I had some Mandalay Bay chips that I forgot to cash in on Saturday, and since I needed to go there anyway, I decided to check out their game. The guy keeping the wait list when I first got there didn’t seem to speak English very well, and I couldn’t figure out whether there were actually NL games going or if I was just on an interest list.
I took a seat at a 4/8 limit game while I waited and was pleasantly surprised by the dealer, who took the time to explain to me a few things that, though I knew them, would have been useful had this been my first time playing poker at a casino. I guess a lot of inexperienced players start off in this game or something, but I definitely had some hiccups getting accustomed to things like moving chips over the betting line and would have appreciated more welcoming dealers when I was starting out.
Anyway, the game was predictably ridiculous, which meant I had to play super tight. The only decent hand I got, I raised a limper with TT, got 3-bet, the SB cold called, and I check-folded to a bet and a call on a QJx flop. The 3-bettor had 33 and the cold caller had QJ. Oh, and for some reason the blinds were $1 and $2 even though the bets were $4 and $8. I got bored and annoyed very quickly and kept darting up to check where my name was on the NL lists. The same guy, Josh W., was ahead of me for both 1/2 and 2/4 NL. Bastard.
The blind was about to hit me again when a woman starts calling for Josh W. I was praying that he won’t respond and that she’ll realize he’s not responding before I have to post. The dealer was scrambling the cards from the previous hand when the floor woman tapped me on the shoulder. “Are you still interested in a seat at 2/4 NL?”
Guess it wasn’t too hard to figure out that the guy who kept running over to check the list was the next guy on the list. “Most certainly.”
She led me to my seat (another thing I liked about Mandalay Bay, the floor was much more hands on and helpful than what you get at, say, Foxwoods) and brought me my chips.
I could tell immediately that the game was good, very good. There was some big convention at Mandalay Bay, and several of the guys in the game were wearing business dress and badges, which was a good sign. In one of the first hands that I saw, a scuzzy looking dude in a dirty, faded sports cap raised a couple of limpers to $35 and got called in like six spots. Wow. Then he shoved roughly $300 on an AcQc3s flop. A guy two seats to my right calls, and the rest of the board falls Jd 6h. The pusher shows 9c7c for a busted flush draw, and the caller shows 8c6c for a worse flush draw that rivered a pair. Wowowow this was going to be a good game. And since this wasn’t internet poker, the guy who just pulled off the ridiculous catch didn’t get up and leave with his ill-gotten gains, but instead stayed at the table to my right with a giant stack. I set my sights on him immediately.
The first pot I played, there two limpers on my BB, I raised to $24 with KK and got one called. The flop was like 966, I bet $35 and got called. Ooooh, a K on the turn, I bet $75 and take it down.
I built myself all the way up about $1100, honestly without playing any pots worth mentioning here. The game was just that soft, and I suppose I was getting the right cards in the right situations. I did see two players give off blatant tells. The first one, I had TT on a JJ94 board after the flop had checked through. I bet and a huge calling station called me. I bet $75 on the river, and he moved all in for $74 more. While I was thinking, he looked over at the guy next to him and said, “It’s time for me to leave anyway.” I mucked and he showed me QJ.
The other pot didn’t involve me, but the guy to my right was in the BB in a limped pot when the flop came out with three T’s. The SB checked, and the BB exclaims really loudly, “What is that? I check,” and rapped the table violently. I immediately figured him for quads. The flop checked through, and on the turn the SB bet. “You don’t have anything, I call,” the BB announced, quickly tossing his chips into the pot. Everyone else folded, the SB checked the river, and the BB slammed a stack of reds into the middle of the table, grossly overbetting the pot. The SB folded, and the BB proudly showed his quads.
This also reminds of a story I forgot to include yesterday involving Captain Calling Station. This old guy on my right was playing a pot out of position against CCS, and on the river the board was like AKQTx. The important part is that the river put the four straight on the board. Before the old guy had even acted, CCS eagerly bet like $90. The old man teased him about it. “You’re that eager, huh? Can’t even wait for me to act? Really excited about your straight, hmm?” It was very obvious to me, and, I thought, to everyone, that that was exactly what was going on. But the old man checked and called the bet anyway, and sure enough CCS showed him the straight.
After hours of trying to get into a big pot with the guy who couldn’t fold a flush draw for any price, I finally got my chance. He raised to $15 after two limpers, which was kind of a small raise relative to what most people were doing. I didn’t really know what to think of that, but it looked like it would certainly be a multi-way pot, so I called with Ks6s on the CO. Sure enough, seven of us saw a beautiful 8s 4s 2s flop.
The action checked to my mark, who bet $55. It was kind of a weak bet, but still a good sign that he had something, since no one continuation bets into five callers if he misses the flop completely. Then, the player immediately between the two of us moved all in for a little over $200. My read on him was that he was just in general way too eager to shove his stack into the middle, he had bought in kinda short and lost his chips twice already.
