[nothumb]

Here's a quick Turning Stone trip report from Monday.

Got there just as Sunday became Monday after dropping notice on 2+2 and heading out on a whim. About halfway there I started to wonder if any games would even run through the night in this joint, so when I got there I was relieved to find a few different small stakes games.

Got into a donktastic 3/6 game with a few nutty young guns on the opposite end and a few steaming retirees and nits on the other. Great, great game. Took me a while to start catching cards but I did end up ahead on the table. The best was an older guy lecturing the biggest nut about splashing the pot, acting out of turn, playing like an ass, etc. Then he stayed in a pot where it was raised by AK and 3-bet by my JJ, ends up winning on an AKT94 board with 32s, making a baby runner-runner flush on the river. This was in a 3-way pot with two other reasonable players who he was 'rooting for.' He said, "Sorry kids, I just had a feeling on that one." Good times.

That game broke around 4 and I sat in a shorthanded 100max game with a very loose, aggressive Asian regular, a sullen looking kid in a Party Poker visor, and a few bad players. Game broke in about an hour and I was ahead a bit.

The hottest waitress in Turning Stone apparently works the graveyard Sunday night / Monday morning shift. Who knew?

For a few hours the only game running was a 1-3 spread limit game with five or six drunken high school kids and two middle-aged women who were less than enthused by their antics. The kids had these weird pastel visors with pictures of stuffed animals and clouds and [censored] on them, I guess it was some kind of joke. There was lots of donking around, raising with K2s, etc. I got a ziggurat going out of whites. I lost with KK on a board of KQTQ2 to a woman who turned quads, capping an orbit where like 8 of 10 hands were won with quads or a full house. The woman was all in on the turn so I only lost $15 or so, the drunk kids went nuts of course.

Around 9 AM we got another 1-2 NL table going that turned out to be very profitable for me. I took a bad beat early on when I made it $12 with jacks UTG, some kid pushed for 10 more with KJ and the flop was KK4. Luckily it was a small pot and for some reason I didn't steam as usual. After a few hours I became the big stack at the table, running up as high as 600. I usually fare poorly in live NL play but I kept myself in check and made only a few blunders at this table.

For the first time in my live career I used the phrase, "For Christ's sake, kid, we're paying a time charge here." There was a young guy in a thermal shirt and what looked like pajama pants in the 2 seat, I was in the 9, and his quiet, babyfaced friend was in the 1. The kid in 1 was solid, the kid in 2 was decent but just sat there doing chip tricks, trying to look into peoples' souls, and waiting FOREVER to fold after his bluffs would get picked off.

After I chastised him he immediately mucked and looked at me like a had pantsed him at his junior prom. I told him, "King high no good." His friend won a large pot (probably 200 or so) with KK after I folded to his all-in on the turn, and got up and started freaking out. It was obviously the biggest pot of his life, probably one of the first times he played live. But not in a jerk-off kind of way, in that seventh-grader who just got his first blowjob way, like genuinely overwhelmed. I kind of liked that kid and I was glad when he racked up and left because I didn't want another big stack and his obnoxious friend left too.

After about 15 hours of play I made a poor call of a short stacked player's all in with TT on an undercard board.I thought he could have overcards with a flush draw or a pair, and the board was 7 high and I felt 88 or 99 were reasonable hands for him to have. In actuality I was pretty sure he had JJ or QQ and should have folded, but it was only about $40 into a $100 pot. And he had made some questionable pushes against me trying to double his short stack with likely the worst of it. But after the hand, I wasn't even really able to think that clearly about how badly or correctly it was played, so I decided it was time to leave. Cashed out and went home, after expenses +400 for the trip. Not bad.

I met a 2+2er whose name I forget because I was awake for 36 hours, he said he doesn't post much and plays blackjack a lot. Nice to meet you duder.

I almost fell asleep on the Thruway on the way home and stopped to take a nap. When I woke up I was kind of wandering around the parking lot, thinking I was supposed to have one of the vans from my job or something, kind of vaguely panicked and disoriented. Then I drank 2 Red Bulls, drove back to MA and bowled in my late night Monday league. Even managed to hit close to my average on only an hour of sleep.

Then Tuesday was my birthday and I got drunk.

Thanks
NT