Borodog
11-22-2005, 06:01 AM
So this past weekend was my first trip to Atlantic City. It started off with convoluted travel and lodging plans booked by my friend whom I went with. We flew out of RDU (That's Raleigh-Durham for all y'all what ain't in the South). He insisted I meet him at his place a 7:30 am, and the flight wasn't until after 10. We got dropped at the airport and were done with our body cavity searches by 8:20, and sat around for 2 hours. After we got on the plan, a woman called the flight attendent a bitch for asking her to stow her bag, the attendent flipped out and had airport security drag the woman off the plane. To her waiting wheelchair. That's right, they threw a cripple off the plane. Interesting way to start the trip.
So do we fly to Atlantic City? No. Apparently the airport at AC is really small, so it's rediculously expense to fly straight there apparently. You have to take the train from Philly. So we flew to Philly, right? Wrong. Apparently that is also too expensive, so my buddy booked us through . . . Cleveland. Believe me, Drew Carey is a [censored] liar. Cleveland most emphatically does not rock. So we wait some more, for our connection to Philly, hop on, no cripples are ejected for profanity or other reasons, and get to the City of Brotherly Garbage Heaps and Auto Salvage Yards (at least that's what we could see from the train). We take some sort of tram or another to 30th Street Station, and try to figure out how to get to AC. Easily enough, we find a computer terminal selling tickets, damn near book out return tickets for the same day but catch it in time, and discover that the Train People have no idea what track the train will come in on. So my friend and I started betting on tracks. It was like roulette on the big flippy board thing.
Anyway, we're starving by now and decide to eat. We get sandwiches at the Au Bon Pain, which we decided must mean "Oh, my bone hurts" (it's French). Our train leaves on track 8 (I loose my on-the-number bet and my friend wines his even bet, bastard), and we're off to AC. On the New Jersey Transit train a conductor sold us our tickets, which he immediately punched about 40 holes through, and we immediately lost somewhere, none of which seemed to matter, since he put another little slip of paper on our seat that apparently had it all covered. This seems like a really stupid system.
By the time we can see the Borgata, the chemical stench is burning the inside of my nostrils and my eyes are watering. My friend was oblivious, claiming he couldn't smell anything. Must be one of those genetic things. Can't curl your tongue, taste certain flavors, or smell New Jersey.
When we get to AC, we grab a cab to our hotel. No, not the Borgata. My friend decided we were going to save money by not staying at any of the hotel casinos. Instead, he booked us at the Quality Inn on Albany, maybe 6 blocks from the Trop, not too bad. Have you ever seen a Motel 6? That's what this place was like . . . except entirely tiled in marble. Floors, walls, everywhere. The room was nice enough, we barely saw it except to crash. If it weren't for the COMPLETE LACK OF HOT [censored] WATER it would have been all right. But the COMPLETE LACK OF HOT [censored] WATER made it sort of hard to deal with in the mornings. But I digress.
We catch a cab to the Borgata. Did I mention all the money we saved by not staying at the hotel casinos? Yeah, it was about ten bucks a day more than it cost to take cabs twice a day. Eventually we started walking to the Trop, playing there for a while, and then taking the Jitney to the Borgata. But we still had to take a cab back to the hotel.
So at the Borgata the cocktail waitresses are indeed as smoking hot as advertised, but the $6-$12 game was anything but. Frankly, it sucked. I heard that it was supposed to be a good game, but the consensus seemed to be that it used to be a good game, but no longer was. The $10-$20 is where it's at these days. Unfortunately I had only brought a grand in cash with me, and didn't want to sit down with only 50BB in case the cards weren't with me. So I played the crappy $6-$12 game. But it broke (twice), I got moved to the other table, and it broke too. The only time I had a real producer at the table he was to my immediate left and consistently outflopped me after cold-calling my raises. I moved seats to his left, finally got a hand against him, and he gutshot me. So I dumped a good chunk to him.
