[Marc Desjardins]

Hello all,

I've been playing online for about a year and I was really looking forward to playing live for the first time. We stayed at the Fairfield resort and it turned out that was just two blocks from the Taj, so that's where I spent the week playing. I did go visit the Borgota as everybody suggested, it was really nice but the waiting list was way too long so I didn't play.

I arrived last thursday and after dinner I went to check out the place, I didn't plan on playing but as I got there, there was no names on the waiting list for 3/6 so I said why not. I asked about getting a Taj card, they explained how to get it, but didn't tell me I needed to checkout, so the first two nights I didn't do it and got nothing. Then they told me to buy my chips at the cashier, but I later saw that many people were buying them directly at the table. I wasn't sure how much to start with, I decided for 200$ and I had some cash in my pockets in case. I didn't know which denominations to get so I just told them I was going to play 3/6. The guy gave me two racks of 1$ chips, so 200 chips, I sat down and everybody looked at me, I then noticed that nobody had much more than a hundred in front of them and nobody had more than 20-30 1$ chips, so I guess I really looked like a newbie right away.

I wasn't really impressed with the dealers, most of them barely speak english, didn't notice the raises half the time and some of them would stare at the board at showdown until the players told them who won.

I was told the caliber was pretty bad, even at 3/6, but I didn't expect it to be this bad, it was really loose and really passive. There was almost no raise pre-flop so when they happened, you pretty much knew you were against AA or KK, but many times I've seen people limp with KK and AK, they weren't trapping, they just never raised. Unfortunatly, it plays the same as micro-limit, you can't make anybody fold with raises and people will stay to the end with any pocket pair, actually any pair, even bottom pair. So I lost some money at first raising with AK or AQ and then trying to make continuation bets. So I figured I had to play ABC poker, showdown the best hand. So I played tight, but this can get pretty boring when you only play 25-30 hands an hour and if you go card dead for 2-3 hours, it can really hurt. I played about 20 hours of 3/6 during the week, I lost 16BB, not so bad considering I got two major bad beats, flopping a TT3 with pocket 3s and vilain rivered a K to make a better full with KT. And then flopping trips with KK on a board of AK8. Turned a full when it came another A, unfortunatly vilain had A8. Each of those pots were worth about 16-17BB, so if I had won any of those I would have come out ahead.

One night there was 6 names on the 3/6 list so I played a few hours of 2/4, the caliber was pretty much the same as 3/6, maybe slighty looser, I made about 10BB that night, not enough to cover my losses of 3/6, but still, the whole week was a lot of fun so it was well worth the money.

I saw all kinds of entertaining players, most of them were eldery people or WPT wannabes. There was the old woman who fell asleep in between hands, sometime even in hands she was involved with. The dealer would deal her out while she slept and wake up her when it was her big blind. There were many table coach, telling the other players how to play and analysing play after each hand. Of course the drunks are very fun to play with. Then there was the players who only bought it for 20-30$ and got all-in abour every other hands and then rebought again for 20-30$ more.

The one night I lost the most (26BB in about 7 hours), I was at a table with a lot of rocks, most of them seemed to be regulars. I should have asked for a table change, but I didn't, I didn't know if what was proper etiquette and how to do so, but then at the end, I saw the one guy do it, was simple enough, lesson learned.

The last night, I tried the multi-table tournament at 6pm, 50+15$ buy-in. We had 244 players. I finished about 50th, they were paying 27 players. We started with 5000 chips and I was at 15000 at the first break. But then the blinds started going up very fast and I played stupid, with 800-1600 blinds with 200 ante, I made open-raised to 5k with A5s in middle position, but with the blinds that high, I guess I should have gone all-in. The player to my left called all-in with about 3.5k and the player to his left cold-called. He seemed to have pretty much the same amount of chips as I did. The flop came K83. I checked, the other guy went all-in. I folded. He turned JJ, the small stack showed A4, of course the turn was an A and I would have won the hand (actually I would have split with the short stack, but still). I was pretty upset and I was blinded out to 4k when I went all-in on 1000-2000 blinds with KT. I got to call, KK and AQ, I didn't improve and that was it. It sucked because I had read HOH II just before I left and I knew I had to go all-in with my A5s, but I couldn't pull the trigger... Too bad it was my last night, I would have really liked to try it again.

All in all a very fun trip and there's a good chance I will go back soon with my home-game buddies. Unless they really open a poker room here at the Montreal Casino like the rumors says.