Long Trip Report - Borgata - Low Limit - Smelly Drunks

[buffett]

Friday night at the Borgata. We get there a little before 6pm, and there is no line for 3/6 or 2/4. [A couple of hours later 3/6 has a line of about 12 people and 2/4 has 1 or 2 (there are 2 tables of each).]

Things are going well, but everyone at the table is waaay too serious. I mean, I will fully admit to being the shy, nerdy type, and I don't think I have ever been accused of being the life of any party, but honestly I was the most animated person at this table. I'm doing my best to chat people up and get them smiling. When I'm the life of a table, you know things are bad. Anyway…..I'm up about 17bb, but then Smelly Drunk Russian Idiot showed up and sat directly to my right in the 1 seat.

He was wearing a 20 year old, maroon leather jacket, hadn't combed his hair in days, had a permanent look of bewilderment on his face, reeked of cigarettes, and carried around a black plastic bag a la Senor Cardgage .

He posts in early position, gets dealt AA, and chops his first pot with another guy also holding AA (both of whom limped preflop, by the way). Great start.

He takes down another couple of medium-sized pots by betting overcards that finally catch a pair on the river.

All this is while he's looking for his Borgata card, which is one of the 174 various ID cards he carries around with him in his plastic bag. So each time it's his turn, he doesn't realize it immediately. In fact, he doesn't realize it at all, not until the dealer semi-yells "Your action," the whole table groans, he puts his stack of ID cards in his table railing cupholder, he finally looks at his cards, then he folds. This is starting to get painful.

On one hand he's UTG+1 and ends up heads-up with the AA chopper from earlier. The board is something like K T 9 4 9, Senor Cardgage checks the river, other guy flips his K6 for the two pair-no kicker, Cardgage disgustingly waves his hand near his cards as if to say, "Dang….I'm beat." The dealer puts her hands on his cards and begins to muck them, and he immediately starts whining.
"What you doing? Hey! What you doing?"
"Sir. You folded your hand, and I'm mucking your cards."
"What you mean, I fold? When I fold? I no fold!"
"Sir. Your opponent showed his cards, you waved your hand at yours, and I took that to mean you were beat."
The whole table is thinking, "Let's just get on with it," but his opponent is being way too nice of a guy and asks him what he had. Cardgage says, "I have ace!" and it looks like he's about to start crying. So we're all thinking, "Uh oh, he also had a king but he had the ace kicker….now what's going to happen?"
Just to clarify, the dealer says, "Do you mean you had kings and fours with an ace kicker?" He looks a little bewildered (as usual), and he says, "No…I have ace. He only have king." The whole table groans, the dealer says, "Sir. This man has a king. There is a king on the board. He has two pair." Cardgage thinks about it for a second and says, "Oh, OK…he win." This whole hand has taken 6 minutes away from my life that I will never get back. Perhaps I should have just smoked a cigarette instead.

Next hand, now Cardgage is UTG and I'm UTG+1 with AJo. He limps, I raise hoping to isolate, everyone folds, he re-raises. Normally this would make me start to worry, but I'm a little steamed and he seems crazy. Flop J 5 3. He bets, I raise to see if he 3-bets an overpair but he just calls. Turn blank. Check, bet, call. River blank, check, bet, call. I flip my top pair, he flips his pocket queens, I now realize that...d'oh!...I was the WB part of WA/WB, I say, "Good hand." As soon as I fold the next hand, I get up to leave because I can't stand sitting next to this awful person. He gets all offended in his cute little smelly Russian way, and he looks up at me with his bloodshot puppy dog eyes and says, "You leave?!" After a pause I look down at him and say, "I leave." He looks even more upset and says, "Why you leave?!" I hardly know how to say 'why I leave,' so I just say, "Goodbye."

It's late. I head up to bed, and I'm back at the tables by 11am, this time playing 2/4 with my friend so the day won't be so painfully boring.

Everything's going great. We're having a good time playing at the same table. The play is 10x worse than Party 2/4. My buddy gets his aces cracked once by a 74s coldcaller and again by a K4o coldcaller. I've got AJs with two coldcallers once, I bet every street on a 7 4 2 9 A board and the two coldcallers chop the pot with pocket A9o.

We notice a biiiig fish (VPIP 95, PFR 4, stats courtesy of my buddy who played with him on Friday night) sit down at the table next to us, so we table change.

This is where it gets ugly.

A wildly drunk guy (in the 1 seat) who claims he has been banned for life from the Taj is holding forth and generally being an ass. It's kind of entertaining at first, but it quickly goes downhill.

But before we get to the drunk guy, let's look at the stupidest pot of the night.

