We had a great time on our trip, although the short time I got to play poker was not particularly kind. Total poker losses for the weekend, which were offset considerably by some lucky race picks from my little brother and a couple of lucky blackjack sessions, were $560, of which $780 came on just four big hands. Most of my time was spent playing $1/$2 NL at Mandalay, but on Friday morning I played in the $60 MGM daily NL tournament with Kim and David (the hosts of our tournament in December) who happened to be there this weekend, too.

The infamous four hands (remember, all hands are 1-2 NL at Mandalay Bay):

Friday morning, starting around 5:00AM. LOTS of drunk guys. Great game.

Big Hand #1: QQ from the button gets one caller from early position for $40 preflop raise. Flop is 10-9-2 rainbow. I lead for $100 and get called. Turn is 4. I put my remaining $60 in the pot and get called. He turns over 44. Shit. Shit. Shit. Lose $200 buy-in.

Rebuy for another $200.

Then, ten minutes later:

Big Hand #2: KK from middle position. UTG had raises to $10. I come over the top for $40 more. SB calls cold and original raiser folds. Flop comes J-8-4 rainbow. SB checks and I lead for $100 (a recurring theme). He calls. Turn is 3 of spades. He leads for $20 (!). I raise with my remaining $30 all in. He calls and turns over QJ with just one spade. I am a huge favorite. River is a Q. Jesus. Lose $200 buy-in.

Rebuy for another $200.

Win a bunch of medium and small pots for the next two hours and get half of it back, then it’s time to go to the airport and pick up my dad.

(Incidentally, this game also had one of the best prettyshirt instances I have ever seen. When I sat down in the game there was a VERY drunk hispanic kid at the end of the table – so drunk that he was literally holding onto the edge of the table to keep from falling out of his chair –who had taken to betting $50 or 60 and stealing the blinds on nearly every hand. Some of the drunker/worse players at the table played with him a little bit, but the rest of the players, myself included, were just patiently sitting there waiting for a decent starting hand to play back at him. Eventually a new player came into the game and on the very first hand doubled through this kid’s 6-3 with QQ. Why, oh why, can’t that happen to me every once in a while? But I digress.)

After the airport run was the MGM tourney and when I arrive there is a line out the door to register. Thanks one more time to Kim and David for saving me a place in line or I wouldn’t have gotten in. The Floorman says they normally have 50-60 in the tournament. Today they have 80 and they expect to use 30-40 alternates. Normally this thing pays $1500 to the winner and today it will be pushing $4000. Sweet. The structure is good too, and I last until just before the first break when I flop the lower full house on the board and go all-in over the top of a couple of underbets and get called by another player whom I have (barely) covered up. He has the nut full-house and I’m crippled and last until my BB. Not fun, but it was a tournament and I’m not going to kick myself over playing very aggressively with a made hand.

When the tournament was finished there was no more poker playing for me until early on Saturday morning. The rest of my family started arriving and I was occupied with dinner plans and sightseeing for the rest of the day. I eventually went to bed fairly early and again woke up at 4:00AM to get back into the drunk game downstairs. Unfortunately, I had similar luck.

Big Hand #3: My old nemesis showed up again when I’m dealt KK in the cutoff seat after only 5 minutes in the game and, after a bunch of raises and reraises, get all in against the player on the button. He, of course, has AA and I lose the $180 left from my buy-in fairly quickly.

In hindsight, I very clearly misplayed this hand because despite his appearance, in the time afterwards I quickly saw that this particular player was one of the tighter people at the table and I might not have been so eager to get all of my money in if I had had just a few more minutes playing with him. But then again, this kind of game is notorious for some of the macho loose plays that go on and it’s quite common for someone to put all of his chips into the pot with any small pocket pair or even hands like AQ or AJ and from my initial impression this guy looked like he could be one of those types of players. I really don’t know what the right answer was, but I do know that TJ Cloutier would just shake his head and smile and say, “that’s just poker,” so I’m not going to get too worked up over it either way.

