A better day!

Well, today our mission went very smoothly and I decided to go play poker at 'the game' tonight. I was a bit tired, but felt that with all the energy drinks floating around in my system I was bound to be awake for a while anyways. After showering, I left for the place with the intention of playing from 2000 to 0000, as in, 4 hours tops. Just enough to get in, play a bit, and get out. It's a pretty rough environment for me, since they allow smoking and the room is really really small. I'm in the military, and everyone knows that military people smoke. Even the non-smokers smoke cigars. And though I'm not above smoking a cigar with friends, people here CHAIN-smoke. So, it's nice to play for about 4 hours at a time and then escape into the fresh air. It'll be nice to get back to the states and quit second-hand smoke cold turkey. But thats besides the point.

I ended up buying in for $40 and after a few circuits, I found myself in a reasonable situation. I had $33 with As4h in the cutoff seat (the seat to the right of the dealer, which is generally considered the 2nd best position) and I called the $2 blind after about 4 callers. The blinds called/checked, and the flop came 4s-5s-9s. There was a $7 bet followed by two callers, and then me, who merely called. The next card was the 8s, giving me the nut flush (though someone COULD have a straight flush), and I was able to get all in with 2 callers, with the result of me more than tripling up the first hand.

After that I literally played 6 hands in 3 hours. I think the highlights include a $70 pot I took with Q-2o against a few bluffers, another A-4 hand I split the pot with someone with another weak ace, and my Qs-Js hitting top two and a flush draw. All these hands helped to keep me in the $100 range, though I seemed like I was stuck.

I was literally about to give them my 30 minute notice the next hand, when I was dealt KK in the big blind. It was called around the table almost to a man, and I raised to $15. Someone went all-in for their remaining $27, and he got 3 callers. I ended up taking the pot, with the best my opponents could offer being pocket 6's. After that I hit a few other reasonable hands and before I knew it, I had a giant chipstack. No really interesting hands for me, the coolest I think I had was J-9d on a Qd-8d-9c-Ad-2h board. I had literally zero three of a kinds, zero full houses, zero straights, and about 5 pocket pairs the entire night (2 of which were QQ, of which both got busted). Single pairs seemed to be the defining factor of the rest of the night.

Anyways, I ended up staying til 0230 which was a lot later than I had really planned on. I was (and still am) pretty darn tired, and I was starting to stop thinking coherently. Still, I felt it would have been rude to make a lot of money there and then try to cash out as soon as possible. So I stayed a few extra hours, in the smoke. woot. I have a horrible headache right now.

Well, here are the stats for the night! I never had to rebuy from my original $40, though I had brought $160.

$1/$2 NL Hold'em
Hours logged for the session: 6.5
Started the night with: $40
Ended the night with: $481
Plus or minus for the night: +$441
Overall cash bankroll: $978
Total plus or minus: +$818
Total hours played: 19.5
Total per hour average: +$41.9/hour


As you can see I had a pretty successful night. I'm beat though, have a good night.

-Trike