Rob, Buck Nekkid and Shamrock's Big Adventure

First of all kudos to J Mo. She hit me up with Flushstraighted 30 seconds after my arrival at Varsity Club Friday night. Cheers J MO!



Rob, Buck and I took to the road Saturday afternoon for a day of pokering up at the Winstar Poker Emporium. It was an uneventful ride as we stopped at Love's truck stop so Buck and Rob could get a Subway sandwich. I passed on that since Merlotgirl and I had gone to our Saturday Brunch at Breadwinners, on Preston. We've really taken a liking to the place and sit at the bar, watching TV and talking to our favorite Gay Bartender, who used to be a waiter...Antonio. As a matter of fact he's the reason we now call the poker hand Q3, the Antonio. Originally called either the San Francisco waiter, or the Gay Waiter...it is now The Antonio. We highly recommend breakfast at Breadwinners.


We get to Winstar about 1:30 or so. I get seated at a new $4/$8 Limit table after about a 10 minute wat. The room was pretty full, and would end up getting very full later in the day.


For some strange reason, which I have been unable to figure out I must go down at least one buy-in before I turn thinga around and head the right direction. This time I actually started out pretty good winning a few hands, before I lost that first buy-in. As a matter of fact it ended up being a pretty bad day, as I headed deeper into the negative. They eventually broke our table and I was seated at another table, where I continued to get my big hands run down. My KK runs into an A 6 4 flop. Of course someone had the A. My KK runs into a JJ2 flop...of course someone had a J. My AA ran into a 7 Q 2 flop, which wasn't so bad until the player playing 7 4 hit his kicker on the turn. As I've always said, my favorite kicker is one that pairs the board. Things did not start to turn around until this next hand.


I'm in the BB with 5c 8c. Not a stellar hand by any stretch of the imagination. UTG raises pre flop and their are 5 callers before it gets back to me, so I'm looking at calling $4 into a $44 pot. Even 85 is good enough to play with those 11 : 1 pot odds. So I call. ($56 in the pot). Flop comes 467 rainbow. hmmm....I flop the nuts. What to do...what to do. SB checks...I check to the Preflop raiser. He bets...5 callers back to me. I don't want to lose anyone on the small bet round, figuring raiser will bet out on the turn too. So I call. (Pot now at $84).


Turn is a beautiful A of yellow horseshoes. Leaving a perfectly innocent board of 467A...and no possible flush. A beautiful rainbow. I planned to check..hoping raiser would bet, and everyone else would call before I could 2 bet it. SB checks, I check, bettor bets...(my plan is working like a charm) it gets called to the SB and she..... RAISES!!!!!!! WOOOOOHOOOOOO. Time to put the hammer down...I briefly consider just calling and hopefully carrying the rest of the players into the pot...but no..I make it 3 bets. Original bettor insta calls. Player next to him does not like it, but calls another $16. Next 2 players fold and SB caps it!!!!!!! Yes there is a god. Let me get my calculator out and see if I can figure out how much is in the pot now. (cha ching $228).



I've still got the absolute stone cold nuts. What the heck could these other 3 players have. No flush draw...those peeps are gone with the rainbow board. Could be someone with 2 pair or a set. Could be someone with 89. Soooooo.....All I need to look out for is the board not pairing, and no 10 or 5. I must say, I don't even know what the river card was. It was a number that was unfamiliar to me. I know for a fact it didn't pair the board, and it wasn't a 5 or a 10. I remember what those numbers look like. So lets just say it was the gizmo of purple clovers. Deep breath. Check my cards. Recalculate... yes...a 5 and an 8 do in fact make the nuts on a 467AGizmo board. Okie Dokie here we go. SB bets...I raise...original bettor thinks for a bit and finally puts his $16 in..next guy folds...SB doesn't have many chips left so she partially 3 bets me by putting her last $14 in the pot...and since her bet was more than half a raise, I can cap it. Cappaccino!!!!!! So I do and Original bettor has to call at this point. Although he takes his time again. The SB asks me a question while I'm waiting, but I don't hear her since my MP3 player is on...the dealer tells her to not talk about it because the other guy is still in the hand. I hold my cards up so she can see them and she says, I figured as much. She has the same hand. 8 5 to both of the blinds and we chop a huge 4/8 pot of...$310 (minus rake). It's a good sign when it takes the dealer 4 pushes to shove the megafuckton of chips over to you. This one hand puts me on the road to recovery. While I didn't make it all the way back to even...it ended up not too bad.



By now it was getting very late...or early as the case may be. Buck started winning some big hands at his table after going card dead for a long stretch...so we ended staying a bit later than originally planned. You can read about his exploits with HKS on his blog over at http://pokeroutlawoneouter.blogspot.com/.


