Last Day in Vegas

I don’t know if I’m in the mood to talk about poker or not, but here’s what I did in that hand I posted about yesterday. I folded. It probably seems like an easy fold to you, but, as is the general theme this weekend for both my $1-2 NL sessions, top pair is not only gold, it’s platinum, given the dearth of playable hands I’ve had and the even fewer I’ve had hit the flop.
Plus most of the players I”ve run against were willing to lose their whole stack on top pair, regardless of their kicker.
But I do play tight. I’m not an especially creative player. And I’m always worried in new situations of someone taking advantage of that.
Still, I folded for another day, Friday, when I got to play poker with Carmen and Miami Don.
The main reason I folded was not because of the bet, it was because he looked down at his hand before he called my bet. I’ve never seen a situation where someone looked at his hand before calling a bet if he didn’t have a hand. The exception is if he’s on a draw, and there was no draw out there. Given that practically everything beat me out there, and I knew he had a hand and wasn’t bluffing, I folded.

Friday was a good session only because I got to meet Carmen and Miami Don, who are great, funny people. I really enjoyed meeting them.




And, well, we played this:






A quarter of the male blogging population probably just dropped their laptops. Did you hear that? I think Waffles’ head just exploded.

Alas, the poker wasn't THAT interesting. In fact at the MGM it wasn’t interesting at all. I won the first hand I played and the last hand I played. I won nothing in between. I didn’t completely lose my buy in, but it got whittled down pretty well. The highlight of my evening was getting to fold a set of 10s, the best hand I’d seen by far in two days, on a J,A,10 board on the turn after one guy went all in and another player pushed $150 more on top of that.

I always question my ability when I have two long, significant losing sessions in a row. I’ve come to the conclusion that I think I played fine. You can’t make many moves at pots when four people are willing to call any raise. I bluffed a couple times and got called by third pair once and the other I gave up on the turn.

I played last night, at the Luxor. I'll write about my poker experience later. It didn't go well again.

Otherwise we’ve had a great time relaxing. Kate woke up today and said, “I’m ready to go home." I miss my kids. It’s the first time I’ve missed them in a while. Missing your children is a good thing. You stop taking it for granted that they’re going to be around forever.

The cigarette smoke is still sticking in my nostils, and the whirl and buzz of the slot machines are still ringing through my ears, and last night's buffet meal is slowly crawling through my gullet. It's hard to get Vegas out of my system, but I'm working it out.
It's snowing in Colorado. I may go for a run tonight regardless.

Poker will be around forever. Mindless fun will be around forever. My kids won’t. Especially not at the age they are now.

Viva, Las Vegas. See you in December.