Friday, May 25, 2007

Up $7805 5/5 – 5/21 Part 4... The Arizona Bay

5/10 Up $1775 (Commerce)
Nice start to the trip, of me missing my flight by like 10 minutes, and arguing with the manager and clerk to not charge me $500 to change my ticket. I learned something though.. that if you ever miss a flight, tell them that there was an accident that delayed you from getting to the airport. The conversation went something like this..
Manager: “Why were you late?”
Me: “Uh, the train was running late.”
“Oh...”
“Wait, why did you ask me that? What does it matter?”
“Well, if there was an accident, we could change your ticket.”
“Ok, then, there was an accident.”
“I don't believe you”

So he walks away, and I take everyone's name down, refuse to leave and insisting for a good ten minutes that there was indeed an accident until they change my flight for a charge of $25.

Anyway, despite my awesome power of persuasion I am still stuck in an airport for five hours until the next flight. Niiiice. Fortunately I thought to download some tv the night before. Heroes is particularly good back to back to back to back.... When I finally get to The Arizona Bay, it's late, and I'm tired, and I don't want to do anything. So, I hang out in the dumpy-ass hotel I'm staying at in El Segundo. Yeah, yeah, bad choice... but a room is a room, and I'm only there to sleep and unwind, and I got a deal on it from Travelocity, and maybe I can find Q-Tip's wallet. Next day I get up, and hang out with a friend, and get a good workout at Wild Card Boxing, which is Freddie Roach's place. I'm way surprised to find it's a small, unpretentious, not even air conditioned, kind of a dump. But it is where tons of great boxers have gone. It also only costs me five bucks to workout there for the day. And it's pretty rad to meet Freddie who is pretty cool to me. The friend of a friend who brought me there tells him that I'm in LA to play poker, and he just thinks that's amazing and wants to shoot the shit about it, going on about how they had a card game at his house once and how bad Manny Pacquiao is. Heh. Anyway, nice work out, shower, hang out with my friend for a little while longer, and I'm ready to play.

It's the same amazing donkey convention as last time. I don't remember much of this session, as I played pretty near perfect with only one difficult hand. It's always a shock when I start playing in a casino.. that most people will actually fold a KT for four times the big blind, so bluffing becomes profitable.

My one mistake of the session comes at the end when I make a stupid call with a J high flush on a 4 suited board, vs someone's Q high flush. I lose like $1k on that hand. It's late, I feel the hand starting to tilt me, so I leave soon after with the profit.


5/11 Up $2560 (Commerce)
Get up sometime in the afternoon, eat some shitty breakfast at the disgusting diner in my hotel. Like, how hard is it to make decent eggs?

I start the session with my usual stupidity of throwing away my first $2k buy in. Bluffing, mostly. But, it's good advertising as people see me playing a good number of hands aggressively, and it allows me to double up my second buy in via a set of King's.

My star play of the day is vs this aggressive Phil Ivey looking kid. Same lighter black skin, wearing a basketball jersey, early 20's. He's pretty aggressive against everyone, re-raising and bluffing on the flop a lot, and playing a ton of hands. I wind up folding top pair to him an hour earlier. I get KJ eventually, and limp into a pot with him and a few others. Flop = JTX, 2 diamonds. I bet $80, size of the pot, he raises to $200. I think for a second and go all in for the $1500 more he has in front of him. He thinks for awhile, looks up, says “I have a lot of gamble, I call.” Turn = J, river = blank. He doesn't show his hand.. but wow... the only hand that he could have that's not beating me that would be the right odds to call would be a straight and flush draw (so, KQ, Q9, 98, all of diamonds..).


The rest of the session is of a blur of good play. Against all the prototype insane Asians, dudes just waiting for AA or KK, and other people who have a variety of stupid playing styles and little idea of what they're doing. I open a “Player's Bank” account at the casino so I don't have to walk around with $9k on me.

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