Although I was happy to see so much money going into the pot, this actually put me in kind of an awkward spot, because I was going to have to call this bet cold for almost 20% of my stack, which would make it very difficult to conceal the strength of my hand (raising was just too likely to kill my action, and I wanted to give someone behind me the chance to semi-bluff with the As or put me on a draw). So when I called, I tried make it sound as though the guy’s over-aggressive shoving tendencies had something to do with it. “Alright, I’m gonna call you,” I told him with sort of a chastising tone of voice, as though I were teaching him a lesson or giving him less credit than I otherwise would in this spot.
The action folded around to the fish, who also called. Between this action and the fact that he didn’t even seem to consider a raise, I figured him for the As. I wasn’t sure about what his other card was, and although it didn’t affect his equity in the pot, I thought it might affect his turn action.
I held my breath and prayed for not-a-spade on the turn. The dealer showed us a black 9, but it turned out to be a club. My fish checked. There was now about $650 in the pot, and I had around $850 left in my stack. The fish had me covered. Against a good player, it might have been tricky to determine a good bet size here, but based on how I had seen this guy play his flush draw hours ago, I had fairly easy decision. “I’m all in.”
The fish groaned and stood up. He looked down over the dealer’s had at me as I stared emotionlessly at the felt. “What do you have? Do you have an 8?” Right, I’m shoving 200 BB’s on the turn with middle pair. Good read. He went on like this for a minute and then turned over the As that I knew he had and stared at me for a while.
The all-in player called the floor and tried to get the fish’s hand killed for exposing his card. The floor ruled that since nobody was left to act, he was allowed to show his card. The whole time, I was thinking of ways to keep him in the sidepot even if they killed his hand for the main pot. Perhaps I could feign moral outrage and tell the floor I didn’t think that was fair and didn’t want to win on a technicality and offer to let him play his hand in the main pot anyway. Thankfully I didn’t need to resort to anything like this.
“You have nine outs,” someone at the table said, quite inapproriately, though there was nothing I could do about it, and I knew it didn’t really matter anyway.
“I think I’ve got more outs than that,” the fish responded, flipping over his other card, the Jd. Wow, is this guy really looking to call off 200BB, a larger than a pot-sized bet, with a bare flush draw on the turn? Even if his other outs were live it would be an awful call.
“I call!” he suddenly announced with great excitement.
It occurs to me in retrospect that this was probably the largest pot I have ever played, in terms of number of BB’s. There were well over 600 BB’s in the pot, and you just don’t get that deep at low- to mid-stakes online NL games, and certainly not in tournaments. The fact that I had gotten the money in as nearly a 6:1 favorite made it particularly exciting.
But I had didn’t have much time to enjoy the moment, as the dealer quickly burned the top card from the deck and revealed the river: the Qs, the black mariah. My King-high flush had been overtaken by my opponents Ace. “Fuck!” I exclaimed, banging my fist on the table as my triumphant opponent pumped his in the air. This is not an uncommon reaction for me when I’m playing online in the comfort of my own home, but at casinos, I’ve generally tried to comport myself with more tact. I’m still not proud of how quickly frustration overtook me, though I did calm down almost immediately.
“That’s one of the worst I’ve ever seen,” said a gentlemen from North Carolina with whom I’d been friendly. I lifted my head from where I had allowed it to droop sullenly over what had been a mountain of chips just a moment before.
“Good playing with you,” I told him. I was too frustrated to play my best any longer. In a live game, you spend hours building a stack, getting to know the players at your table, and trying to set up great situations like the one I’d just been in. It took about four hours between the time when I saw this guy make his first terrible call and when I finally got the opportunity to take advantage of that information to induce a much, much worse play on his part. And then he lucks out and wins anyway.
On my way out, I clapped him on the back and said, “Enjoy it,” as genuinely as he could, and I hope he does enjoy it. I’m not spiteful, and it helps that I don’t think he thinks he outplayed me or anything like that. He was there to gamble, like so many others in Vegas, and he was one of the lucky few who came out on top. Poker is the only game in the casino where the house lets the gamblers spew money to you rather than to them, and guys like this one have made me a boatload of money.
When some old lady drops a quarter into a slot machine and wins a six-figure jackpot, the casino doesn’t cuss her out and tell her how lucky she was and what a terrible decision it was to play the slots. Instead, they celebrate, cheer for her, hang a picture of her smiling face on the wall. The occasional longshot win is what keeps them gambling, so I hope that he does enjoy his winnings, because in the long run, he’ll probably donate them and much more back into the great poker economy. And in the end, I’m the lucky one, because I’m one of the very few who is able to take money out of this economy, enough money that I don’t have to have a 9-5 job or a boss or a morning commute. I am the lucky one.