To tell you the truth, I was dreading going to the Poker Classic meetup. Not because I was afraid of Felicia or Al, though maybe I should have been. No, this was my anal Type A control freak side coming out for some weekend planning:
Other Me: “Dude, you’re throwing a party Friday night and then meeting a bunch of bloggers Saturday morning?”
Me: “Dude, it’s cool.”
Other Me: “Dude, it’s not. You’re getting shitfaced Friday night, and you’ll be in no condition to deal with the AlCan’tHang Experience. What the fuck is SoCo anyway?! And why the hell did you agree to pick up Hank at noon?”
It was true. I had turned thirty and deserved a party. But I also had to prove that in my maturity I could handle three beers, a shot of bourbon, a bourbon and soda, a tequila shot, and three Cosmopolitans, and deal. Well, I could deal. I was this close to yakking that night, but I got in eight hours of sleep and merely woke up with a hangover threatening to knock me on my ass. I gulped down two pints of water and two cups of coffee and drove off to the mall where Hank made his home.
—
En Route
I guess I told Absinthe I was going to be there around noon, but I was still stuck in mall traffic.
Me: “So have you met anyone yet?”
Absinthe: “I think I saw Felicia and Al at the bar, but I’m not sure.”
Me: “Bar? That’s them. Go say ‘hi.'”
—
I Should Soco
We are young, we run green,
Keep our teeth, nice and clean,
See our friends, see the sights, feel alright,
We wake up, we go out, smoke a fag,
Put it out, see our friends,
See the sights, feel alright
It’s true what they say. AlCan’tHang is a party in a box. That is, if they made boxes with long hair wearing Eagles jerseys. Which gives me an idea that I think Eva would like: sell the party on eBay. Each lucky eBayer can pay CantHang Industries a few hundred dollars and they’ll send a genuine AlCan’tHang within 4-5 business days to make your life better. Shipping costs a few thousand frequent flyer miles, and sorry, but due to the costs involved, insurance is not available.
Having bought my stake in Al, and after bolstering my system with my third (of eight) cup of coffee of the day chased by the full house breakfast–eggs, bacon, and toast, I figured the least I could do was accept his offer of a single Southern. Good lord. I’ve gone through my entire drinking life thinking that Southern was some kind of whiskey. I can be so wrong sometimes. Whiskey would have been hair of the dog. SoCo would have upended my breakfast onto the poker table. But I could deal.
I wouldn’t be the only one to accept the Southern. FHWRDH, PokerProf, and Obituarium all partook (?) of the nectar, and apparently the Prof doesn’t even drink! Now I’m pretty sure there were two bottles at the Arena sports bar just before the tourney. By the end of the dinner break, there were none. But get this: Al was in the tourney. Wham!
I’ll leave the details of how Al took ownership of the Commerce Casino to him.
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The French Dip Report
The French Dip at the Arena Sports Grill and Bar consists of slices of slightly fatty prime rib in a nicely textured french roll. Unfortunately, the au jus is a super-condensed brine solution, which is too bad, since it was very easy to imagine how good the sandwich could be with the au jus juste. The Prime Directive at the Raffles Cafe and the Texas Beef Dip at Bunboy still take first and second for now.
The french fries were decent, but the real winner was the spicy mayonnaise sauce they served with potato chips as snacks. Unless, of course, you don’t like creamy stuff like mayonnaise, thousand island, or ranch dressing.
—
All kinds of gay
If blogs are gay, are bloggers gayer? I don’t know, but Felicia outed three of our company to their faces. I don’t remember about the other two, but I think she thought Absinthe’s glasses were just too styling to be worn by a straight man. Heh. The thing about direct people who also like to deadpan is that you don’t know whether to laugh or be offended or laugh and be offended. I lose more friends that way…
But gay or not, all the bloggers I met were good people. Some of them are nuts.
For instance, the LasVegasVegas crew made the four hour drive down, stayed for a few hours covering the NL tourney, had dinner with us, then left a couple hours later for the four hour drive back up to Vegas. Hard core. There’s a story behind there somewhere, but we’ll have to wait until the details come out in the wash.
Everyone else stuck around, but still, there wasn’t enough downtime to spend more facetime with the group, which is really too bad. As with everyone else, our social proclivities compete with our anti-social obsession, and I spent a good 6-7 hours playing poker. Oh? You didn’t know there was poker at Commerce?
—
Poker at Commerce
Here’s the bottom line: +$21, making for a measly $3-4 per hour win rate. Good for 1/2, terrible for 2/5 $100 max no limit. Especially during the LA Poker Classic.
