The two casinos of this story are Tulalip, and the Fantasy Casino at Allison's (Lish's sister) work party.
My friend Chris e-mailed me during this last week asking if I wanted to hit up a cardroom sometime this weekend, because his wife was out of town. I did some googling and found that Tulalip has a $75 buy-in poker tournament that starts at 11am on Saturdays, so we decided to go for that.
It was pretty quick getting up there, like 35 minutes once we left my house. So we got there in plenty of time to register and everything. Chris sat at a cash game while waiting for the tournament to start, and I played some blackjack. Pulled down $55 there so a nice little score. I think Chris lost a bit in his cash game.
Then we started the tournament. Starting stack was 5000 chips, blinds started at 25/50 and 20 minute levels. So definitely a fast tournament. In one early hand, I managed to get away from top two pair where I would have lost my stack. A couple people limped in front of me, I called with QJo, and another person or two called behind me. Flop came down QJ9 rainbow, the BB bet 150, one guy called, I raised to 650, BB made it 1450, and then the caller woke up and shoved all-in. In retrospect I think it's a pretty easy laydown with all that action, but I really tanked on that for a while (trying to convince myself that one of them had a worse two pair, and maybe the other one just had a straight draw). But I think I'm absolutely never best there. So I folded, BB called with KTo for the flopped straight, and the other guy had my same hand, QJo. The straight held up to win, and I live to fight another day.
There was one guy who busted two people (on different hands) coming from behind -- he took out KK with AJ after they got it all-in on a J-high flop, and then he took out AA with 9T after flopping middle pair. Definitely was salivating at the prospect of getting into a pot with this guy. Then, another guy open-folds top two pair against him after getting shoved on. WHAT!! Didn't you see what this guy was moving in with?? yeah, there definitely was some weak play at this table.
My bustout hand came right after the first break. Blinds were 200/400 with 25 ante, I had about 5700 at that point. It folds to me in the SB, I have AQs and raise to 1200. BB 3-bets to 2400, I ship and he calls with JJ. I get no help and I'm out. I was talking to Chris about this one, wondering if I could get away from my hand there. My point was that, on the whole, live players have very narrow 3-betting ranges; online I'd ship this all day without a question. But I think JJ is towards the lower end of a typical live player's 3-betting range. Chris made the point that you can't let this go because the blinds are rapidly increasing and you just need to accumulate, and obviously if enough pocket pairs are in his range, it's an easy ship with that much in the pot already. yeah, I might need to think about this one a little more, but he's probably right.
Anyways, then I played some cash (1/3 no-limit) after that and pulled down $88 at a non-remarkable table. Definitely plenty soft, but nothing too interesting there. So I booked a little $68 win on the day after counting my tournament entry. Hey I'll take it; Chris said he was down about $300 on the day.
Then was the Fantasy Casino for Allison's work party. But first, we all went to the 5pm mass at Blessed Sacrament (Lish, myself, Allison, Bekah (another one of their sisters), Tisa and Erin). Tisa and Lish already had plans to hang out tonight, so I went with just Allison and Bekah to this work party. And it was really fun! All of the chips were just play-money, and you got raffle tickets for prizes at the end of the night based on how many chips you had won; the more chips you had, the more raffle tickets you got. They had blackjack, roulette and a poker table. We played a little bit of all 3. Roulette is probably one of my least favorite casino games since there's no strategy at all, but I think I had the most fun at that table! I got to explain it to the girls (in terms of how much you win for each bet -- there's really nothing else to it), and just hang out with them there.
All in all, a good day of gambling on all counts.
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