Saturday Night Poker

I got a call from Mark on Friday night asking if he and the other big game players were ever going to see me again and that there were TWENTY SIX (26) people playing the $1000 min no max game and approximately 20 of them were absolutely horrible. Unfortunately I had to be somewhere at 9 am Saturday morning and I (barely) resisted the siren call.

So, Saturday after attending my morning commitments, I ran home and debated between grocery shopping and going to the boats to play some poker. Guess what won?

The must move table was, as usual, a nice soft table, and I didn't want to leave. I'd doubled up plus some there with some pretty weak calls on my opponent's part, and then managed to give that profit back when they moved me to a main game. I took one look at the table with too many regulars for my liking, looked at the other five games going and saw one that was pleasantly filled with two women with lots of chips^[1], and one of the guys from my original must-move table who was awful and also had a bunch of chips. Hello, table change!

Nick the poker manager comes up to me at one point and informs me that the big game is probably going to go tonight and do I want a seat on that list? No thanks, but I do check out the list and see that Mark, Stan and Jimmy are on it - not the lineup I'm looking for.

I sit down at this table and watch one of the women call off $200 on a gutshot straight draw that hits, and observe the guy from the must-move call off $230 preflop with AKo, and I fell in love with the table. I end up felted when I cannot get one of the ladies to lay down her JJ on a flop of 544 when it's obvious that she no longer likes my hand. The turn comes down another 5 and I bet pot into her; she thinks for a long while and then raises another $150 all in. I truly think that I have the best hand - that she has AK and thinks her A is good because she is so obvious that she doesn't like her hand. Oh well, I did play the hand well - the only thing I could have done better was raise her $25 (into a $40 pot) flop bet to $125 instead of $75.

I get up and take the open 10 seat, which is to the left of the ladies with the chips, as one truism in poker play is that the money always moves to the left - I want to be able to act after these women rather than before them. About 20 min after taking the seat, I feel someone tickling the back of my neck, I turn around and who is it but Lawyer Mark? He tells me he's gotten all the big game players to rearrange their schedules to play on Saturdays because I said I was going to be here on Saturday and not Fridays. I tell him I don't believe him for a minute, but it is a very sweet thing to say^[1]. He sure does know the way to warm this girl's heart though! :)

Eventually I run my second $200 up to about $775, when the women rack their (way too many) chips up and leave, and the pickings at the table get much more slim, so I take a look around and there's a MUCH fishier table behind me. I move to that table, and proceed to go the worse kind of card dead I've ever seen for 45 minutes - to the point where everyone at the table is asking me if I've played a hand yet? I get AQ, raise for the first time in 45 min and still get callers, and the very next hand I get TT on the button, raise again to $30 and STILL get two callers, plus one person staying in for $60 on a Jd jh 5d flop for his diamond draw. YEEESH. Luckily the turn isn't a diamond, and my next bet takes the pot down. I proceed to go back to being card dead, and when I rack up at about 12:30 am (as again I have to be up and somewhere at merely 9:30 am this time), I've made a whole $75 profit at the table.

But more importantly, I was aggressive and played well.
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^[1] Not that women with chips is a bad thing, but stereotypes and generalities are in place because they ARE generally true - women are either rocks who play only top ten hands, or they're maniacs who play a lot of hands and play them poorly post-flop. There are exceptions, but not enough to change the generality in my mind (yet).

^[2] As of this writing, I think it's about 60% true, though, and 40% for a chance at more money from the big boys.