tommytwotoes

So after a dismal week in Indiana of losing poker I got in Friday night and went pretty much straight to bed, instead of hitting up the local card room. On Saturday I was faced with doing chores around the house and fixing my truck and mowing the yard… or wait… wait… didn’t fencewire say something about a Choctaw end of month tournament this Saturday? I looked through the postings in the forum and found it. It was scheduled to start at 11am. Since it was 9am I knew that I had to act fast,if i wanted to do it. Frankly at the time I really didn’t care, but it was better than the alternative of being responsible and mowing the yard etc. So I texted Marcus. He responded with he didnt really care. I decided to call him since he was obviously awake. I talked to him and explained my dilemma of not wanting to do anything productive. I ended up talking hims into going. and so we were off to the races. Long Story Short, The dude packs a chest of beer for the trip, nice, that is all there is to say about that.

We decide to take a piece of each others action. And that if one of us gets paid over $1400 that we will pay the other double our buy in back.

We arrive at Choctaw, a place I have not been in over a year, with just minutes to spare. We walk quickly inside and sign up and pay for the tourney. Take my seat and eventually get moved before the tourney starts and now I am at Fencewires table.

Things for the first hour did not go well we started out with 5k in chips and I found myself sucking wind with only 1100 in chips in the first hour and a half or so. I eventually caught a break when i hit a flush draw, I had a-j of spades raised preflop and got a few callers. The flop was 9-5-3 or something trashy. I guy pushed all in in front of me on the flop. Since there were two spades and i had two overs I figured F-it I need to get lucky at some point and I called. I ended up hitting the flush on the run and more than doubling up cause of the others in the pot preflop. I still was short stacked comparatively. But at least i have a few chips to play with. I won a few other random hands. One a guy paid me off pretty significantly when i was in the BB and it was limped and I flopped two pair. I bet hard the entire way and he called me down with a-4 he hit an ace on the turn and didnt want to let it go.

I end up getting moved to another table and I have about 7k in chips. The blinds at this point are I believe around 200-400 or maybe 300-600. In other words they were starting to escalate rather quickly. I get to the new table and get JJ right off the bat. a guy in front of me raises preflop to 1800. I just call, I wanted to make sure the flop was not dangerous before going all in.  It was 8 high. He bets out 2000 and i push all in its only 3-4k more for him to call and he folds. So that was a nice add on to the stack. I get a few more ands and somehow by the time the blinds are at 400-800 I am sitting on about 10-12k. I get A-K of diamonds and Raise preflop get one caller, its the old man who is the bigstack at the tournament and people have been complaining about him basically being a call station etc. He was in the SB. The Flop comes out Jd-3d-10c, so I have a flush draw and a straight draw and two overs. The guy pushes all in in front of me. after raising preflop to $3500 preflop I was not really prepared to give up 1/3 of my stack to someguy that may just have 10-9 or J-5. I really put him on Q-J which meant my overs were live and my flush draw might be missing an out and my straight was missing an out. So I made the call once again hoping to catch something and keep me alive and more importantly keep me relevant. The guy turns over AA…. dammit. but hey I still have a ton of outs… but my overs are no longer good. So I went from beign a 55-45 favorite to a 45-55 dog. But as luck would have it a diamond saved me on the river. Ten hands or so later I am sitting on over 20k and I get AA its still 400-800. I raise preflop to $2k I wanted to invite in some decent hands or induce a bluff all in or something,  and the guy i sucked out on with A-K min raises me to 4k,then a guy next to him reraises all in. He only had like 10-15k, I re-raise all in over the top of that hoping that the min raiser will fold. He doesn’t. He calls and has KK the other guy has 8h-7h. I mean really why push all in there with 8-7? you have enough chips to wait for a better spot than to try and steal from two guys that likely have hands. The KK guy still has me covered. The flop gave the 8-7 guy a flush draw. The turn gave him a straight draw also. I thought i was doomed. But a blank on the river gave em the entire pot. I now was sitting over 50k, and the bigstack. I ended up taking out another player a few hands later.so going into the final table I am the bigstack sitting on about 65k.