The 6-player flop comes 5 5 5. It checks around to biiiig fish on the button and he bets it. Two callers. Turn is A. Check, check, bet….call, raise, re-raise….coldcall, cap, call….call. River is a blank…..check, bet, raise….coldcall, re-raise, cap….coldcall, call. At this point I say to my buddy, "One of these other two guys has pocket aces." I was wrong. First guy (the multiple coldcaller) shows AT, second guy (the aggressor) shows A9, and biiiig fish shows us 75 for the quads. Nice hand.

But back to the drunk. He bluffs like crazy. He raises, he checkraises, he 3-bets blind, he straddles….all with nothing. He plays hands completely blind, and wins them (2 out of 3 times). He's just crazy.

One of his blind hands was against a good player who kept raising and re-raising Q8 on a Q 3 2 9 5 board. At showdown, drunk guy looks at his cards for the first time and learns that he had been playing QJ, so he outkicked the other guy for a rather sizable pot.

Another hand he had Kc3c and he was heads up with our biiiig fish. The board is Qs Tc 7s 4h 3s. He checkraises the river, gets 3-bet, raises again, and calls another one only to have his bottom pair lose to….duh….a flush.

Later, he's first to act in a three way pot holding Ts 5c. He checks the Qc Js 4s 9h 8s river, second guy bets, third calls, he thinks for a second. He stands up, hovers over the board cards for a couple of seconds to make sure he sees all the numbers and suits correctly, finally comes to a conclusion, and loudly declares, "Oh! Well, I have the best hand! So I have to raise it, right? 'Cause I have the best hand! OK! I raise!" Now, besides the fact that there are three spades on the board, and besides the fact that a KT makes a higher straight, keep one thing in mind….the other two players are the biiiig fish and a bad Asian kid (see below). So, actually, he was right….he had the highest hand of the 3 of them, so he did in fact have "the best hand."

For me personally, the most entertaining thing about the guy was his method of raising. This is a 2/4 limit table, mind you. But when he wanted to raise, he wouldn't just put in 4 or 8 dollars depending on which street it was. Oh, no. He'd put in however much he darn well wanted. "4 to me? Make it 17." Or, "4 to me? OK, here's 4"…and then he'd put in 4 red chips. And practically each and every time he tried to put 4 white chips into a pot, he'd end up with something like 5 or 7 or 3 and he'd have to adjust. I don't know how the dealers were able to put up with his antics and also keep the game running.

OK, wrapping it all up now…..his best two lines of the night:
1. On one flop, someone bet, another guy folded, the action gets to him but he doesn't realize it b/c he's in the 1 seat. When the dealer makes him aware that it's 2 dollars to him, he thinks for a second and says, "I call. I swear to God, I call."

2. On another hand, it's one bet to him on the turn…..after lifting his cards a quarter of the way to his face, staring at them for 3 seconds, and placing them back down on the table in front of him, he loudly declares, "I raise blind."

And worst line of the night:
After a bad player wins a big pot holding Kd9d on a Ad As Jc 4d Jd board against his maniacal attempts to represent the full house, he steams for a second and then says, "Hey, I thought you Asian guys were supposed to be good at poker. But you know what? You suck. You suck! You. Suck. Yousuck! You suck."

At this point a floor manager comes over and escorts him out of the room.

Conclusion
With the unbelievably slow pace of play, the inability to multitable, the higher rake and more expensive drinks, the pounding bass that begins each night around 12:30 from the nightclub next door, and the people like Senor Cardgage…next time I get the urge to go to AC, I think I'll just stay home and play Party.
-web

[buffett]

Oh, I completely forgot about the big fight.

Saturday night around 9:30 or 10:00, some guy at the 1/2 NL table in the corner by the restrooms takes exception to a table coach, they stand up, one gets shoved, the other gets punched....and before you know it 85% of the players in the room are on their feet trying to get a better look at what's going on. The brush at the microphone starts yelling, "Security to the back of the room! Security to the back of the room!"

After a couple of minutes everyone except for 10 people in that corner are sitting down and playing again, and 20 minutes later it's as if nothing happened.

-web

[StevieG]

[ QUOTE ]

Conclusion

With the unbelievably slow pace of play, the inability to multitable, the higher rake and more expensive drinks, the pounding bass that begins each night around 12:30 from the nightclub next door, and the people like Senor Cardgage…next time I get the urge to go to AC, I think I'll just stay home and play Party.


[/ QUOTE ]

How do you write this fantastic trip report and come to this conclusion?

Not saying you have to sacrifice more hands with less rake do it everyday, but aren't lines like "I call. I swear to God I call" worth something on those occasions when you get the AC urge?

[CCx]

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I will fully admit to being the shy, nerdy type, and I don't think I have ever been accused of being the life of any party

[/ QUOTE ]

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next time I get the urge to go to AC, I think I'll just stay home and play Party.

[/ QUOTE ]

[poker327]

About the fight, I was only 1 out of probably 3 people at my table not to get up and see what the noise was about.

[zuluking]

Awesome report.