I met an interesting fellow named Tiger. An older gentleman with a white mustache. He knows Greg Raymer well, and they're both members of BARGE, and apparently he had a 1% piece of Raymer's WSOP win. Entertaining fellow. He rivered me in 3 gigantic pots. First he hit of the river with his flush+gutshot (hit the GS wheel, which I couldn't see him calling with so I payed off his raise on the end). Second he filled up on my nut straight in a gigantic pot. And third I flopped the nut flush and he went runner-runner full house on me. Those three hurt. Nearly $400 in those 3 pots alone. Still, I only dropped $170 on the night. A couple of rivers go my way and I'm way up.
The next day we walk to the Trop, play a few hours there. I play the $4-$8, because the vaunted Pink Game ($7.50-$15 played with $2.50 pink chips), which is supposed to be such a great loose game, was tighter than a mummified nun. Maybe it was too early in the day on a weekday. Who knows. So I play $4-$8, never make any traction, drop like 5 big bets or something negligable, and we head to the Borgata again.
Second night at the Borgata $6-$12 goes starts out the same, card dead, no traction. But I finally catch some breaks, and end up $250, so I'm a little up for the trip. I met a 2+2er named Gillad (sorry if it's not spelled right dude). Nice guy. Knows Billy Gazes fairly well, and was in contact with him on the phone during the game, as Gazes was at the final table of a WPT tournament at FOxwoods (I think), and came in third for $740,000.
Finally got to see Anne, who is easily the hottest dealer I have ever seen. I'm glad I was card dead while she dealt because I couldn't think of anything but those lips. Mmmmm.
I finally convince my buddy to head out at 4am (after I got rousted by security for snoozing in the poker waiting lounge). We catch a cab back to the hotel and sack out till around 11 the next day, and head for the Trop.
By then it's Saturday, and the Pink Game looks pretty good. Running on 2 tables, which soon became 3. I get on the list and sit at the $4-$8 while I wait. Play a few hands, run up a hundred, get called, cash in reds for pinks and head over with $350 in pink.
I absolutely crushed the game for a while. Ran my $350 up to around $850, and that was after running into quad 6s with 5s full (against the player who had just capped A9 preflop, so I didn't give him credit until probably 1 bet plus his raise too late on the turn). I got into trouble repeatedly for reaching past my cards to check with chips in my hand, a habit that I found damn near impossible to break, since I constantly keep chips in my right hand to shuffle.
Eventually the producers dried up and went broke, and the game went tight and short. I should have gotten up. The game was not good. On top of that my cards went cold and dead. Like an idiot I stayed and played. Just one big pot . . . just one big pot . . . that'll get me back to where I was . . . Well, no of the pots were big, and I wasn't winning any of them anyway. Eventually my $500 up was $75. A played came in that said he'd been watching the other table, and it was full and loose. I requested a table change and eventually got it. I took my $425 over and decended into Hell.
I sat down and the table seemed nice enough. One woman on the end clearly knew what she was doing (a radiologist from DC named Laura), the rest, not so much. As soon as I sat what looked to be the major producer at the table took a huge beat to lose boat under boat, got fed up, and left. After that the table tightened up, although the majority of the players were still not good. A couple of people left, and suddenly I'm playing in a mostly tight, short game and running card dead. Again. Ugh. The only loose terrible player left was sitting to my immediate left. I was just contemplating changing seats to get position on him when the seats got locked up by the Wonder Twins.
Two guys came and sat down where the producer and another guyt had been. They came a few minutes apart, and acted like they didn't know each other, but I'm still not sure. They were action players. Betting and raising and cold-calling with extremelt weak hands. The worse one, on the left going around the table, played any two cards for any number of bets. Raised 87o under the gun. He very often looked like he was protecting the other dude's hand. It looked a lot like collusion, but the guy was showing down winners. Rediculous winners. The most unlikely, rediculous straights with small gapped offsuit cards you ever seen, the worst ace-baby offsuit that cracked Kings you ever saw, ther worst two pair with two random cards, gutshots, one cards flush draws that hit and win with a 7 high flush, 3 bets cold with K5 vs JJ and AQ and the flop comes KQx, just the most rediculously bad poker you've ever witnessed. He played every pot and dragged half of them. He cold called my under the gut raise with 53o and flopped a wheel. He called a bet and a raise on the flop with pocket deuces and turned a set to beat my TPTK. He beat my queens, he beat my jacks, he beat my AK, my AJs, it didn't matter. And it wasn't just me. He threw the most spectacular beats you could imagine on everyone at the table. I've never seen anything like it. He sat down with maybe $500 and quickly ran it up to $1300. The radiologist said she'd played with him 2 nights before, and he'd done the same. I just couldn't beat the guy. I won exactly one pot off of him.