Everyone gets to the table and sits down. They start talking chop immediately… but instead of a realistic chop they offer a even chop 9 ways. The blinds are like 1k-2k and they want a even chop when some of the players were sitting on 10k or less. I told them I would take $2500 and they could do an even chop they said this was ridiculous…. we did decide that 9th-7th would get $300.
My bigstack didn’t last long. I got sucked out on for about 30k and then I was just in the middle of the pack. The blinds are going up at a blistering pace and I have not seen many decent hands. 2 people have been eliminated and everyone is sitting pretty even now except 1-2 two bigstacks. I have a little less than 30k. I get A-K of clubs the blinds are 2-4k and I raise to 12k a guy goes all in after me. I think and realize that I am glad that 7th gets $300 and I once again need to catch something. I figured the worst this guy had was a mid pair or possibly A-Q. I really put him on 10-10 or JJ for some reason and made the begrudging call. He flipped over QQ,I was surprised and relieved all at the same time. At least my outs were live. And I hit both of them on the flop. That doubled me up but didn’t knock that guy out as he had me covered by about 10k. So I am back in this. I pick up a few more pots and am 2nd in chips. they start talking chop once again with 6 people left. I tell them once again that me and the other big stack deserve a larger portion. They once again act like this is just stupid, so we come to no agreement. And a another person gets knocked out and then another and its down to 4. we play a little while trading chips and then chop talk comes up once again… everyone is relatively even. And thus a 4 way chop is agreed upon.

So with this chop I scored $2085 tipped $85 and paid off fencewire his $450. So I ended up with a nice score for 6 hours worth of work. I got lucky several times and unlucky others. Glad I was able to make it that far.

We get up there just minutes before the start of the tourney

So for my regular job I traveled to Kentucky, and as an avid poker player one of my first things to look up was where is the closest place I can go and play? That was answered rather quickly with a google search. Caesars in Southern Indiana just across the river from Louisville where I was going to be working.

Well as it turns out Caesars is no more it changed its name to The Horseshoe. I will say that I was somewhat impressed with this backwoods casino. Its a boat and apparently it is the largest boat casino in the US.The decor is rather high tone. The poker room is on the bottom floor (its 4 floors high). And its rather nice. looks like they have plenty of room to expand if they wanted to hold a decent size tournament also. I am guessing about 15 tables are currently setup. and they run mainly holdem games from 2-4 to 2-5nl… they also apparently had a Omaha game going last night.

As far as the players go I was unimpressed it appears that alot of them are just gamblers and thus are rather loose in their play. There are some that I would say are serious and good. There dont seem to be many in between. Granted I have played there only 3 nights in a row and only for a few housrs each time. But that is the general feel I get for the play so far.  All three nights have been profitable. I hope to continue the streak tonight and I hope to play about 3-4 hours. Instead of 1-2 hours as before.

There have been a few characters… you know the type that thinks they run the place and think that they are a pro. The type that justifies any call with a pot odds declaration. The type that dresses like a total slob wearing a t-shirt 5 times to small glasses that had to of been made in the 50’s and shorts like the basketball players wore when larry bird was in the NBA.  Despite all of this they think they are the greatest thing since slice bread. They donk off hundreds and buy back in for more win a hand that still doesnt get them back to even and then proclaim they are up $200 for the session…. really?

I also witnessed a older gentleman proclaim “I am going to go play blackjack , poker is for suckers.”. Good luck my friend. I just imagined the owner of a casino hearing that comment and then grinning from ear to ear. Moron please buy back in here instead of throwing it away at the blackjack table.

I will also post my comments on their buffet. It was worse than the winstar buffet. Heck Golden Coral looks appetizing compared to this shit box. Yet the cows,me included, lined up and paid our $20 to eat the filthy slop that patrons before us picked over. God I almost want to vomit. I will likely eat there again tonight…. just kidding.

The cocktail waitresses are a little on the white trash fat side and some are down right obese. I guess in these parts they have slim pickings for women so whatever works I guess. I was more amused that guys were still flirting with them like they were hotties. Not that I should be judging people seeing as how I am one fat bastard myself, but I thought I would throw the observation out there.

I have made about $600 there this week so I cant complain and I am hoping that over the next week that I am here that I can get that to about $1200 in profit.  This brings me to the announcement that my bankroll since I started the 10k project is now at just over 4k. I am not blazing any trails yet but I feel this last month of play has been good to me. I hope by months end this trend continues and that I will be over 5k and thus the half way point.

