Up $300 (Mar 24 Commerce)

The Commerce Casino... I'd kept hearing how it's the best poker game in the universe, and so I decided to take a trip out there. I spent the entire week before doing basically nothing: sleep, eat, tv, gym. Happy with the $2400 I'd won earlier in the week, bringing my wad of cash to $3700 that I'm feeling is pretty fragile. Anyway, my friend was working out there, so I had a bed at The Four Seasons, and free use of his rental car for a few days.

I went there with the intention of winning a few thousand in a 5/10 game, and moving to a bigger game when I can put together $5000 total. But the 5/10 game has a max buy in of $400. Which sucks, as in Atlantic city and Vegas, and everywhere else it's at least a $1000 cap. So I take a look at the 10/20 game, where the minimum buy-in is $600, and no maximum. And after sweating it for a little, I decide despite my huge anxiety, to put $1500 on one of the ten tables they have running.

So, I sit down and start to lose, and lose, and lose more. And before I know it, I'm down $1700, and I've managed to put every red cent I've brought with me on this table. I played horribly... over playing pocket tens and AK, bluffing too often, no patience, not really paying attention.

Eventually I settle down, achieve a calmness that lets me climb back to being up $100 after eight hours. I'm about ready to leave, but I decide that I'm going to bluff out a the next hand for a small profit and go home. That hand happens to be a 5/3 that I raise to $80, I get 2 callers.

The flop = 53T, 2 diamonds.
Wow! Nice, two pair. It's checked to me, I start counting out a bet, when a forty year old guy says something like "Don't make it too much... I don't know if I can call $200." He's a somewhat decent player, but he plays too many hands for too much money, but he's been getting lucky all day and is showing a decent profit. I count the pot to be around $250, and so I stupidly say "two hundred it too much? How about $180?" To which he says "oh, that's just perfect, I can go all in." And he pushes all in for $600 total or so. It folds around to me, and I insta-call. I had the right read, and dude of course has AX of diamonds... And of course he turns the diamond for the flush. Swell...

So, now I'm down about $800.

I'd been playing for about nine hours at this point, and my time limit is eight hours for reasons like the following hand. And as I'm sitting at this table, I'm very aware that I should have gotten up, and left with the small loss, and not turned it into a disaster. But, as I look at my stack it just chaps my ass that he turned that diamond and that I can't leave with profit.

A sixty year old woman (who the dude who just cracked me was calling "grandma"), who I'd busted twice earlier while getting back to even, was getting frisky for the past hour. She was constantly making a $200 pre flop raise. Which doesn't make much sense in this game, as she was usually winning the hands uncontested and taking the $30 worth of blinds. Anyway, she does the $200 a few hands after my suck-out, and I have 9T of hearts (ahh, this fucking hand...). I'd been waiting for a good hand and/or the balls to pop one of her $200's, and in my tilted head this 9T looked like an amazing hand and a great spot to do it. So I grab a bunch of $100 chips without counting and make it $500. She goes all in almost instantly!!!

Wow. Well, I'm fucking tired, and way on tilt, and looking down at my stack after throwing away that $500 makes me even more on tilt.

And then I start to do the math.. and I make a huge mistake..
As I have only a thousand left in front of me at this point, I keep thinking "It's $1000 to win $3000." Or 3-1. Which is wrong, it's $1000 to win $2000, or the pot of $1000, plus her $1000 that she'd match of my money... It'd be a $3k total pot but I'm only going to win $2k. Yes? Got it?

Then I make another mistake...
I figure, "well, against the AK that she pushed with before, I'm 3-2, so this is a great call." The possibility that she had a pair didn't even enter my mind.

Anyway, I put my money in, she has... AA

But...
flop = 99Q, turn = X, river = T, I have a full house, she has Aces up. I'm in such disbelief that it takes me a few seconds to turn over my hand. I can't speak, I sit back and let the dealer count my money out. The table kind of goes nuts.

The next hand I'm the big blind, I refuse to take it. As I'm stacking my chips, I say "I'm done. If I'm going to do things that fucking dumb, I have to go." And I get up and leave immediately with a $300 profit on the day.