Wookie's Thanksgiving Trip Report (Long, with Minimal Poker Content)

[MrWookie47]

Wookie’s Thanksgiving Trip Report

Given that this includes my first ever trip to a B&M and my first ever meeting with a 2+2er in person, I figured I'd post a trip report. If you're looking for something deep and insightful, you're in the wrong spot.

Thursday:

I woke up later than I had wanted to (about 7:30 am), so I hurriedly pack and rush to the airport. I still made it with an hour to spare, but I forgot my cell phone. After everyone gets on the plane, the pilot announces that there is a severe wind problem in Detroit that has closed down all but one of the four runways. We were to wait on the ground for our time to come in. And we wouldn’t be getting another report for about another hour as to even our status in line. I sure was glad we would get to sit on the plane for that hour, rather than in the terminal. I was also “glad” I have just barely an hour between my arrival in Detroit and my departure for Seattle. It looks as if I’m likely to either miss my connection, or have it so grossly delayed that I don’t get in at a reasonable eating hour. Fortunately, we get another announcement about 15 min later that, apparently by miracle, we’re leaving, and Detroit seems to be fine. Phew. I get to Detroit uneventfully, but it seems that I was destined to spend an hour sitting on a motionless plane anyway. After we taxi out of the gate en route to Seattle, we just sit. And sit. And sit. The pilot announces that there was some weird error generated by the left engine, and we needed to “reboot.” And when we’re about to get rolling again, someone gets up and goes to the bathroom, so the pilot stops the plane AGAIN. And then the wind picks up again, so we need to dally around to some special runway for taking off (probably the one out of the four mentioned earlier). Over an hour after pulling out of the gate, we’re finally in the air.

Once I get home, however, life is pretty good. I join my mom, dad, brother, grandmother, aunt, and uncle for an excellent Thanksgiving dinner. The turkey was moist and tender. The garlic mashed potatoes were creamy and smooth. The wine was first class: two different vintages of special reserve Cabernet from my uncle’s favorite local vineyard. The evening wound down with a slice of pecan pie, a glass of port, and giving in to the food coma.

Friday:

I didn’t think I was going to hit up the crazy people sales, but sure enough, I did. I wasn’t stupid enough to go anywhere at 5 am, though. I woke up at about 8:30 or so when my dad tossed me the ad for Fry’s Electronics and pointed out a few things worth getting. For those of you not on the west coast or who are not familiar with Fry’s Electronics, this place is nerd heaven. The place is absolutely gigantic and is jam packed with all sorts of nerdy goodies. They base their business on ridiculous door busters on select items and mail-in rebates (usually combined). If you’re meticulous about filling out all the paperwork and such, you can get some great prices. If not, you end up paying too much, even relative to retail electronics stores like Best Buy. What was fortunate was that their ridiculous door busters were TV’s, cameras, and complete computers – nothing I was in the market for. Those were gone first, and some of the things I was shopping for could still be had at 11 am when I finally got there. Civilization 4 for $30? Ooooh yeah. I picked up a copy for my bro and me. I also picked up a wireless router (gotta fill out the rebate yet) and some cabling that I needed. My mom, who was along with me, checked out some printers, but the model she settled on wasn’t on sale, so we decided to shop around a few more places in case someone did have it. Unfortunately, the only place that had it on sale was sold out. We also hit up a couple of clothing stores. I was impressed with how efficiently we did things, though. We were in a total of three major shopping areas and were able to dodge traffic and easily find parking. There were a couple of things at the clothing stores that we had missed out on by being late, but all in all, this was a surprisingly pleasant Black Friday shopping experience.

Now, when my brother and I are both home, my mom is always sure to feed us well so that we come back. Rather than Thanksgiving leftovers for dinner, she tossed a prime rib roast in the oven. We did have some leftover garlic mashed potatoes to go with it, but they came out so well the first time that that was no bad mark on the meal. My bro and I ate quickly, though, so we could head over to a home poker game.

I had played poker with my brother’s group of friends quite a bit before. They were actually what turned me on to hold’em in the first place. Had I not wanted to start beating that crew, you wouldn’t be reading this. It turned out, though, that it wasn’t the usual group. It turned out to be predominantly friends of the younger brother of the guy who usually hosts it – high school seniors and college freshmen, mostly. However, there were a couple members from the usual group, and the oldest brother of the kid who was the new host was a friend of mine I hadn’t seen in about 15 years. It was cool to see him again.