….September treated me rather well , I played A LOT. I played every day mainly at the HH room(code name not real name of room). Was close to making 2k that first week. It felt great. I then decide hey I want to go to winstar and give it yet another go. I decided to go on Sunday as I was driving back home from the HH Saturday night. I got home, got on the forum and had a private message from IOJ. He was drunk and clamoring about going to winstar on Sunday morning. I told him to call me to discuss going. He responded with I am wasted I will call you in the morning around 9-10.

So around 10:15 he calls me I just had a filling breakfast at IHOP and was walking out the door and talking to him, he decided to meet me outside the IHOP and we would go from there. Not knowing what car he drove besides his self proclaimed “old hooptie” I was looking for a 1960-70’s chevy or ford or something. About ten minutes after talking to him a 1968 Chevy Z28 totally restored pulls into the parking lot, I was thinking sarcastically “ya Jonny what a piece of shit”. The car left just as quickly and I considered calling IOJ, begging him to come back for me. Then reality hit that there was no way he got to IHOP that fast after telling me he still needed to get dressed etc.

IOJ shows up and we are off to Winstar World Casino! We had a few conversations about poker and Dallas poker but nothing earth moving, or unknown to the general masses. We mainly talked about his bar that he is trying to open. And how we would correct the worlds energy problem. We came up with a simple solution and checked and rechecked the physics behind it scribbling down formulas on a few separate paper napkins, we had in our hands the working version of cold fusion, all we now had to do was get in in the hands of Val Kilmer and we could deliver this solution to the world!

So we get to winstar and we both play 1-2NL. I get raped repeatedly. End up down $800 and decide to go sit out for a while. I make a few phone calls for various things. then end up calling Jim to see what he was up to. I tell him I want to come out there in October etc and play in Vegas again and he was cool with that. And he agreed that cold fusion was the wave of the future. He wanted me to fax over the formulas for safe keeping but seeing as how he lost all of our data on our previous wind catching experiment that he logged for us for at least 6 years I did not trust him to hold on to this information as it might fall into the wrong hands. After talking to Jim I decide to get back in the action and play some more cards.

I ended up getting seated at IOJ’s table and made a few bucks, and cashed out. IOJ had left the table eariler and went to go to play video poker cause he knows its a skill game, then he played some 2-5nl and really ended up playing 2-5 PLO. The man is an animal. He likely happen to be able to capitalize on people having second nuts and him having the nuts. I watched him play for a few rounds and I was surprised at the jolliness of the table. Also note to self dont hold your cards up in the air like the goofy asian lady was doing so that the thug life cool hip hop Indian (dot not feather) guy can look down the line and see your cards. IOJ had almost 4 times what he bought in for sitting in front of him so I knew it was a good session and that I would see a windfall from this since I backed him. He went and cashed out and I asked for my share … He laughed and explained that I sucked at cards. After taking in this news it dawned on me, backing doesn’t mean sitting behind someone watching them play it means actually financially investing in someones play… “doh”… oh well I will know better next time.
I did the ride of shame home once again from winstar a loser. But whatever, like a gambler I guess I now believe I am due for a win. I will likely hit up the HH again this week a few times and try to recover my loss at winstar. I really need to break above the 4k mark on my 10k challenge, and losing $600 at winstar is not helping me.

Some side notes:

1. Winstar is supposedly opening a new hotel and casino behind the tent.

2. that fake building structure they are building in front of their tent, they realized that it looked like ass and stopped making it. (but it doesn’t appear that they are tearing it down just yet. (what a bunch of morons I mean really they could have made the structure on one section seen that it was going to look retarded and then tore that down .. but noooo they had to build the scaffolding for the entire length of the complex, then put that facing up in one section, then decide it was ugly. That was likely a lot of 50 cent antes from the black jack tables flushed down the drain).

… I got nothing to talk about really so I will talk about my weekend poker plans.

I am heading to the honey hole to night to play in a freeroll. Then tomorrow they are having the august monthly freeroll. depending on weather or not they get a cash game going after each of these I may or may not take the trip up to winstar. In reality I really need to fix my front hub/bearing on my truck before I make a long trip on it. so that will likely get done tomorrow morning. Trust me it will be fun… not really.

Then on Sunday I will go to winstar and try once again to break through my losing streak there. The goal is to make about a grand this weekend in total. I need to get past this back and forth break even shit, and make some money.

My 10k challenge is in its second month and I am sitting on just under 3k. Not bad and not good. Keeping track of expenses is an eye opener, I think that many players might be break even players but lose money on the cost of traveling to play poker. I have been fortunate in that I am above break even, and I will brag about that every chance I get to humiliate the losers out there…. I kid I kid… knock on wood all that jazz… my bankroll at the moment is so tiny that any bad run could send me reeling and waiting for my next paycheck deposit of $200.