I swear on all things holy there was money to be made at those tables. My second table had about half a dozen guys who rebought at least 2 or 3 times, putting between $2000 and $3000 on the table. One gambooler called my $20 preflop raise with K4s and mucked it face up after I bet $30 into the ragged flop with rockets. Another gambooler called a $20 preflop raise with ATo and went all in for $35 or so when a ten hit the flop. I called with my Hiltons and they held up. Ace-rag would bet into an ace-high flop and get raised by Ace-slightly-better-rag, then call to the showdown. There was money to be made.
But not for me. When I caught the flop, I didn’t get paid. When I caught a big piece of the flop, a scary draw forced me to shut the hand down with a big raise. And in my first session sitting with Absinthe, I made two mistakes that cost me my prior profits and then my stack.
I’m in seat 9.
Hand 1: I’m holding AQ in the SB and there are some limpers until seat 6 raises to $15. I call and seat 2 calls. Flop is A78. It’s checked around. Turn is a 9, and I put out a $30 bet. Seat 2 raises all in for $17 more and seat 6 folds. I call the 7:1 and the river is a rag. Seat 2 has A8! I suspected that seat 6 didn’t have a good hand, but if that were the case, I think I should have raised to knock seat 2 out. This mistake would soon beget another…
Hand 2: I’m holding 66 on the button. Seat 6 raises all in for $47. I figure my hand is good and call, but I fail to account for the players left to act. Oops. Seat 1 re-raises to put me all in with 50% of my stack in the pot. Glub. I compound the mistake and call. So we’re looking at seat 1’s KK vs. seat 6’s 33 vs. my 66. The flop is AK9. I’m dead. The turn is a 9. I get my stuff since the river can’t help and I’m out $100. Ugh.
Then it was time for dinner and I didn’t make it back to the tables for another three hours. How I went from $100 to $221, I don’t quite remember. Other than the extreme fishiness I noted above, nothing about my wins was that notable. I ground it out and wandered around every so often to check in on Bill and Grubby.
Bill was riding the variance train like you wouldn’t believe. Before the dinner break he had something like $800 sitting in front of him at a $100 max no limit table. He was still there when I finally got back to the tables. Then at some point he was down to a buyin or two. Then at some later point he was riding high wtih massive stacks at his seat again. I never got a chance to see him play, but I’m sure it would have been amazing.
What is it about sitting at a table with a blogger that ups the testosterone and makes people make bold, but stupid plays? Well I’d seen it online, but when I walked over to Grubby at 12:30 to check on him, he told me he was down a buyin or two, then flashed me the hammer. Oh no.
Grubby’s in seat 3 and puts in a big raise in EP. Seat 4 calls and everyone else folds. Now, there’s some dispute about this, but the way I remember it, the flop came AQ9. Grubby bets and seat 3 calls. The turn is a rag and Grubby checks. Seat 4 checks. The river is another rag and this time Grubby puts out a substantial bet. The boy has balls. Seat 4 calls again. Grubby mucks his cards and seat 4 shows K9s. Uh… what? Nevermind the fact that only idiots play the Hammer, what the fuck was seat 4 doing in that pot in the first place, and what the fuck was he doing calling it all the way down with his bottom pair?
Didn’t I tell you there was money to be made? I saw shit like that go down all night. I thought about loosening up even more, but all the crap cards I got never hit on the flop. The only hand I wanted to play and didn’t due to a momentary loss of manhood was J9. The psychological torment came in the form of a J9xQ9 board where KQ won the hand. Even now I want to let out a primal scream. This was a hand I would normally play in this type of game and for whatever reason I became super weak-tight when facing a modest raise from one of the idiots.
—
The last of the degenerates
By the time I cashed out at 4 in the morning, Grubby and I were the only ones left. He was wondering why he had left Vegas, where the alcohol flows all night and the carpet isn’t held down with duct tape. But he did point out that Commerce was indeed the world’s largest poker room, and the availability of higher-stakes games made it attractive even to Vegas-based degenerates like himself. Yeah. Still, I would rather have been standing with Grubby just outside the poker room at the Aladdin figuring out where to get some cheap food and hard liquor.
Yeah, man. I’m calling you out. Vegas. I got a spring break coming up. If you play roulette with me, I’ll play some slots.
All in all I had a good time, but I had three regrets:
1. Not enough time to hang out
2. Never got to see Felicia in a tournament
3. Not enough boozing (damned Los Angeles auto-centric layout!)
4. Didn’t get a chance to say a proper goodbye to most people
Shut up. I know.