Rebuy for another $200 and win a few nice pots to get it up to about $300 and halfway back to even. Then I lose another big hand for about $150 where my AJ catches trips on the river and loses to the guy who flopped a set of eights and filled up on the river.

Now I am down about $375 for the day and decide to reload back up to the $200 max because I still have about 2 more hours of poker time left. Over the next two hours I got onto a little run of small and medium pots and eventually managed to get all of it back but $100 when 9:00 rolled around and it was time to go meet everyone for brunch at Bellagio. I love brunch at Bellagio.

The rest of the day was spent shopping and sightseeing with Mrs Johnnymac and the rest of the family. We also spent some time at the Mandalay Beach and I must say that it lived up to expectations.

Right before dinner, my little brother and I had 90 free minutes so we went down to bet on the horses and play some poker. The room was packed and I got a seat in about 20 minutes. I enter the game in the BB and throw away rags to a $10 raise. The older man next to me shows me 2-4 and says, “All damn day I keep getting this crap! Man I wish I could get some cards to play!”

“Be careful what you wish for,” I said, “it’s an undeniable rule in this poker room that all big pairs get cracked by flopped small sets.”

He laughed and the game continued.

Big Hand #4: Then came the hand that absolutely positively set the tone for the weekend and will be what I remember about this trip forever. Less than 10 minutes after I had sat down I was on the button for just the second time and I look down and see KK.

The rest of the details are irrelevant. I lost my $200 and I think you can pretty much guess what hand the other guy had (hint: not AA) and how it turned out for him. All weekend long I flopped one small set and I ended up having to throw it away against two obvious flushes. Jeez.

I’m sure there are some of my teeth still laying on the floor of the Mandalay Bay poker room, because it sure felt like that’s where I got kicked on that hand.

Nickel Pool Trick

A true classic!

I guess this is a 5-card stud hand. Otherwise, I don’t understand why only 4 cards are shown.

With my chances of getting onto an earlier flight this afternoon going nowhere (who would have thought that flights to Vegas the day before the WSOP would be full? Gee.), I’m passing my day off from work with S&G’s and web surfing until my flight leaves at 6:30.

So I was looking for information about some of the hospitality freebies I’ve heard so much about – hats and shirts and the like, which led me to a post on the PokerStars blog, the “WSOP Primer.” There’s some good stuff in there, for sure, like where the restrooms are, where the food is, how the satellites work, etc etc, but one thing that really blows me away is as much as it is a primer it is on the WSOP itself:

Q. What is the procedure for calling the clock?

A. Calling the clock (a fair but rarely-used method of hurrying up an opponent’s decision) is done simply by asking the dealer to put the clock on the opponent. The dealer will call for the floor person who will give your opponent a pre-designated amount of time to make the decision..

…It’s also a primer on simply how to play casino poker:

Q. How should I handle my cards?

A. Don’t pick your cards up off the table. Use one hand to cover them, and peek at the corners. Cover your cards with a chip or other tchotchke (you’ll probably get one in the goody bag that all our qualifiers get). If you don’t cap your cards, they may be “fouled” by other players’ folded cards or picked up by the dealer. If there’s an all-in, do not turn your cards up until the dealer tells you to do so (to be sure that you don’t turn them up prematurely). For instance, if you are all-in and more than one other player is still in the hand, you must keep your cards hidden until the side pot is resolved. In short, just wait for the dealer to tell you to turn up your hand.

I’m not pointing this out to judge or make fun of people at all, I just find it extremely interesting and I would have found it more than a bit counterintuitive just four years ago before the WSOP blew up. Now it makes perfect sense because a vast vast majority of the players in the Main Event are online players who have probably never heard of the terms, “brush” (I still don’t quite know the origins of why they call it that) or “play over” or “sweat” or “railbird” and many others and I can bet that they’re intimidated as hell. I would be.

No, not making fun. Just something that I find bit interesting, that’s all.

Is this Kaplan related to the Gary Kaplan that won the 1st ever Dr Fro / IAG poker tournament?