“there’s two kinds of people in this world, there are pimps , and there are hoes, and pimpin aint easy!”

Had a great night at a local room last night. Was glad to see a few friends in attendance as well.Things got off to a great start when I had the balls to call down a player that likes to play aggressively when I had an under pair to the board, any other player and I would have folded on the flop my small pocket pair, Him I chose to call down and it paid off. He isnt a bad player, he just likes to come out and have fun.
The big hand of the evening was when I was UTG. I had pocket 6’s and chose to raise to $12 to build a decent pot. MY reasoning is that in this game I know that I am going to get 5 callers and thus if I can hit a set those 5 preflop callers basically are building a pot that is decent enough if I hit my set. I did hit my set. The flop was 7-6-J . I was first to act and knew I would get at least 1 caller with a bet of $20 so i bet $20. I get 3 callers … ok that is cool now I need to think about what draws they are on. I figured one of them was on a straight draw, 9-10 or 9-8 even possibly 4-5. And one of them had a J with any kicker. I didn’t put anyone on a set of Jacks cause they would have reraised preflop and them having 7’s is unlikley also. Another thing that was going on is that two of the players in the hand where joking around about how they both had the same hand and one of them claimed pocket kings. So while I doubted them to be telling the truth, I also figured that them warning me to calm down on the betting meant that they had something but nothing great.  So like I said I bet $20 got three callers and the turn comes out another J. Ok that is a great turn for me. Seeing as how i know that one of them likely has a J I am likley stacking them on this hand. I bet $50 into a pot of  about $150. First guy folds next guy goes all in for about $70 and the last guy repushes for like $215. It was like $165 for me to call. I stopped and thought for a moment… was it possible for them to have a higher full house? it made me think about then talking about pocket kings. I thought hey they are not now pushing with KK especially after my strong bets with a J high flop and then another J on the turn. They obviously are not afraid of the J’s. it gave me concern that maybe one of them did have the pocket 7’s. I thought about it and decided hell the most likely thing is that both of them have a J and don’t have a full house. Or that one of them actually does have an over pair and the other does have a J. I mainly called cause I am not folding what is 5th theoretical nuts on this board and in reality the 2nd nuts for realistic hands to have played out this way. I turned my 6’s over as I called and one player didn’t show his hand and David N turned over A-J. The river came out a 4 and I raked a pretty large pot.

The guys gave me a hard time about thinking so long instead of just insta calling. I guess I like to think about things and replay the events in my head before committing $200 to a hand. And I think that everyone should take a moment to re-read the board and re-play the hand in your mind before putting a substaintial sum in play.

So it was a profitable night and a good comeback from the $600+ loss at winstar, I ended up well over $900 in profit last night which i definitely needed.

However my play has still been about break even for the last 30 sessions which is frustrating to say the least. You can see this in the graph I show you here.

Is there some secret that I just don’t know about ?

I am a consistent loser up there the last month or so. I keep telling myself that hey it will turn around or that hey I am only one big hand on several trips from being a big winner up there. But when ? When will it turn around?

I know that many will read this as me just complaining. And maybe I am . But I really need to turn this tide. I am sitting here at 3:45pm on labor day. and i ma thinking about heading up to Winstar. The things that are rolling through my mind are:

“Do I want to do this?”

“Why go up there and play if I know I am going to lose, or think that I am likely going to lose?”

and my personal favorite… the ride home after losing…. “the Winstar ride of shame sucks”, I think maybe it sucks cause you feel defeated and feel beat down … not really at the current loss , but at the thoughts that you have during that hour… you know when you say “I am never going back”, ” Fucking suck outs!”, “Fucking Donkeys!”… But those comments are not the answer.

The Answer is simply I make mistakes. Mistakes in my play that lead to losses greater than they should be.

“I’m not a player I just crush a lot.” — Big Pun

The middle was the best part….

The trip was chalk full of crazy poker action, poker attitude and poker idiocy! And I like it! Got off to a bad start on Friday night at Caesar’s palace Jim later reminded me that I banned Caesars a long time ago and that it used to be that every time I used to go by the place that I would flip the building the bird… I guess they recognized that and took advantage of me coming back into their building. That night was rough and my bankroll took a hit After losing my second buy in by flopping a straight and another guy flopping a higher straight it was time to go.

