On January 29, the City of Commerce won’t know what hit them. A team of elite bloggers will take on the live poker world for every last chip, and there will be much rejoicing in the blogosphere.

Five of us went on a preliminary mission tonight to locate key access points, the cashiers, and most importantly, the men’s room. It also happened to be the Film Geek’s birthday (Happy 24th!), which was the perfect excuse for some live casino no limit action.

Who was present? The usual suspects: The Film Geek, HDouble, Bill Rini, FHWRDH, and moi.

Check with the others for reports on the no limit home game tourney that started off the night; I decided to get in some nap time before heading out. But I did manage to sit in on a no limit cash game with some of the busted tourney players, beat flopped trips with trips on the turn, and walked out of there with an extra 20BB (it was dime no limit).

At 12:30 in the morning, we figured we’d catch the tail end of the profitable drunken fish phenomenon, but it turned out that we just missed it. I knew that getting a no limit table with five open seats was just too good to be true, and it was. The fish had been gutted, scaled, and deep fried by the time we sat down. Film Geek remarked at one point that it was a bad sign when the players at the table all had been doubled up by the suckers whose seats we inherited. In our short discussion afterwards, we agreed that these guys weren’t necessarily good, but they were fairly good at punishing draws and weren’t willing to pay off your monster hands. And that’s really a recipe for losing your blinds and minimum calls without getting the requisite payoff to get you back in the black. Which isn’t to say that it wasn’t possible. It’s just more work.

I’ll let the others report on the hands they played, won, and lost. For the record, Bill Rini dropped the first hammer, and HDouble dropped the second. Success both times!

Very briefly, here were my significant wins: tens full (on the turn) to double-up, pocket tens with a Q9XJX board, flopped set of nines for 15BB with two scary draws on the board. My best hands were KK (won the blinds), TT, 99, AQ (folded to 3x overbet by smug guy on AT9 flop), AJ (folded to HDouble on QTX flop–he showed AQ). Most of my suited and offsuit connectors flopped gutshots or crap, or were folded to pot-sized bets (maybe I had implied odds, but then again…). My small pockets were outflopped by bigger cards. My non-Ace Broadways flopped an ace and/or a board pair. Blah. Still, I ended up in the positive (half a buy-in), so my bankroll and I are grateful.

By 4AM, we realized it wasn’t going to get any better. It’s like those NL blogger tables: -EV unless you can delta yourself into some unexpected profits. But for the most part, without any contributors willing to go broke with TPTK or second pair, it’s the house that wins. So we cashed in our chips and headed out.

It’s better to hang with the bloggers than play against ’em, but either way, getting together on the 29th should be a lot of fun.