Le Retour de Clio

With a roof over my head and a bed under my bod, I turned to the reason why I came out here: poker. Maslow's needs were met, it was time to get back into the game.

I forgot how in Vegas, you get dry almost instantly stepping out of the shower. It makes hair care much simpler, and now that I could take showers, that meant I could get away with funkier styles that in Indiana would have left me detangling for hours over a warm pan of microwaved water. It felt good to get back into work clothes again, I'd been casual for far too long.

In preparation, I took a little disco nap in the afternoon and arrived fresh at 11pm. The Mandalay Bay poker room was packed, but I got a seat quickly at the front. It didn't take me long to figure out that there were seven (7!) local semi-pros playing, two tourists, and me. "What the heck," I thought, "this is an AWFUL game to be in, but let us see how it goes." I wanted to see how I stacked up against the local pros.

As I said, it was an awful game. Right off the bat, my second hand, I get pocket aces. Cool! I'm next to last to act, and there is a lot of action in front of me: one player called the $2 minimum bet, then another raised it to $7. There were 4 other callers, making there about $30 in the pot when it was my turn to act. Now aces is a horrible hand against a lot of people at once, so of course I raise to thin out the field - hopefully going heads up with another player.

I raise: $50. They'd have to be crazy to call. Four other people were crazy! With nearly $250 in the pot, the flop comes 789. I know I'm folding as soon as I see the flop, but the betting in front of me confirms it: someone flopped a straight and my hand is a loser. So right off the bat, I'm down $50. Not a great start. Turned out, three (3!) people flopped a straight! One had 56, one had 6T, and one had TJ. Calling $50 preflop with those hands? Money didn't mean much at this table.

A new tourist sits down wearing a red shirt with the letters, G E O R G I A on them. He instantly becomes known as Georgia. He's drunk and playing very aggressive. I've seen this behavior time and time and time again, and it works well. Just bet a lot of money every chance you get and people will fold to your aggression every time (in these kind of weak games, anyway). He built up quite a stack doing that, betting with absolutely nothing. The man understand aggression and played it well. Unfortunately, he didn't understand much else about poker and soon was sporting a bulls-eye right on his forehead. Everyone was playing snake in the grass... waiting for a good hand, then striking to take all his money.

But that didn't happen. I played a few more pots, folded on the flop, then made a score against Georgia for $100 putting me back to even. Shortly thereafter, the game broke up because it was just me and the locals. They all left in disgust that the game was so bad (LOL) and the four of us left were moved to different tables.

The second table was awesome. A GREAT game, both in terms of entertainment and potential winnings. I ended up staying at that table for thirteen (13!) straight hours. Since this was my first time back, I was pushing limits, seeing how the marathon session would affect my play. Answer? Not much. Once I got into a zone, I was fine. It wasn't until my vision started getting blurry that my concentration started wavering, but that wasn't until 2pm the next afternoon.

In the end, for that marathon session, I was down exactly $100. That's like, -$7.60 an hour, not a very good wage, but hey, it was the first time back in over a year, and I learned a lot, not just about me, but how the game has changed since then. Over the course of 16 hours, I played about 20 hands, folded most of them on the flop and won all the ones I showed down, so I felt really good about those stats. I should have played more hands, but it was my first time back, and I didn't have any bluffing money. I was down most of the night and never got more than $10 up or $200 down. I wanted to keep playing, but it was getting hard to focus my eyes on the cards, so I figured it was time to go home. I barely made it before crashing hard. All in all, a good night.

It's great to be back!