massacre at the commerce

I've been in LA for the past week, trying to assess whether or not it is a livable city for a broke, lazy twenty five year old. (Verdict: perhaps...) I'm not allowed to drive, but on Thursday I did manage to make it out to the Commerce to play a little $200 restricted 2/3 NL Hold 'em.

I got to the Commerce at 11:30 AM and my ride wasn't going to be able to pick me up until 7 PM. Which really is a horrible way to enter a casino because even if everything goes well and you go up early, chances are that you're going to give away most of your stack at some point during the 6.5 hours. If you go down early, you don't have that option of just getting up and calling it a bad day. But, I was willing to overlook both of those potentially disastrous conditions because I've been riding a bit of a good streak as of late and didn't expect either of those things to happen. As I saw it, I would tighten up and wait to bust out the bad degenerate gamblers at the table.

I tried the $100 table first because there was an ungodly line for the $200 and on the third hand, I was dealt AK u on the button. The guy two seats to the left of me raised the pre-flop bet to $20 and I re-raised him to $40 total. He was about a 40 year old balding guy in a cheesy granite button up, which would make you think he would be an experienced player, but once the bet got back to him, he started shaking uncontrollably. I remembered my Caro's book of tells-- uncontrollable shaking usually means the guy has the cards-- but I hate that book so much that I decided to go the opposite way and put him on a middle pocket pair. For some reason, I was convinced of this even when he re-raised the bet to $80. I went all-in and asked, "Do you have aces?" He nodded and flipped them over. Ten minutes into my day at the Commerce, I was down $100 and already on tilt.

As I was yelling at myself to calm down, I got dealt a bunch of marginal hands-- K-10 s, KQ, KJ and kept missing the flops. Slowly, I got ground down to about $40 left in my original buy-in and decided to buy back up to $100. ABout two hours later, I was still at $100. A new $200 table opened up, so I went back to the ATM and took out another $100.

The $200 table was a lot better--less old gamblers, more crafty young Korean kids who all played the same style of poker. I steadily built my stack up to $440, meaning that I was about $80 above my initial buy-in. At this point, if I had a car, I would have gotten up and left. What I should have done was go play 3/6 Omaha until my ride arrived... Anyway, I started playing poorly shortly after I built up my stack because this hideous kid to my right kept questioning all my plays. He succeeded in getting me slightly on tilt, at least enough for me to massively misplay a hand for $200 to some equally hideous Samoan guy who had just sat down at the table. Back down to $200, I picked up AQ of spades in the cut-off position and raised to $20. The guy to my left raised to $60, a bet that was called by the crazy Asian man to my right. I thought about it for a while and stupidly called, hoping that I had two overcards to jacks. The flop came 9 spades 5 clubs 7 spades. I stupidly bet $100, not thinking that any hand worth a $60 raise would be overcards to the flop, and winced when the guy to my left raised it to $200. The crazy asian man threw in all his chips and I was pot-committed enough (about $50 in chips left, drawing to either 9 or 12 or, at best, 15 outs with two cards left...) to call. The turn was the 4 of hearts and the river was the two of clubs. The kid to my left, of course, flips over Kings and I took a very long walk, down $360 on the day.

My ride called to say that she was stuck in traffic and wouldn't be able to get to Commerce for another hour, so I called my bank and confirmed that my daily withdrawal limit was $500 and bought back into a $100 table on super-duper-duper-duper tilt. So bad that I announced it to the table, saying, "Hey guys, I'm on tilt, so call any all-in bets I make." My ride called to announce her arrival just as I was throwing my last $12 pre-flop with AQ. I got six callers and missed everything, losing finally to a pair of 8s.

Daily losses: -$460
Total semi-semi pro earnings: $487