Decompression

My sudden reversal of fortune in the $2500 6-handed was another visceral reminder of how much needs to go right even to make a run at a tournament. I mean by all accounts I ran extremely well in several important ways for the first hours of the tournament and two run-of-the-mill spots that barely even count as unlucky were enough to send me to the rail. I needed some time off from tournaments.

The good news was that, no longer constrained by a 90-minute window for dinner, I was able to get a proper dinner with my friend Shorty (that’s his 2p2 handle – a few of you old-school MTT forum folks may remember him).

Like many people nicknamed Shorty, he is in fact quite tall, which had a lot to do with us becoming friendly. If I recall correctly, we first met at at Foxwoods when he staked me in a tournament there to entice me to come play it and meet him in person. He’s a working stiff and only gets out to Vegas for a few days each summer, so ordinarily my odds of running into him again wouldn’t have been great. However, because he’s so tall, if he’s anywhere in the WSOP area, there’s a good chance I’m going to spot him.

I felt bad asking him to cram into the passenger seat of the Nitmobile, the Mazda 2 I ended up with when I reserved the cheapest class of car available from Enterprise. Thankfully he was good-natured about it, and perhaps taking the tiny vehicle to be indicative of my pecuniary status, insisted on picking up the tab, which is no mean feat when you’re dining at NOBU.

I really do feel fortunate to know so many people who are in or passing through Vegas this summer. For me there’s no better relief from the frustration and stress of tournament poker than spending time with a new or old friend. A cold IPA and Game of Thrones is a close second, but I just watched the season finale last night so I’m going to need more friends!

The next day I didn’t play any tournaments, but I did follow Ed Miller’s advice that I really ought to be playing the cash games while I was in town. I spent the afternoon in a boring and not very good 5/10 game at Aria, where I got off to a good start but finished the session very slightly down after running into unlikely monsters and possibly getting bluffed off of TPTK. My net loss for the session was less than $200, which is literally nothing at 5/10, but psychologically it would have been nice to book a win after whiffing all the tournaments I’d played so far.

Once again relief came in the form of dinner with a friend. This time it was a new one, a student of mine whom I’d never met in person. He was an interesting guy and took me to a very interesting place, an Italian-Japanese fusion trattoria in Chinatown.

As much as I joke about nitting it up and free meal equity, I usually insist on paying when I meet up with my students. This guy got the jump on me, though – I had some trouble finding the place, so he had a few minutes before I arrived to pay the waitress in advance, which fact I didn’t realize until she suddenly showed up at our table bearing change. I guess I got outplayed. The student becomes the master.

Thursday I took as a true day off, no poker at all. Well, I still wrote about poker, but I didn’t play. I did wake up early enough to stroll through a nearby park before the oppressive heat of the day set in. I also went swimming and got a surprisingly good $20 massage. It wasn’t the best massage of my life, but it was damn good for about half of what I’m used to paying even after I left a 100% tip (which is not beyond the pale – though it’s advertised as a $20 massage, a 50 – 100% tip is expected, and it’s still a great value at that price). And yes, you are reading too much into “surprisingly good” – pretty sure those massages cost more than $40.