Happy Accident

Tuesday was my last day to play for a bit.  Thanksgiving on Thursday and a lot of family coming to stay meant it was time to head back to San Manuel casino.  I expected to be stuck playing $2/4 limit hold'em again, but hoped that because of the holiday period there'd be more no limit tables going than I'd found last time.

I arrived about half past three, got my $100 in $1 chips and went to the brush.  Of the 40 or so tables going, they actually had a couple of tables of Omaha and 7 card stud and three tables of nlhe!  I put my name down for the $1/2 and went to play some limit hold'em while I waited.

After about 45 minutes of wasted pocket kings and such, I took a break to check in with the brush because I couldn't see my initials on the board anymore.  There'd been a change of staff and something got messed up somewhere so I had to put my name down again.  Fifteen minutes later and I got the call to table 8.

I took my rack of chips (still about $100) to the table and took seat 1, my least favorite.  I was thinking about how I'd move to change to any different seat that opened while I pulled $200 out of my wallet to buy more chips, as I'd seen the max buy-in was $300.  Doubt crept in when I was given 2 stacks of $5 yellows to go with my rack of $1 blues, and then the dealer asked if she could buy some of my blues.  It was then I noticed that all the players had mostly yellows ($5 chips) and a two or three had a lot more than $300.  In fact, the polite young man to my left had well over $1000 in yellows.  Huh.  It took a few beats for me to realize I was at the $2/5 table.  The blinds hadn't come around to me yet, so I definitely had time to stand up and find the right stakes for my $300, but I had noticed a couple of other things:  first- 7 out of the 9 players at the table were mid-twenty-something males (one seat was empty of a player but had about $500 in chips and a 'missed blind' disc in front of it).

In my admittedly brief experience playing live, both cash and tournaments, I've noticed that something in the dynamic between middle-aged female me and twenty-something male players gives me an edge against at least 80% of them.  Whether it's because they immediately box me as a M.I.L.F. (Mother I'd Like to Felt) or H.O.T. (Housewife On Tilt) I'm not sure, but there's something at work where they don't believe me when I have it and do believe me when I'm bluffing.  So with a number of prime candidates at this table I decide to give it a go and see how the dynamics played out.

The next notable event was when a young reg-type wandered by and said hello to a couple of the players and asked about the seat with chips but no player.  The guys in seats 7 and 9 lit up:

"It's BeRad!"

"Brad?  The Brad?"

"The one and only!" followed by big grins.  Hmmm. 

The dealer change came up soon after and the sitting dealer told the new one: "Seat 5's been missing for ages.  It's time he's out."  Several of the guys erupted with protests: "No way!  Hold his seat!" and the like.  The new dealer sat down and said, "If the players want him here, we don't interfere.  Not our job."  Everybody settled down.  I looked forward to seeing what The Brad was like.

I played only a few pots in the next half hour or so, noticed that the B.S.(Boy Shark) in Seat 9 liked to pop a raise pre-flop every hand and tested him a bit to see, yep, he only really got stubborn with me.  Meanwhile, The Brad arrives back at the table, whisky grin on his 60ish face saying "Did you miss me, boys?"  And proceeds to try to buy Johnny Walker Black for the table "and whatever the lady wants.", wink.

Over the next few hours he proceeded to talk 'drunk', lose big pots, re-load, re-buy drinks, win bigger pots and generally have a good time while being greeted like family by the floor people.  From what I saw, only the guy in Seat 2 was really seeing the profits from The Brad situation.  He was early to mid-twenties, very quiet, very polite and a very strong, smart player (and so didn't qualify as a B.S.).   I eventually left the table with $1230 about four hours after sitting down while Seat 2's stack had grown to near $3000.  And we never once got in each other's way.

My visiting family's all hitting the road again at the weekend and I'm looking forward to returning to San Manuel.  I am aware, by the way, that the more astute B.S.s will adjust, so I've decided to make sure I take my $300 to the $1/2 table, at least to start.

Capture the flag

I  played the Fox Poker Room Main Event at the beginning of September.  I got there as the winner of The Hendon Mob Forum syndicate.*   The 2-day event was very well run as usual for Genting and a great structure.  I took 5th place for £1905.  My percentage in the sydicate meant I took home £905.  I happily tipped the dealers out of my portion knowing it was well deserved not least because, judging by their astonished though patient reactions, dealers at the Fox aren't used to players fighting back tears after being informed they put out an incorrect amount for a raise. (I'm working on that.)