The next morning the plan was for Jim and the other PDC members and wives to go traipsing around the desert at red rock…. “Ohhh I heard someone got married out there once and that it must have been cool” … whatever it’s the fucking desert and fucking hot how much sand can you look at? …instead I made an executive decision that my fat ass is going to sit inside the confines of a casino where the ac is pumping at full force. So I got to Bellagio around 8am. Players still going at it from the night before and me fresh from a 4 hour nap. I got a blow job from a Asian hottie in the lobby, right next to the pretty flowers. Mark that. I went in the poker room and put my name on the SNG list , a satellite to get into the $1000 weekly tournament. Cost me $240 bucks. I am like 10 times better than the avg donk out there playing SNG’s , unfortunately I got raped on the bubble . Fuck you I have kings! Need I say more?

From there I met up with forum member rebelraider at the Venetian.

Phone conversation: “Hey Tom whats up?” …. “not much man, where you want to play some cards?”…”how bout the venetian?”… “sure where is it in relation to Bellagio?”… “ohh its right next door!, go out front and hook a left.”

First let me say it aint right next door. Second let me say I am fat. Third let me say that was how I got in my last workout of the week, for the Bigstack Exercise Survivor Competition. It took me like 35-40 minutes to get from the Bellagio poker room to the entrance of the Venetian. Seriously freaking 40 minutes, yes I am fat, handicap and slow, but that aint “right next door”. And it was well over 100 degrees. I felt like sitting down in the shade and buying a bottle of ice cold water from the immigrant families that line the people bridges, and begging for change while I cooled off. Maybe hold up a sign that read “I aint gonna lie this money is going straight to the rake!”

I got to the Venetian and things were going well. I was playing great poker and blowing bitches up. Sucked out on a one dude runner runner style! Sorry dude get more chips to make me fold next time. Got to pop a boner at the poker table as this milf was sitting next to me and her milf friends came by and then to top things off this milf gets a massage from what had to of been the hottest asian chic in Vegas, Damn. This milf was moaning as this hottie leaned into her . Ohhhhh that feels good… ummmmm…. Jesus fucking Christ how can I play with this shit going on… every man at the table was having to be reminded that it was his turn to act. The massage girl left and I was left with 2 options go and jerk it in the bathroom or just let the hard on die off… The milf announced she was leaving soon after , and then after a few hands announced her last hand. I got 44 and it was limped in. The flop was 3-5-Q, it checks around to the milf and she bets 15 I call for some stupid reason and everyone else folds… she then doesn’t realize that I am in the hand and she turns her cards face up. The dealer says she can still play the hand face up, the turn is a K and I say “well I have you beat now”. She asks if she folds will I show and I say yes. I bet 25 and she folded I turned over my 44, told her I lied. She called me a tease. And I responded “well it’s only fair you having been teasing me for the last 30 minutes or so with that hottie giving you a massage!” , she laughed hit me in the shoulder and then leaned over and kissed my cheek. This shocked me and I said “ well that will give me enough fantasies to last a month!” … everyone laughed and she left.

Me and rebelraider left the Venetian and met up with Jim, Alan(drove in from LA), and Heather for dinner at redrobin then went and played pool at a place near their place. At this point I had only slept like 3 hours on the trip and I was starting to doze off with a full belly of burger meat and queso. Got a few beers in me and I was done.

Woke up on Sunday morning to find that itsoverjonny was playing in a MTT on stars … I railed him for a while, at the same time playing some cash games on FTP. He got down to the final table .. .but I believe while he was at two tables he fell asleep , cause it was auto folding or well it looked like it was autofolding… along with jonny not responding to chat messages… I pulled out the cell phone and placed an emergency wake up text. He came back to the game apparently and replied to my text message with “wake these fucking cards up!” He went out 6th I believe shortly after.

Went to the Wynn on Sunday and played well enough and made some decent money. But I will say them playing with $1 and $3 chips is a pain in the ass. This table was also the worst collection of donkeys I have ever seen. I sit down and the guy to my right says “welcome, you just sat down at a dream table, the guys at the other end are just giving it away.”…. after 30 minutes of play I decided that everyone including that guy that talked to me was giving it away just as much if not more than the guys at the far end of the table. I love it when people think they know everything about poker, but they don’t. Makes me smile.