Combine that with the rest of the table throwing beatsw on me (guy to my left cold calls my UTG raise with T8o, calls on the flop and gutshoots me; guy to my right calls my UTG raise in his BB with A6o, calls the flop with no pair and no draw to beat my queens when he turns an ace; guy down the table rivers a straight to beat TPTK, asian kid to my right flops a set of 7s on my TPTK, on and on and on).
I finished my first session of the pink game with one of the most brutal bad streaks I have ever had. My $425 quickly turned into $0. I put cash on the table thinking this couldn't possibly continue. At some point I had to drag a gigantic pot off these guys if I could just hit a big hand or have a hand hold up. But it never came. I eventually went from up $500 in the pink game to down $450, dropping 63 big bets in a few hours. Since I was up a little from the previous day and the $4-$8 game, this left me down only about $300 for the trip, which is insignificant, but damn it hurts to drop a thousand after you were up $500.
All in all I made a few bad plays, mostly consisting of my perenial mistake of paying off a bet on the river when I should obviously fold (the 3 hands Tiger rivered me come to mind), and one bad hand were I folded two overs + a gutshot because I acted too quickly on the flop (turn gutshot me and I'd have drug a bug pot). Other than that, I played pretty damn good poker I think and ended up with nothing but a hard lesson about getting up when the table isn't good, and the power of variance.
During all of this my buddy was playing nothing but $1-$2 no limit and faring even worse than me. He dropped closed to $600 for the trip, plus he had to listen to me bitch about the cabs and the lack of hot water.
On the way home New Jersey we had to, get this, take a train to Philly so we could catch a flight to . . . New Jersey? Newark was our layover on the way home. The trip home playing heads up no limit hold'em and gin was the highlight of the trip it turned out (I crushed him in NLHE, but he won half his money back at gin). Isn't that sad?
Know what's worse? I can't wait to go back.
So do we fly to Atlantic City? No. Apparently the airport at AC is really small, so it's rediculously expense to fly straight there apparently. You have to take the train from Philly. So we flew to Philly, right? Wrong. Apparently that is also too expensive, so my buddy booked us through . . . Cleveland. Believe me, Drew Carey is a [censored] liar. Cleveland most emphatically does not rock. So we wait some more, for our connection to Philly, hop on, no cripples are ejected for profanity or other reasons, and get to the City of Brotherly Garbage Heaps and Auto Salvage Yards (at least that's what we could see from the train). We take some sort of tram or another to 30th Street Station, and try to figure out how to get to AC. Easily enough, we find a computer terminal selling tickets, damn near book out return tickets for the same day but catch it in time, and discover that the Train People have no idea what track the train will come in on. So my friend and I started betting on tracks. It was like roulette on the big flippy board thing.
Anyway, we're starving by now and decide to eat. We get sandwiches at the Au Bon Pain, which we decided must mean "Oh, my bone hurts" (it's French). Our train leaves on track 8 (I loose my on-the-number bet and my friend wines his even bet, bastard), and we're off to AC. On the New Jersey Transit train a conductor sold us our tickets, which he immediately punched about 40 holes through, and we immediately lost somewhere, none of which seemed to matter, since he put another little slip of paper on our seat that apparently had it all covered. This seems like a really stupid system.
By the time we can see the Borgata, the chemical stench is burning the inside of my nostrils and my eyes are watering. My friend was oblivious, claiming he couldn't smell anything. Must be one of those genetic things. Can't curl your tongue, taste certain flavors, or smell New Jersey.
