Recently in Poker Category

I enjoy poker. But I'm not, by any stretch, a "great" player, nor am I naturally wealthy. Thus, when I play in anything other than a home-game, I limit myself. Either I'll enter into a multi-table tournament with a decent payout, or I limit myself to something like 2/4 Limit, or maybe 3/6. But, beyond that is simply outside my reach, both from a skill level along as well as from a bankroll level.

Thus, I was kind of sad that I didn't get to do anything at Hollywood Casino in Aurora. I had been out in the 'burbs visiting some friends, and on the way back I realized I passed (literally) right by the casino. It was convenient enough that if I didn't change out of the lane I was driving in, I'd've have continued back to Chicago. So I went in, got myself a players club card, pulled some cash from the ATM, and set off for the Poker room, looking to play.

I had two options... a single-table tournament with a $90 buy-in (oof), or, get this... 5/10 was the minimum spread.

I simply couldn't afford to bring enough cash to the table to play 5/10, and a single-table tournament simply doesn't have a whole lot of appeal at that level of buyin. It's too easy for a couple friends to stack the game, and the newcomer would never know. (In a multi-table, it's a lot harder to do that because people are constantly, randomly, thrown from table to table).

I couldn't even find a blackjack table that would have met my normal cash requirements... hell, even the Bellagio, that home for rich people, has $5.00 blackjack from time to time... the minimum I saw was $20 on blackjack which, again, was over my head.

So, in the end, I left my cash in my pocket and came back to the hotel, never having gambled a single dollar. I'm not sure if it's a testament to self-control (and, obviously, the fact that I am not a gambling addict *grin*), or if it's simply an indication of how poorly the casino services the customers.

Then again, since they've got lots of people all the time, I have to assume it's the former.

Got invited to a private game this evening. Bought in for $100. Over the course of the evening I sold $60 in chips (so I was effectively at a $40 buy-in) and cashed out $175 at the end of the night.

Turn $100 into $235 in four hours? That's not a terrible hourly rate, really.

This morning I returned to Bay 101 for my first honest-to-goodness "real live tournament". Everything prior had been either a "tourney-style home game" or a charity event.

As I told Mark (who also plays poker) on the phone afterwards, I was both really happy and really sad with my performance.

The happy: I finished 19th out of 126 players, which is IMHO a pretty damned good showing for my first time. I started off with a series of great hands and was the chip-leader for all the tables (that we could see, so of about four tables) for the entire first four rounds (one hour) of the tournament. I felt like I held my own, and by and large, did very few stupid things.

The sad: Only the top 18 positions paid out. I was bubble boy. And, to make matters worse, as I replayed things in my head on the ride home, I realized that everything I had done in my final fifteen minutes of play was wrong, in every conceivable way. I think I got too fixated on "how many players are left, and where are you in regard to making it into the money" that I started to lose focus on the things I needed to do to actually get there. I could have survived -- easily -- another round of the table, if I had only retained focus and not called when I didn't have to (and, obviously, shouldn't have).

I saw some holes in my game, and they bit me once or twice, but they're holes I've known about for a while, and that I just keep trying to correct.

Ah, well, at least I can say I was in a tournament that had Matt Savage as the tournament director. (He's the guy who does many of the WPT tournaments, and also the World Series of Poker, but he's actually an employee of Bay101 as well).