Atlantic City (Part 2)

I've finally got my act together to write up the remaining antics of my Spring trip to The States.

If you need a brief recap here are the previous entries:

From Oxford to Foxwoods
Foxwoods
Onwards to New York City
The New York Players Club
From New York City to Altantic City

We'd left out hero just after his second night it Antlantic City. As of yet there had been no straddling and no Hammer Dropping. Things needed to be remidied...

Friday 1st April (Uh Oh)

I awoke sometime in the afternoon crawled out of the hovell that was the Super 8 motel and made my way back over to the Borgata. I hadn't slept so well; having spent most of the last 48 hours in a high oxygen environment, my body hadn't adjusted to the real world. Once back in the marbelled foyer, I felt much better. One cheese steak later and I was raring to go.

My biggest mistake of the few days I spent in AC, was the same mistake I make time and time again. I wanted to play at stakes slightly above my bankroll. In this situation this equated to playing the $2-5 NL game as appossed to the $1-2 NL game. Now when it comes to live play, I think it can be acceptable to play slightly above your bankroll for a number of reasons. Usually live play in the USA is softer than online. You dont play as many hands live as you do online so you swings over a session will tend to be smaller, although this argument applies more to limit than NL. Playing at a higher level live can also be justified by thinking of it as a night out gambling, taking a set amount, and setting a stop-loss level. All of these seasons might have justified my playing at $2-5 but three equally important factors should have ensured that I didn't stay there for long. First and foremost I was, to a dgree, playing with scarred money and I made one horrible horrible play as a result. I'm almost too embarrassed to write about it. I called a preflop raise with 77 against an early position raiser and flopped a set on a queen high board. He checked, I bet, was called behind me, and he raised big. Having worked my stack up from $500 to about $800 I was too scarred to put it all on the line, I convinced myself that he had top set and I mucked my hand. On reflection there's no way someone would raise that much with top set in that position he almost certainly had an overpair and I cost myself at least $400. Second, the play was notably better at $2-5 than it was at $1-2. It was still beatable, but not all of your profit was going to come from other people's mistakes. Inteligent play was also going to be required. Finally, the buy-in structure meant that the difference in potential earn rates between the $1-2 and the $2-5 was not great. The maximum buy in is $300 and $500 respectively so a big, tourist packed, beer swilling $1-2 table can be much juicier than a local-infested $2-5 rock garden. I failed to pickup on any of these deterants, continued playing $2-5 and only managed to brake even for the rest of my stay. It's all very well reasoning over it now, but I make this mistake time and time again.

Anyway, back to the antics...

I'd made plans that evening to meet up with Wade, a poster on ITH. I found him sat at a juicy looking $6/12 limit table, although, it being 6pm on a Friday, there were few tables in the room that didn't look juicy. I got myself on the list for $6/12 and soon found myself at the table next to his. I'd normally want to sit down with about $500 at a $6/12 table to ensure that I had pleanty to cover and nasty swings. I'd come sriaght from a $2-5 NL table where I'd got about $600 in front of me so I figure I'd just take the whole lot. Well it turned out that I hadn't sat down at a $6/12 table at all. It was a $3/6 table and my stack was probably equivalent to everyone elses combined. I felt like a bit of a jerk, and I'm sure that they were thinking exactly the same thing so I was pretty releived when my transfer came up and I joined Wade's table. I went on a huge rush for the few hours that we played there. I'd never played any live limit before so it was a fun experience, but overall I definately prefer playing NL/PL live. I'd read Miller's "Small Stakes Holdem" prior to coming and was aware from posts on ITH how bad the suckout could be, but fortuantely I maged to aviod them for the whole eveing. Many of my big starting hands got bigger on the flop and I hit a good number of straights and flushed too. Wade had been been drinking some and had taken an entire tables share of bad beats so he decided to hit the sack shortly after midnight and I went back to NL.

Saturday 2nd April

The following day -EV and I had arrange to meet up with Al and Helix at midday. The other east coast bloggers had been unable to make it, but with the prospect of a highly booze-fuled weekend, -EV and I had agreed that we should attempt some kind of an early night. I finally managed to prise myself away from the table at around 7am and -EV was still there when I left.

Back at the Super 8 I set a mirriad of alarms and managed to get a well needed 4 hours sleep. Little did I know that this would be the last I got before flying back home on Monday. That's not entirely true; I'm pretty sure I did sleep for a few hours at some point, but I really have no idea when it was.

I was only 20 minutes or so late for our midday meeting at the Boragata's B-Bar. When I arrived, Al, Eva, and Helix were already well stuck in to the booze and video poker. Eva had already hit quads and proceeded to hit another three full houses and one set of quads while Al slowly did his bollocks. At least it ensured free drinks. I was feeling a little sleep deprived, but in honour of The Blogfather, Al order me a Guiness and the situation rapidly improved. -EV arrived in an even worse state that me so he was prescribed a double vodka and red bull to ease his pains. In the meantime Al was working his magic on a couple of girls at the other end of the bar. The guy is awesome. I dont know how he manages it. -EV and I got chatting to some semi-drunk weirdo at the bar about internet poker, poker tracker and such like. He ended up offering to stake -EV, who sensibly gave him a false telephone number.

Several Guinesses later the need for carbs was pressing so we made a pit stop at noodles of the world. That place is great as are comps - having eaten only cheesesteaks since the first night's extravagence at the buffet, I'd accumulated quite a few comp dollars.

It was now without a doubt time for some poker. Beer had been quaffed and noodles slurped. It was time to fling some some chips. The down to the poker room was uneventful (all 200 feet of it) but to travel the final 10 feet from the bottom of the escalator to the desk was something of a mission. The room was buzzing and the wait list for the $2/4 and $3/6 limit games were over an hour long. -EV and I went and sat in a NL game while we waited, but in the meantime someone had a brainwave and phoned the Trop and Taj to check on their waitlists. It looked as though we'd get seated pretty quickly at the Taj so we upped sticks and headed across town.

I'd be meaning to get over to the Taj at some point during my trip so despite hearing that it was pretty grimy, I was excited to be going. The scene from Rounders when Mike and Worm hit the Taj is one of my favorites and the ride down the shiny gold escalator didn't disapoint.

Generally, though, the Taj was a bit of a shit hole. It's a huge poker room, but it's a complete mess. You cant walk between tables without falling over 17 fat greasy couples with their chairs parted from the table by a great ocean of belly. There are pleanty of fat people at the borgata, but they dont seem to have the same problem. They also need a total managment overhall. It's a joke. No waiting list software. Instead they have a couple of grubby white boards linked up to a monitor. The chips are filthy and so are the waitresses, but enough bitching, back to the poker.

The waiting lists looked much more managable and we got our names down for various low limit Holdem and Omaha Hi/Lo games. It didn't take too long for -EV, Helix, Al, and myself all to be sat in the same $2/4 holdem game from which point all hell broke loose...

I thought I might be able to wrap this up in one post, but it would appear otherwise. Final installment will be along soon.