When we get to AC, we grab a cab to our hotel. No, not the Borgata. My friend decided we were going to save money by not staying at any of the hotel casinos. Instead, he booked us at the Quality Inn on Albany, maybe 6 blocks from the Trop, not too bad. Have you ever seen a Motel 6? That's what this place was like . . . except entirely tiled in marble. Floors, walls, everywhere. The room was nice enough, we barely saw it except to crash. If it weren't for the COMPLETE LACK OF HOT [censored] WATER it would have been all right. But the COMPLETE LACK OF HOT [censored] WATER made it sort of hard to deal with in the mornings. But I digress.
We catch a cab to the Borgata. Did I mention all the money we saved by not staying at the hotel casinos? Yeah, it was about ten bucks a day more than it cost to take cabs twice a day. Eventually we started walking to the Trop, playing there for a while, and then taking the Jitney to the Borgata. But we still had to take a cab back to the hotel.
So at the Borgata the cocktail waitresses are indeed as smoking hot as advertised, but the $6-$12 game was anything but. Frankly, it sucked. I heard that it was supposed to be a good game, but the consensus seemed to be that it used to be a good game, but no longer was. The $10-$20 is where it's at these days. Unfortunately I had only brought a grand in cash with me, and didn't want to sit down with only 50BB in case the cards weren't with me. So I played the crappy $6-$12 game. But it broke (twice), I got moved to the other table, and it broke too. The only time I had a real producer at the table he was to my immediate left and consistently outflopped me after cold-calling my raises. I moved seats to his left, finally got a hand against him, and he gutshot me. So I dumped a good chunk to him.
I met an interesting fellow named Tiger. An older gentleman with a white mustache. He knows Greg Raymer well, and they're both members of BARGE, and apparently he had a 1% piece of Raymer's WSOP win. Entertaining fellow. He rivered me in 3 gigantic pots. First he hit of the river with his flush+gutshot (hit the GS wheel, which I couldn't see him calling with so I payed off his raise on the end). Second he filled up on my nut straight in a gigantic pot. And third I flopped the nut flush and he went runner-runner full house on me. Those three hurt. Nearly $400 in those 3 pots alone. Still, I only dropped $170 on the night. A couple of rivers go my way and I'm way up.
The next day we walk to the Trop, play a few hours there. I play the $4-$8, because the vaunted Pink Game ($7.50-$15 played with $2.50 pink chips), which is supposed to be such a great loose game, was tighter than a mummified nun. Maybe it was too early in the day on a weekday. Who knows. So I play $4-$8, never make any traction, drop like 5 big bets or something negligable, and we head to the Borgata again.
Second night at the Borgata $6-$12 goes starts out the same, card dead, no traction. But I finally catch some breaks, and end up $250, so I'm a little up for the trip. I met a 2+2er named Gillad (sorry if it's not spelled right dude). Nice guy. Knows Billy Gazes fairly well, and was in contact with him on the phone during the game, as Gazes was at the final table of a WPT tournament at FOxwoods (I think), and came in third for $740,000.
Finally got to see Anne, who is easily the hottest dealer I have ever seen. I'm glad I was card dead while she dealt because I couldn't think of anything but those lips. Mmmmm.
I finally convince my buddy to head out at 4am (after I got rousted by security for snoozing in the poker waiting lounge). We catch a cab back to the hotel and sack out till around 11 the next day, and head for the Trop.
By then it's Saturday, and the Pink Game looks pretty good. Running on 2 tables, which soon became 3. I get on the list and sit at the $4-$8 while I wait. Play a few hands, run up a hundred, get called, cash in reds for pinks and head over with $350 in pink.
I absolutely crushed the game for a while. Ran my $350 up to around $850, and that was after running into quad 6s with 5s full (against the player who had just capped A9 preflop, so I didn't give him credit until probably 1 bet plus his raise too late on the turn). I got into trouble repeatedly for reaching past my cards to check with chips in my hand, a habit that I found damn near impossible to break, since I constantly keep chips in my right hand to shuffle.
