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.