Unfortunately, my brother had partially spilled the beans about me being a winning player on the web, but I was still a limit ring player, and the game was a no limit tournament. I’m sure I had quite an edge, but it wasn’t like these folk were sitting down at a limit ring table with me. I was totally card dead for about the first hour or so of play. I only played two hands past the flop (and not many that far): a flush draw that hit, winning me a decent pot, and top pair that got outdrawn by an OESD on the turn. I finally started catching some cards, and when AK takes down an A8 that was trying to bluff me out of the pot with an all-in bet that I just barely had covered, I finally look like I have a decent stack just as we collapse from two tables down to one with the final 8 players (from about 16 or so). It didn’t last long, however. I played quite poorly in a hand that cost me most of my stack. I was up against one of the guys from the old poker game who I knew to be a very aggressive player and occasional wild bluffer. However, all of my limit on the web corrupted my play. He played his flush draw like a loose passive player would play TPGK (I held TPMK). This guy, though, would have come over the top of me on the flop or c/r’ed me on the turn if that were his holding rather using a SnG. Consequently, I paid him off handsomely on the river for the bulk of my stack when he hit. That put me solidly into the red zone and a “push or fold” strategy. It worked well, and I crawled into the orange zone by rampant stealing, at least until another escalation of the blinds put be back in the red. I open-push A5o from MP (I was getting a lot of respect with my pushes, oddly enough) with 5 players left (top 4 get paid), get called by 88, and that’s all she wrote. It was a good time, though, and it was good to get some practice handling real cards and moving real chips so I was prepared for Saturday’s excursion.

Saturday:

The day started off with my brother and I helping my mom get the Christmas decorations started. This included getting the Christmas tree down from the attic and getting the lights on the house. My mom made getting this done a requirement for her to make her famous chocolate pie. The chocolate pie is more than worth the effort. It would have to wait until Sunday, but it was going to be great.

After another great meal of rib steaks on the grill, I was off to the Muckleshoot casino for my very first B&M poker experience, and the first time I’d ever meet another 2+2er in person. I was pumped on my way over here, remembering that Washington had just passed a law banning smoking in bars. Turns out it doesn’t apply to tribal casinos, though, so, to my chagrin, I would be coming home reeking of cigarettes. I was proudly sporting my Sup Bro? t-shirt to make me easy to spot. I wasn’t sure who all was going to show up, and I wasn’t exactly sure how to meet them, so I just tried to wander around conspicuously between the various bars and the entrance to the poker room until someone asked me if I had 15 tackles for losses. After twenty minutes or so of this, I finally ran into Iggie right outside of the poker room. We introduced ourselves and got a couple of beers. I was pleased that this placed stocked Mack and Jack’s, a medium-bodied, slightly sweet ale from somewhere in the Pacific Northwest that I enjoy, in addition to the usual fare that ends in “lite.” Iggie refused to let me pay for this first beer or for any others for the rest of the night, and with all his bucks, having been, I believe, the second most successful 15 BB challenger on record, I wasn’t about to argue. We dallied around outside to see if CrayZee or any of the other guys who had said something about coming in the original thread. We heard bernie’s name called for the 10/20 game (apparently he makes his living here), but we didn’t see who answered the call, and he didn’t see a 6’ 3” guy broadcasting that he was all county ’95.

After a few more minutes, we decide that CrayZee and Irishpint’s friends are a bunch of dirty nits who fear our wrath, and we get in line for the 4/8 game. They spread 3/6, too, but I suggested 4/8 for a lesser rake and still poor competition. We requested the same table, but it was a full night, and they couldn’t automatically oblige us. We got different tables to start. I asked to buy in for 3 racks, $300, and got some unexpectedly odd looks. Apparently buying in for less than 12 BB (using 1 rack) is the norm. Ah well, I played it off to the table as just being weird because it was my first time playing poker in the casino (true), laughing it off, and buying in for 3 racks anyway. I knew that I wanted to start creating a light, fun atmosphere from the start, and I did a decent job. The right half of the table was busy laughing it up and having a good time. The left half was quieter. Play here was more passive than I’d seen in a long time, especially after 4k hands of 5/10 6 max. It wasn’t as loose as I was expecting, though. There were quite a few players who’d play most anything, but it was a far cry of the stories I’d heard of 7-8 to the flop consistently. At this table, it was more typically 3-5. People were also willing to make some fairly big laydowns postflop. I’d say things looked like a somewhat more passive version of Party’s 2/4 full (albeit 9 handed), at least pre-split (haven’t played there after the split). For my second hand at the table, I was in the BB (I didn’t have to post. I got a free play UTG for my first, to my surprise), T8 flops a straight, and things get off to a nice start. I went on quite a cold streak afterwards, though, including getting dealt AJ four times and hitting nothing in 4-way pots with zero fold equity. I was down approximately a full rack at my worst. The nice thing, though, is that I never really had any idea exactly how much I was up or down – two racks is still an impressive wall of chips. Consequently, it couldn’t affect my mood or my play. Whereas I might have been slightly bummed if I saw I was down $100 online, I was still plenty able to yuck it up with the guys at my table.

