out $40, a $25 raise.  Also about half my stack, give-or-take.   He called.

River was a deuce.  No flush was possible, but it was conceivable he had a small straight.  I didn’t think that was very likely.  And then I remembered it was Max dealing.  Suddenly I put the odds of my opponent playing Ace-4 at less than even money.  Sigh.  No matter, I knew I couldn’t really think that way, I had to bet, of course. I put out the rest of my chips and he snap called.   I showed my top set.  The Asian groaned and showed his set of 3’s.  Which he had turned, not flopped.  Slow playing may have paid off.

Before Max was finished with his down, he sent me a pair of Aces.  I was in the small blind, a number of folks limped.  I made it $14.  The player under-the-gun, who had limped in, called and then the aforementioned Asian, who had also limped in, shoved.  By this time his stack was down to less than $80.  It folded back to me. I didn’t bother asking for a count.  My only question was, should I just call and see if the UTG player wanted to come in, or shove and make it more unlikely he’d call?  I went with shoving, because I’d just assume play my Aces heads up if I can.  I know that some of you would be ok playing them three-handed.

The UTG player did indeed fold.  The Asian showed his hand, Ace-King off, which I was quite happy about.  I showed my pocket rockets.  The board was all low cards.  I remember two 4’s and a 5, not sure what else.  One of the original limpers said he had 5-4, but of course, he folded to my original raise.  A woman said she would have caught a straight, but she folded to the Asian’s shove.  The UTG player said he had Queen-10 suited and although he called my $14, he wouldn’t have called the Asian’s shove if I had just flatted. 

That was a decent pot.  The most amazing thing was not that my Aces held up, but that it was with Max dealing. This is just the type of hand he’s clobbered me with in the past, just like the previous hand.  Maybe Max will now become my lucky dealer?  I’m not counting on it.

I was now up around $160.  And the same player was responsible for most of my stack, thank you very much. I lost some chips calling a fairly big raise (maybe $15) with pocket 7’s.  The raiser was short stacked so I ordinarily wouldn’t have called, but a guy with a stack bigger than mine also called so I thought I might be able to get paid if I hit a set.  I missed and there were nothing but high cards on the flop.  Easy fold.

The football game was winding down, and players started to leave.  There weren’t enough players on the board to replace them all, and I felt confident that the game was going to break (very typical that a game or two breaks after the NFL game is over on football promo nights).  So it was easy to decide to cash out for dinner.  Once I was headed for food, I thought about it and decided it would be nice to book a nice little win to get my trip off to a good start.  I was tired from the long drive to town anyway, so why take a chance on losing my profit due to fatigue?  I called it an early night and booked a $130 win for my first night in Vegas.