We left and went to the mirage and made a few more bucks. Nothing really to report here. Besides a reminiscent moment of when me, easytiger and Jim were walking through the mirage doors on the last trip to Vegas and this escort was telling this middle age man how to get her up to his room etc… ahhh Vegas.

Monday morning we went downtown and were going to play at the Golden Nugget. Unfortunately the Golden Nugget didn’t want us to play there. We put ourselves on the list only to see a new comer go and directly sit down at a chair were someone had just gotten up from. Jim saw this and quickly went over to the manager after the manager had taken that new guy chips. Jim asked him why wasn’t someone called off the list? The manager replied “ oh I forgot we had a list”….really? you are running one table of NL and you forgot you had a list? Man I can just imagine the stress you are under…. So we left and went to the Venetian where I was consistently sucked out on. And or just made bad plays myself and ended the trip on a losing note instead of a winning note.

All in All it was a good trip, I made money and I will make more trips knowing that I can at least make enough to pay for the trip.

So this weekend I finally ran out of my “fun” money and on Monday I deposited from my official bankroll. So Far I have limited myself to very short sessions about 30 minutes a pop playing 50 cent $1 NL Holdem. Things have gone well as each time i have profited about $60-70, so I cant complain. I will say that the online play will just be at random I don’t plan on any marathon sessions, it will be more of a convience thing. I plan on try to have the bulk of my play be in live games for this experiment.The online games that I have been apart of have been rather tight, almost too tight, I have tried to take advantage of this by being a little LAG.
In other news I had a bad session at one underground room on friday night and another bad session at the other room I frequent. That second room I wish they would move locations but it appears they are not going anywhere. Both of these losses were really nothing to write about just things didnt go my way, I do feel like my heart wasnt in the second one or that my mind was on other things.

Tonight I head off to a room and try to redeem myself. I am setting a goal of $400 in profit for the night(if I hit that I am leaving). I will post back here the results.(ended up only making just over 200 in profit)

Well it was a rocky start on my first month of the 10k Challenge, But the last week or two was good to me. One of the local card rooms provided me with most of my profit. Winstar to my surprise was a losing proposition. And another place in town was a break even spot. $23 an Hour was my pay rate, which I am happy with. But I am hoping that I at least have that at the end of the next month, I would really like it to be above 30 an hour, but that will take some doing. I put in over 80 hours at the tables this month, and hope that trend continues. Tentatively I will set a goal of $25 an hour and 100 hours this next month. I am hoping to make it out to Vegas next weekend and play for a good 20-30 hours while there.
See ya at the tables.

Well like most Tuesday’s now a days I spent it at a certain poker room in town. I made a decent score(+$760). There was one hand in particular that created the lion’s share of the profit.

I had Pocket jacks,was in early position and raised to $17. I get 5 callers. Right before the flop the new waitress walks up behind me and starts massaging my neck/shoulders. I don’t blame her I am a sexy fucking guy but this was not the time for this shit. It freaked me out, yall that know me know that I don’t like that massage crap… see this post for previous documentation: massage . I spilled some chips I was trying to grab to be ready for my next bet/move. I said something like really please stop and it took her a while to stop… just weird .. everyone laughed at me but whatever…. I guess I am the weird one.

So anyway  the flop was J-8-10 two spades. I was probably still freaked out and I under bet. I only bet $30 everyone called. and the last person to act went all in for $10 more which of course everyone called… we are seeing the turn 5 way. which isn’t good, as long as the turn doesn’t pose much of a threat I am going all in. The turn was the 4 of diamonds I believe and I went all in. Guy to my left immediately calls for $160. then the guy next to him calls for like $200+, I was really worried. The last guy to act thought for a long time then showed QQ and folded. Good fold by the way. I flipped over my set of Jacks and two people showed that they had a 9 and where on the open ended straight draw… the other player didn’t show and just mucked(I guess he had two pair or just top pair?). I was surprised that no one was on the flush draw. The river turns over and its the 9 of spades. Thank god no one was on the flush draw and thank god the guy with QQ folded(he would have hit the straight). I ended up taking it down with top set, and my stack was now over $800. I won another $100 hand when I had 10-10 vs 99 a few hands later, all in on the flop of 8-6-3.

After another orbit or two I decided to lock the win up and go home. As I was making this decision, one of the players apparently that actually reads my blog made a comment about how I was texting someone to call me so I could get out of there…..