Iggie sat down with me after about 30 min when a seat opened up on my table. He was immediately on my right, giving him the best seat at the table, and me the worst. Yuck. I think I even had the loosest player at the table to my left. Ah well. I was going to make the best of it. Fortunately, Iggie did a lot of folding, just like a good 2+2er, and there weren’t a lot of stealing situations. He and I were only ever involved in one pot together (at least in any important way), which I posted. Other than that hand, in which I chided him about his play already, I might also prod him a little bit for talking seriously about poker too much. It wasn’t a big deal, though. It was mostly sympathizing with a guy who was in the process of busting out. It was about this time, too, that Iggie dragged in what I believe was the biggest pot of the night. That was about all he caught for the remainder of the night, though. The guy who busted made room for a guy named Jev who was a lot of fun to play with. He was very vocal and helped continue to cultivate the light, fun attitude. In one of his first hands at the table, he told one of the other players, “OK, I’ll pay you off, I’ll pay you off,” as he called him down with a decent hand and won. At first I figured it was just that he was pretending to be weak when he was reasonably strong, but he said that a lot for the remainder of the session, and the rest of the times, he was just calling down with junk and genuinely paying off (frequently to me). When we got to the fourth dealer with us (I was surprised at the rate of dealer turnover), I started catching some great hands. I dragged in some huge pots (including in the hand that I posted), and I was told to convert one of my rack of whites into four greens rather than have the great wall of China in front of me.

We wrapped up around 12:30 am after roughly 3 hours of play. I finished up about 30 BB, a good session. Iggie was down about 4. Both of us had a blast. I’d definitely be game for a live game in the future.

Sunday:

After church, the theme of getting good food continued. My family went out for brunch at one of our favorite brunch restaurants. This place serves eggs benedict made with Dungeness crab instead of ham that keeps us coming back. This time, though, they had added smoked salmon eggs benedict to the menu that I decided to try instead. I’m not quite sure which I liked better. Both are a real treat. After brunch, we turned on the Seahawks vs. Giants game that had us glued to the TV for the next bunch of hours. For those of you who missed it, you missed a truly epic football game. The Giant’s kicker missed game-winning field goals THREE TIMES, once in the last seconds of regulation, and then twice in OT from, IIRC 40, 55, and 45 yards out. The Seahawks finally got their act together after the third miss and marched down for their own field goal after having totally crapped out in their last possession of regulation and first two possessions of OT. Not long after that, I was off to the airport to enjoy a 5 hour flight to Detroit followed by a 5 hour layover (where I wrote most of this) there before heading back to Rochester. There was more excessive dallying on the tarmac in both locales. Eeesh. It’s currently Monday morning somewhere over one of the Great Lakes, although I’ll be posting this after I get home tonight. Heading straight into lab from the airport is not my idea of a good time, but that’s how it had to be in order to find an affordable flight that enabled all of this. I think it was worth it.

[jaxUp]

solid trip report. Not nearly as crazy as I'd hoped, but I blame that on a lack of participants. Sounds like a good weekend.

also, nh:

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chagrin

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tl;dr



j/k - read the parts that pertained to me.


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I was pumped on my way over here, remembering that Washington had just passed a law banning smoking in bars.

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That actually doesn't take effect until Dec. 8, which not so coincidentally is the day I plan to play my first non-tribal live poker. And apparently the dealers at the Muck are putting pressure on to ban smoking in their poker room, too (Tulalip already does that).

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Iggie refused to let me pay for this first beer or for any others for the rest of the night

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And any other self-respecting 2+2er who meets up with you should be doing the same.

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I asked to buy in for 3 racks, $300, and got some unexpectedly odd looks.

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The chip runner caught me on the way to the table and they were waiting for me when I arrived, so I avoided a similar scene with the same buy-in. But soon after the table change, the floor came over and requested that I sell some of them back because we were apparently running the casino out of $1 chips.

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Play here was more passive than I’d seen in a long time, especially after 4k hands of 5/10 6 max. It wasn’t as loose as I was expecting, though. There were quite a few players who’d play most anything, but it was a far cry of the stories I’d heard of 7-8 to the flop consistently.

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I chalk this up in part to the small buy-ins - there were people (like the guy with the chain, the guy in the cap to Jev's immediate right, and the other guy to the dealer's right) popping in almost every hand, but they'd quickly bust out and leave, so we played quite a few 8-handed games.

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Other than that hand, in which I chided him about his play already, I might also prod him a little bit for talking seriously about poker too much.

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Just who was it that got warned by the dealer for talking about hands...? I can't seem to remember... [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

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Both of us had a blast. I’d definitely be game for a live game in the future.

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True dat, and me too.

[Nomad84]

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Iggie refused to let me pay for this first beer or for any others for the rest of the night, and with all his bucks, having been, I believe, the second most successful 15 BB challenger on record, I wasn’t about to argue.

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Ummm....didn't he go from $15 to $2k? Who beat that??