The day after (Monday) I played a smaller Fox tournament and got 5th there as well.  When I registered for this, the poker room manager Nick V. warned me this one wasn't an event that would get me another Hendon Mob database entry - he knows I've developed a mild case of flag fetish.

Since then I've been on an extended trip to the U.S. where we all know there isn't much on-line poker to play.  I've even missed the re-launch of Full Tilt!  But I'm assured my $1.53 will be held securely until I can log in again.  So, since I'm here until the beginning of January I've been playing in brick n mortars when I can.

I played one night in Hollywood Park Casino.  All the poker room staff were friendly and welcoming and the security guards never once drew their guns (it's an interesting place, Inglewood).  I went for the nightly 6:30pm tournament - not the best structure and it started over an hour late but I was gasping to play and we eventually got about 40 players.  Made the final table but not the money (pretty top heavy pay-outs) though they did give us all a $5 meal voucher just for entering and they make a pretty good reuben.

There were about 20 cash tables running on this Wednesday night.  They actually had a mixed game table ($2/4)- I was thrilled to get the chance to play mixed live for the first time so I put my name down and watched the table for a while.  The dealer was excellent, the players were a very mixed bag of age, race and gender but all were intensely focused and the table had several avid observers.  Every passing minute left me feeling more intimidated to be honest.  After about 15 minutes I asked a floorman how long he thought the wait for the mixed games would be.  He told me they were all regs and there for the duration but maybe the player who was a school teacher would leave by midnight or so.  (This had me running through the list of my childhood teachers and re-evaluating.)  A combination of disappointment and relief hit me at the news of the long wait since it was only about 10pm.  So I put my name down for $1/$2 nlhe and got a seat within a minute or two.

I sat for the next four hours in sincere gratitude to the pokerverse for my regular visits to The Hendon Mob Forum.  Playing with that lot in the league and other forum interactions have honed my game to mediocre in the Mob world, but made me something of a Hollywood Park shark.   (By the way, mediocre is a big leg-up from where I was when I first started ghosting that forum.  I thought I [i]knew[/i] poker back then.  Now I know I don't know, you know?)  About an hour in, a floorman came over to tell me a seat was available at the mixed table.  I declined.  I left at 2am when the tables were all breaking up - I ended up leaving with about $350.

I'm now in a different part of southern California and the local (10 mins drive) is the San Manuel Indian Casino.  The poker room is newly renovated, quite large, non-smoking and sound-proofed from the gazillions of slot machines.  Most of the staff are very friendly and the dealers are sound.  Table service for food and drinks is pretty good too.  All in all a very comfortable place to play.  But.  They offer no tournaments.  Worse, it turns out they also offer almost no nlhe.  It's a limit hold'em mecca here.  I arrived at about 6pm on a Thursday and while there were maybe 30 or so tables going out of what looked like 50 or 60 available - only ONE of those was nlhe.  The min buy-in for $2/2 was $20.  I sat down with $100 and rode the rollercoaster a few times to finally leave at 5:30am with $120. (Got comped a couple of meals so at least that $20 win was pure profit.)  When I left the poker room at dawn there were still three full tables going and more people were starting to dribble in. 

The players were a very entertaining bunch.  One guy told me not to set my handbag on the floor.  He said he was just looking out for me because in his community (Mexican) the women see it as bad luck financially to ever put their bags on the floor. (I kept it on the bottom shelf of my drinks table after that.)  Most seemed more intent on what the flashing light at the brush was doing than on the game.  The rake is $3 at $2/2 plus one for the jackpot - which excites the players more when that police-type light flashes blue than other colors.  I never did get a clear idea of the jackpot requirements, but there were 8 other players at the table being lookouts so I figured it was covered.  Over many hours of playing I finally learned not to chase too much post flop, and to semi-bluff only very strategically.  Mostly.  Also that most of the other players will chase but won't bluff much. Mostly. 

Limit hold'em has always been one of my weakest of mixed games so I'm looking at this as (another) opportunity to improve.  I'll leave driving an hour or so to the next nearest casino- Morongo - until after the Thanksgiving holiday here.  I also might make the drive into L.A. and have a go at the Bicycle Casino or the Commerce.  Or both.



*This was an amazing value syndicated satellite: The syndicate played a single table on-line tournament where 10 players paid £22 each, 1st place won the seat and 47.5 % of any main event prize money winnings, with the other nine syndicate players getting a percentage of possible winnings as well.  The Mob and Genting very generously paid the other half of the £400+£35 Fox main event buy-in.