Campfire Stories

Adventures on the Run

I cannot disclose my location due to fear of being shot by the mob or a mob of angry poker players. After a crazy week in Las Vegas I decided to take it on the lam instead of going to the mattresses. I bought a one-way ticket out of Vegas Friday afternoon with $14,500 in my pocket, a suitcase full of dirty laundry, and my laptop. A friend of mine has put me up at his mother's place, and my days have pretty much looked like this: get woken up at 7am, move to another room, sleep on an air mattress, wake (or get woken) up around 1:30, dabble online for several hours, and then head into the local casino and play cards all night.

The first night was good times. I sat down in a 60-120 mix game and instantly heard, "Holy shit, it's Bryan Devonshire!" It was a friend of mine who I hadn't seen in a while. I instantly lost $500 in my first hand. Excellent. The game broke within an hour and I sat in a 40-80 LHE game. That game quickly broke, and it was me, a good player named Brian, and some guy I've never seen before that was a good player.... NOT. We quickly cleaned him out, and then the heads-up death match started. It was bumped up to 60-120, and then to 75-150. I couldn't really get anything going though, and when all the dust had settled, I was stuck $410 from when the mix game broke. As far as heads up went though, Brian definately kicked my nuts in. From there I went to a full 60 game, blew some more, and quit the night stuck $1900 exactly.

The following day I woke up, played cribbage and euchre online with an old friend of mine for a super long time, and then sat down to a family dinner for the first time in a long time. It was nice. I ended up baby-sitting the kids for a while, and I found myself wondering what to do with kids five and under. I've worked with 3rd-5th graders, junior highers, and high schoolers extensively, but I didn't know what to do with kids that young! It was fun though seeing their innocence and curiousity of the world. I did a good job of keeping them from falling into the pool, and after the kiddos went to bed, I was off to the casino. I put on a bit of a clinic and won $3200.

The next day I got money online for the first time in a long time. I played the $200 rebuy on stars, instantly rebought, added-on (in for $600), was 4th in chips with 23 left, and busted 19th for $1350. 18th paid $2350 and first was $54k. Oh well. I then headed into the casino and ended up winning $1600.

On Monday I ended up going to the casino earlier than usual having no idea that I was about to have my biggest (in terms of bets) winning session ever. We played some 40-80 for a while, I won $1900, and then we finally got the 60 game fired up. Now, the gross thing about this casino, home to the greatest limit hold'em games in the world, is that the 60 game is usually better than the 40 game. This one was no different. After about an hour I introduced the "rock" into the game, which is basically a mandatory straddle that bounces around the table. If you win a pot with the "rock" in it, when you are UTG next, you put the rock back into play. Somebody else wins it, and then they put it back out. So much fun, and so good for action! I put two rubber-bands around $120 in chips, put them in for my straddle to start the rock, and we were off. I won it back the first two times it was in play, and six times in total the entire night.

I played one interesting hand that I was very proud of. UTG (Brian from the first night) limped, I raised the Q{moscardsuit:ss} Q{moscardsuit:cs} , the button called, and the BB called. Four ways we saw a flop of 9{moscardsuit:ds} 3{moscardsuit:ss} 3{moscardsuit:cs} . Check, check, I bet, BTN called, BB called, UTG called. Turn T{moscardsuit:cs} . Check, Brian bet, I raised, BTN and BB folded, and Brian 3 bet.

Huh? WTF is he three betting here? I've played with him enough to know his tendencies, and as I was thinking about it, I knew that there was zero way that he could have me beat at that point. Here's why: He's raising TT or 99 pf, probably 33. He's not limping with any hand that contains a 3 except for 33, and that's obv pretty rare. I had him on one of these hands: A{moscardsuit:cs} T{moscardsuit:cs} , J{moscardsuit:cs} 8{moscardsuit:cs} , 7{moscardsuit:cs} 8{moscardsuit:cs} , possibly QJ, possibly AT, possibly T9, and a small chance of something really spewey.

I four-bet, $480 each going in on the turn after he called. The river came the A{moscardsuit:ds} , and thank God he visibly didn't like that card. He checked, I bet, and he folded. He claimed to have QJ.

I just kept on crushing the game until it finally broke around 2:30am, and I was up $8390, good for a little over 74 big bets in eight hours of full ring game action. I got lucky on one huge pot (having the right pot odds to draw to my gutterball the whole way, of course...), and got un-lucky on two big pots and one medium pots. Pretty sweet!

Today, my friend and I went on a two hour adventure to a middle of nowhere casino where we heard that a 75-150 mix game goes every Tuesday night. Long story short: I'm writing this on the way back. The game never went. The usual suspects must be in Vegas for the main event. Sigh...

Anyways, I'm up over $10k for this trip which is a great feeling.


I want to thank y'all for your positive comments and e-mails regarding my last blog post. It makes me very happy to see that there are others in the poker world who agree that there is so much more to life than fame, fortune, and poker, and I pray that y'all would continue to walk with me on this journey of re-discovering what that means. For the record, I am not broke, depressed, or in a bad life situation - I simply had an "ah ha!" moment and realized that I need to make some life changes.

Peace and good luck,

Devo

posted by Devo @ 8:19 PM |