Atlantic City

I was in the Baltimore area for work and made a little vacation out of it. Here's my trip report from AC.

This past Saturday I made a trip with a couple friends for a day of poker in Atlantic City. We had planned to play an 11am tourney at the Showboat, but took a “shortcut” from Baltimore and ended up on a 2 lane highway through south BFE New Jersey. Can you say dueling banjos?

We get into town around 1115am and notice on billboard that the Hilton has 40+10 tourney starting at 2pm. We get to the poker room around 1pm and sign up for the tourney. I grabbed a seat in a 1-5 stud game so I could play a little before the tourney. Play was pretty terrible. The second hand I get dealt I bring it in with (510)5. About 5 limpers come along. I make 10s up on 4^th and bet with 3 people calling. Made 5’s full on 5^th and everyone dropped but one guy who raised me with a paired deuce door card. I popped him back and he called. I caught another 10 on 6^th and led out, and was raised again as a Q came for him on 6th. At this point I am thinking that he might have concealed queens. I call the raise and his bet on 7^th. He showed 2s full and I scooped up a decent sized pot. That was the only meaningful hand for me at this table, but I saw plenty of interesting goings on. One old guy going by the name of 2-dollar Harry twice called bets on 7th when he couldn’t beat his opponent’s board. A black guy sitting next to me wearing more bling than puff daddy played about 90 percent of his hands. He wasn’t too good about hiding his pocket cards and I got to see how he would chase with starting hands like (J3)Q or (27)A. He also got about several phone calls in 45 minutes and I got to hear the MIDI version of Carl Douglas’ “Kung-Fu Fighting” 6 or more times.

At one point a new dealer sat down and had no idea how to deal 7CS. First hand she started to deal 2 cards up. She was burning cards left and right, and wasn’t real certain on where the action should be. It got pretty annoying. Fortunately, our tourney was about to start and I took my $10 in profit and headed out.

I joined my friends, Johnny Cheng and The Shoeshiner. As we got our seat assignments, we decided that we would all buy 20% of each other.

I sat in seat 10 and we were 7 handed to start. The first hand I played outside of the blinds I get AQ off in early position. Flop came all hearts with the Q being the highest card. I called down what I was pretty sure were bets from the ace of hearts. No more hearts came and we ended up chopping as he had AhQc. I chopped one other pot with A10, but didn’t win any other pots for awhile. When we got to level 3, I started putting in some raises when people were limping and I was in position. I stole 3 or 4 pots. Just before the end of level 3, I raised in up from the cutoff with Ah6h. Button called with the 4 limpers folding; flop came K 6 9. I bet about 1/3 of the pot and was min-raised. The pot was laying me damn good odds; maybe 3 or 4:1. I had about 1700 chips left and would have to commit the rest of my chips on bottom pair having 5 outs at best. I folded. At the start of level 4, the blinds were 200/400 with a 50 ante. After a few hands, my stack was below 1500 and I get dealt A9 off from middle position. It was folded to me and I went in for my last 1500 or so. I get called by AQ off and IGHN.

I was looking forward to getting back into the juicy 7CS game, but it was no longer running. The Shoeshiner busted out about 30 minutes later and we hopped on a 2/4 no foldem table. The Shoeshiner likes to play most every hand and he got hot early. I was able to take down a few nice pots early as well and was up 4-5BB. Our other friend, Johnny Cheng, bubbled out of the tourney with a horrific beat. He called all in from the SB with AhQs. The button had pushed with 108 suited. Flop came Q 10 x, all hearts. Turn was Ac, and the river…..10d. Two freakin’ outered. He was pretty ticked as he joined our 2/4 game. We all donked around a bit, but it wasn’t how we played or any particular hand that was the real story of our table. It was the people. Seated 3 to my left was a Hispanic looking dude with paint on his hands who didn’t say one word for 3 or 4 hours. He was also sick as dog. He was coughing; sniffling, sneezing, and you knew all those germs were being spread all over the table. At one point someone brought him a whole box of tissue and I think he went through them all. Before we started to play, we told The Shoeshiner that playing poker live was unsanitary and that you should wash your hands often and try to keep them away from your face. I even joked to him that you might want to wear a condom while playing. Because, hell, you never know.

I started drinking Miller Lite’s as fast of our waitress would bring them. I decided to see what would happen if I played every hand for one full orbit. I lost the first 7, but won the 8^th. This ended up pulling the size of my stack down pretty good. Not the optimal strategy, I must admit.

The one noteworthy hand I played was against I guy who had been at my tourney table. He was one of the guys who felt the need to narrate the play at the table, so I called him Babbling Bob. I had pocket deuces in LP and hit a set on a rainbow flop. Turn was a blank and I hit quads on the river. Bob folded on the river and proceeded to tell me that he missed his flush draw. I told him that there was no flush draw possible on the flop, and he said “right, but there was after 4^th street.” I just smiled.

A Vietnamese dealer sat down and didn’t seem to know what he was doing. Beyond that, at one point I won decent sized pot and forgot to toke him immediately. And he asked, “wha, no tip?” before even dealing the next hand. I tossed him a white. I momentarily forgot to tip a few of the hands I won, but this was the only prick that pointed it out and held up play in the process. I always tip and I tip well, but if I had won another pot I was going to pull a nickel out of my pocket and give it to him. It put me mini-tilt.

Later on, a 60ish woman sat down in seat 6. One of her first hands she had QQ and made a set that eventually got cracked by a straight. Henceforth, she complained about everything. She had the floor people come over and change the channel on a TV that was directly behind her. She complained about her chair. She complained about dealers who didn’t speak English very well, and she complained about the weather. It seemed like people started to drop pretty quick after she sat down. She took a lot of the fun out of the table. Eventually the 3 of us got up and headed out.