It's like you're always stuck in second gear

I got to see how the other half lives yesterday; jet-setters Scott and Aimee Malmquist were in town and living it up (way up) on the 59th floor of the Wynn hotel, and they took me up to their room to check out the view. Spectacular. You're basically looking down on the roofs of all the casinos on the Strip. We hung out for a while in a rather fancy lounge/restaurant and chatted. It was very enjoyable. At least, it was until the man in the nice suit came up to me and said "Excuse me sir, but you clearly don't belong here, and here's a nice $20 bill as a way of saying 'Thank you for leaving'". I thought about re-raising to $80, but he was pretty big.

I did mean to get over to the Venetian, but the black hole that is the Wynn poker room sucked me in and eventually crushed me into atomic oblivion. I'm now considering a lawsuit for false advertising, as if there were ever a misleading and dishonest phrase, it would be "Wynn poker room". But first things first.

As a poker player, it helps to determine what is going on in people's minds - what their motivations are for the things they do. As I was driving to the Wynn yesterday, I got behind a pickup whose owner had an odd taste in decor - across the entire back window, in large painted letters, were the words "GOTCHA BITCH!" I have thought about this message, maybe more than it warrants, and I still can not come up with a truly satisfying answer as to why someone would put that on their vehicle. My first thought was that it was referring to a divorce proceeding in which this man got the better of his wife - but the dented and rusted condition of this rather old pickup ruled out that possibility. Maybe it's a taunt to anyone that gets overtaken, but again, the vehicle itself just wasn't capable of doing that to any other vehicle of significance on a regular basis. There has to be more significance than that. So this phrase has become a sort of Holy Grail to me. I feel that if I am one day able to comprehend the complex and subtle nature of this missive, I will have achieved a level of insight into human nature that will allow me to destroy my opponents at the tables. My plan until then is to loudly use the phrase as a victory cry whenever I take down a pot.

I also had to question the motivation of a simply gi-normous poker player at the Wynn as to the way-too-short shirt/pant combo that was woefully inadequate at covering the, ahem, middle of his body. Gads! It was reminiscent of Jeff's "Hugh McCracken" plumber Halloween costume. I had to resist the temptation to yodel and see if there was an echo. I ask you, the reader: is it actually possible to have half of your butt flapping in the breeze and not be aware of it? I don't know. Personally, I think I'm 100% conscious of it, when it's happening to me.

Finally, I question the motivation of the gentleman who called my 5x big blind raise with K6 and hit a 66x flop to hurt me pretty bad with my JJ. Actually, I don't question his motivation - it was to do exactly what he did. The reason he got away with it is that he raised what I thought was way too much for trips - $100 into my $30 post-flop bet. It seemed as though he was trying to push me out of the pot with his own pocket pair, and I figured my jacks were good. Guess not.

So starting the day down $200 was kinda lousy. I played very tightly the rest of the evening, and suffered another bad beat when a guy went all in on the turn into my made flush, and rivered another club to give himself a higher flush. Oh man, this guy was annoying, too. He was sitting right next to me and humming the whole time, almost under his breath but not quite. And he was a total calling station, and...just trust me, he was the type of guy that you want to get away from. You know that cheesy move you see in lame martial arts movies, where the bad guy is sneaking up behind the good guy, and at the last second the good guy "senses" the presence of the bad guy, and without turning around he flips his fist backward at eye level and socks the bad guy right on the nose? I think Jean Claude Van Damme did it in "Bloodsport" after the blinding dust was thrown in his eyes. I seriously wanted to do that to this dude.

Actually, losing that flush hand did make me really, really angry. I was fuming. The entire night, the table had been limping in with marginal hands and hitting. It was a good environment to wait for good hands and make people pay. But I was getting nothing. The cards were extremely cold. So when I finally had chance to take down a good pot and get back to the plus side for the night, it was really frustrating to have it taken from me. I was playing patiently, and it wasn't being rewarded. In fact, when I woke up around midnight with pair of queens (heh - sounds kinda kinky) and finally raised a pot, the other super-tight guy at the table exclaimed, "Hey, welcome to the game!"

After losing quite a bit on the flush hand, I could not mount a comeback and left down $365 on the night. All things considered, I am not dissatisfied with my play - I did what I could with what I had. I am happy that I was able to control my play, with considerable effort, while being angry. And I'm happy that I did walk out of there without completely busting out of my $500 buy-in.

Congrats to Chuy once again for (almost) getting "Like Suicide" by Soundgarden. I've lost count of who the song leader is but it seems to be a close race between Chuy and Jeff L. Today's should be easy!

I promise to get to the Venetian today.

HAND OF THE DAY:
-----------------------

As previously noted, I was playing yesterday in a rather irritated mood. And one of the things that is annoying under any circumstance is when a lot of people limp in, and someone in late position raises the minimum - i.e. 5 people limp in for $5 and the button raises it to $10 total. The purpose is almost always to build the pot, and people typically do this with drawing hands (i.e. JT suited). But it is kind of a silly play, in my opinion. You basically have declared the strength of your hand as "needing a lot of help", and opened the door for any of the initial limpers to make a large re-raise. The folly of doing those things simultaneously should be obvious.

So this chick about three doors down had done this earlier in the night and shown down a QJ off hand. Later in the evening, I limped in from UTG with AQ off. Call, call, and then this girl again does her cutesy raise to $6 (I was in the $1-$3 game). Two other callers put their chips in and it gets back to me.

Ack. I'm sick of this, and I probably have the best hand, so I raise to $27. Everyone folds except the initial raiser, which is a surprise. I thought she'd be one of the first to fold. Fine, whatever - I know I've got her dominated.

Flop - three rainbow rags, 7 high. I bet $60. She calls, but doesn't seem too happy about it. I don't get it.

Turn - 8. Straight possibilities abound, but I cannot put her on low cards. Possibly a low pair that tripped up, but I don't think so. So I go all in for about $160. She thinks and thinks and thinks. Eventually she mucks her hand - JJ. Yowza. I hadn't adopted my "Gotcha, bitch!" slogan yet so I quietly raked in the chips.

I had almost become another victim of someone who played their hand in such a weird way that it made my reads very, very wrong. I can't think of a reason why someone would do that silly minimum pre-flop re-raise with pocket jacks.

The hand was interesting not only because of the strange play, but also because of the amount of chatter it generated after she folded. Everyone was speculating about what I had, if the girl should have come over the top on my pre-flop re-raise, and anything else they could think of. It was amusing. No one put me on AQ off - ha!

Play well, everyone, and chill a little, wouldja?