Eventually the producers dried up and went broke, and the game went tight and short. I should have gotten up. The game was not good. On top of that my cards went cold and dead. Like an idiot I stayed and played. Just one big pot . . . just one big pot . . . that'll get me back to where I was . . . Well, no of the pots were big, and I wasn't winning any of them anyway. Eventually my $500 up was $75. A played came in that said he'd been watching the other table, and it was full and loose. I requested a table change and eventually got it. I took my $425 over and decended into Hell.
I sat down and the table seemed nice enough. One woman on the end clearly knew what she was doing (a radiologist from DC named Laura), the rest, not so much. As soon as I sat what looked to be the major producer at the table took a huge beat to lose boat under boat, got fed up, and left. After that the table tightened up, although the majority of the players were still not good. A couple of people left, and suddenly I'm playing in a mostly tight, short game and running card dead. Again. Ugh. The only loose terrible player left was sitting to my immediate left. I was just contemplating changing seats to get position on him when the seats got locked up by the Wonder Twins.
Two guys came and sat down where the producer and another guyt had been. They came a few minutes apart, and acted like they didn't know each other, but I'm still not sure. They were action players. Betting and raising and cold-calling with extremelt weak hands. The worse one, on the left going around the table, played any two cards for any number of bets. Raised 87o under the gun. He very often looked like he was protecting the other dude's hand. It looked a lot like collusion, but the guy was showing down winners. Rediculous winners. The most unlikely, rediculous straights with small gapped offsuit cards you ever seen, the worst ace-baby offsuit that cracked Kings you ever saw, ther worst two pair with two random cards, gutshots, one cards flush draws that hit and win with a 7 high flush, 3 bets cold with K5 vs JJ and AQ and the flop comes KQx, just the most rediculously bad poker you've ever witnessed. He played every pot and dragged half of them. He cold called my under the gut raise with 53o and flopped a wheel. He called a bet and a raise on the flop with pocket deuces and turned a set to beat my TPTK. He beat my queens, he beat my jacks, he beat my AK, my AJs, it didn't matter. And it wasn't just me. He threw the most spectacular beats you could imagine on everyone at the table. I've never seen anything like it. He sat down with maybe $500 and quickly ran it up to $1300. The radiologist said she'd played with him 2 nights before, and he'd done the same. I just couldn't beat the guy. I won exactly one pot off of him.
Combine that with the rest of the table throwing beatsw on me (guy to my left cold calls my UTG raise with T8o, calls on the flop and gutshoots me; guy to my right calls my UTG raise in his BB with A6o, calls the flop with no pair and no draw to beat my queens when he turns an ace; guy down the table rivers a straight to beat TPTK, asian kid to my right flops a set of 7s on my TPTK, on and on and on).
I finished my first session of the pink game with one of the most brutal bad streaks I have ever had. My $425 quickly turned into $0. I put cash on the table thinking this couldn't possibly continue. At some point I had to drag a gigantic pot off these guys if I could just hit a big hand or have a hand hold up. But it never came. I eventually went from up $500 in the pink game to down $450, dropping 63 big bets in a few hours. Since I was up a little from the previous day and the $4-$8 game, this left me down only about $300 for the trip, which is insignificant, but damn it hurts to drop a thousand after you were up $500.
All in all I made a few bad plays, mostly consisting of my perenial mistake of paying off a bet on the river when I should obviously fold (the 3 hands Tiger rivered me come to mind), and one bad hand were I folded two overs + a gutshot because I acted too quickly on the flop (turn gutshot me and I'd have drug a bug pot). Other than that, I played pretty damn good poker I think and ended up with nothing but a hard lesson about getting up when the table isn't good, and the power of variance.
During all of this my buddy was playing nothing but $1-$2 no limit and faring even worse than me. He dropped closed to $600 for the trip, plus he had to listen to me bitch about the cabs and the lack of hot water.
On the way home New Jersey we had to, get this, take a train to Philly so we could catch a flight to . . . New Jersey? Newark was our layover on the way home. The trip home playing heads up no limit hold'em and gin was the highlight of the trip it turned out (I crushed him in NLHE, but he won half his money back at gin). Isn't that sad?
Know what's worse? I can't wait to go back.