Dispatches from the Culture Wars

My run at poker continues. After meeting with another reader for dinner, I hit the poker room for my second session of the day. Started out playing 1/2 no limit but got on the interest list for a 2/5 game. Had a bad run at the 1/2 table, losing about $180 in about an hour. That's when they got the 2/5 game going, so I moved to that table and bought in for another $400 on top of the $120 I had left.

It was a pretty slow table for the first hour or so, then we got some new players and things picked up. Over the next 4 hours or so I built my stack steadily, cashing out for $1291. Since I bought in for $700 total, the profit was $591. I was actually a couple hundred higher than that at one point, but I gave some back at the end before going to grab a bite to eat.

It was a rather unusual table. Sitting two seats to my right for the last part of the session was David Redlin, who is originally from Michigan but plays poker professionally in Las Vegas now. He finished 5th in a World Poker Tour event at the Bellagio (losing to Daniel Negreanu and Joe Hachem). He's got over $700,000 in career tournament cashes. I have no idea why he was playing the 2/5 game at the Mirage rather than a bigger game at the Bellagio.

The rest of the table, though, was pretty weak. I didn't win with dominating hands, I won with good hands that were getting called down by marginal hands. I beat on one guy like a pinata all night. He had to have lost a grand or more in 4 hours. Three times we ended up being heads up against one another on the river and three times he called big bets on the end and turned over a losing hand.

In one hand, I had K Q and he had K 10 on a king high board so I had him outkicked. In another hand, I had A Q with an ace high board and he called a $100 bet on the end with second pair and a marginal kicker. Another guy called me all the way down for about $250 with pocket jacks when there was an ace on the board and I had an ace in my hand.

Time and time again I didn't have really dominant hands, and sometimes even had a hand I thought might have kicker problems, only to have a player turn over a weaker hand at the end. It was a loose passive table with a lot of calling stations at it. If they had any piece of the board at all they felt like they had to call. So here's the latest stats:

Poker: +1393
Food: - 286

I think I'm done for the night. I was thinking about going back down, but it's 1:30 am local time now and I'm fading. Back to the tables tomorrow.