Unfortunately, about an hour before we leave another table breaks and a hearing impaired woman, who allegedly plays at Winstar all the time, either 4/8 limit or 10/20 No Limit comes to our table...and she brings over $700-$800 in chips. Damn..she must be really good. Uh...not so much. I wish she could have gotten to our table a lot earlier. In the one hour we played, she managed to play every hand. Raising most of them preflop...and betting all the way...with basically crap. I think she won one hand where she raised preflop with 8d 9d and hit a flush on the turn. But most of her hands weren't that good...and she proceeded to donate about 1/2 of her $700+ in only one hour. Oh well...I'm sure she'll be there again when we go to play. At least I hope so.



IMPORTANT EVENT:


Wednesday night is Nanuck's birthday and Pinky has requested everyone's presence at EZ to celebrate. I know I'll be buying Mickey an Irish Car Bomb (thanks for the idea J-Man) hopefully others will buy him that raspberry creamy concoction he came up with called "Lick Me Long Time", and someone else can get him a large Tuaca Lemon Drop. It is difficult to explain the distress signals being sent out by your body once an Irish Car Bomb lands on top of the Lick Me Long Time/Tuaca Lemon Drop combo. Yes...when the nectar of the gods (Guiness) is combined with Jamesons and Baileys (one might actually consider this the holy trinity) and then dropped on top of whatever the hell is in that raspberry stuff, and the Lemony goodness of a Tuaca Lemon Drop...things get a bit interesting. Oh... I almost forgot the piece de resistance when Neva topped it all off by giving me a Three Legged Monkey....Mmmmm Mmmmm good.


COUNTDOWN to VEGAS:


It is now T minus 12 days and counting before Merlotgirl and I return to the scene of the crime. Where she, in a moment of weakness, made me the happiest person alive by marrying me. It's been the best year of my life. And for me it makes the old joke/toast "Here's to wives and girlfriends...May they never meet" an oxymoron. She's my wife, my girlfriend and my best friend. I'm very lucky and eternally grateful. I love you Pookie!!!!

Upcoming Events

It's about time to update the list of upcoming events. As you can see from the latest poll, Grapefest is upon us again. For those of you who didn't go last year it was great. Many Texas wineries are present and the wine tasting was fantastic. Respond now, and contact our social coordinator, Pinky, so she can compile the list!

For those men in the crowd who aren't invited to the Women's Only Poker event tomorrow, I'm probably looking to head up to Choctaw for an afternoon and evening of poker. Give me a shout out or talk to me tonight at Varsity Club.

First person to mention the term "flushstraighted" to me this week gets a shot!

To quote one of my favorite poker writers, Tommy Angelo, "when I keep missing and they keep hitting, I get very flushstraighted".


Ship it!

One Eyed Jacks!!

Sorry for the lack of updates. Been hellaciously busy at work. As a matter of fact it looked like I was going to be heading off to Kansas City this weekend, although now it seems to be put off for a while.

Spent 10 lovely days in western Florida. Sarasota to be exact. Worked about 45 hours overtime during that period so there wasn't much time for fun. I did manage to squeeze 2 nights of poker at the Sarasota Kennel Club, which has a poker room. One Eyed Jack's! Nice name for a poker room. Nice chip too. A greyhound staring at you with a patch over one eye.

Strange games being spread there though. $2 limit. I didn't particularly care for 2/4 limit at Tampa Bay Downs when I was there, because it was basically play every hand and we'll see who has hit something by the river. With a straight $2 limit game it was going to be worse. Much worse. So I decided to play 1/2 No Limit. There was a $60 buy in for that game. Not a $60 Max or a $60 Min....just $60. I did ok the first night cashing out up a little. The second night was a much different story. I had a case of second best hand...and there was one old guy at the table who would play any two suited cards, and he went on a ridiculous rush. In one dealers half hour down, he hit 5 flushes. He went from about $40 to close to $500 in that one half hour. My final hand of the night was KK under the gun. I made it $12. 2 callers. 8 2 J flop. I bet $30 (only had $20 more behind), kid who just sat down goes all in. I call. He had 88 and flopped a set. I didn't improve. Time to go back to the hotel. Some nights you just can't win, and this was one of those.

The rest of the trip to Florida was uneventful except for the fact that Merlotgirl bought me a great laptop for my birthday, and I took that along with my work laptop. This way I was able to play online poker at night, after a long day at work. I may be addicted. It's possible.

I usually play Single Table Sit N Go Tournaments on Bodog. There's also a $10 + $1 Pot Limit Hold'em Multi Table Tournament every night at 9 Central time. There are usually only 18 - 45 players in it, and I seem to always do pretty well in it. The week I was in Florida I played it 3 times and bubbled out once, got 2nd once, and 5th once. The second place was in a 45 man tournament and paid $108, so that was pretty nice.

More posts to follow.