Concluding the previous trip report…
After the tournament we both felt pretty good about ourselves, so after grabbing some lunch in the café. (decent, but nothing great, since I was saving room for our main course). After lunch we did an early check-in. We got a room on about the 11th floor, looking out over the Detroit River. The room was very nice. It had a king size bed, medium sized plasma screened TV, and a fridge. The bathroom had a tub and a glass doored shower.
After chilling out for a while, we decided to check out the pool. It was very nice, partially because we were the only ones there. The pool was on the 3rd floor, also overlooking the river. It had an extra large Jacuzzi as well.
After the pool, a shower and a change of clothes, I still had about 2 hours to kill before dinner, so while Victory was getting ready, I headed back down to the poker room. I decided to play a some 1/2NL, just for fun, and maybe make a few bucks. I don’t recall any memorable hands, but by the time Victory came down, I was up about 200. We headed to the “Sportsbook” to watch the end of the MSU/Penn State game, and kill the last 30 minutes before our 7:00pm reservation. I say “Sportsbook” in quotes, because that’s precisely what it is. They take bets, but they only allow parlays. As if that weren’t enough, the odds of a 2 teamer are 3 for 1 (meaning 2 to 1), and for a 3 teamer, they are 6 for 1 (meaning 5 to 1). The odds in nearly all Sportsbooks for these are 2.6 to 1, and 6 to 1. It is, however, a very cool place to watch a game. The crowd was mostly pro-Spartan, and it was an exciting comeback win for MSU.
Dinner was at Nero’s steakhouse, on their $150 comp. Nero’s is a nice upper end restaurant. The main courses are between $30-50. Both me and Victory ordered a filet, her’s well-done, and mine medium. We also ordered baked potatoes ala carte, and split a Caesar salad. The salad was made fresh at your table, and was excellent. My steak was cooked excellently (some places have a difficult time hitting medium for some reason). It was cooked in some kind of butter glaze. The steak was a very nice cut and very tender, but was a little lacking on the flavor. Don’t get me wrong, it was good, but for that price I expect top-notch.
For dessert, we both got the NY Cheesecake at $9 per. This pretty much exhausted our comp (we couldn’t include drinks). The cheesecake unfortunately not up to par, although it was decent. I’m not a big cheesecake fan anyhow, but I have had a few good pieces in my day, so I was optimistic. Overall I give the meal a 6/10. It was pretty good, but I don’t think it is worth anywhere near $150. I can have a meal that is as good at the Texas Road House (though far less elegant) for only $45.
After dinner it was time for some more poker. I got into another incredibly juicy 1/2NL game, and Victory ended up getting a seat in the same game. Early on, there was a middle aged gentleman who was on complete monkey tilt, raising preflop to $40-45. He quickly went through 2-3 buy-ins, and I was disappointed that I didn’t have an opportunity to take any of it. Finally I picked up AK and raised to 10 after a limper, I got one cold call right after me, and then the tilter moved in for 100. I was slightly fearful that the cold caller was trapping the tilter with a big hand (he seemed decent) but ultimately shipped my stack in. He had AJ, and my hand held up. He polished one more buy-in off before storming away from the table.
He was replaced by the Queen bitch loud mouth of poker. She endeared herself to me early when I tried to get a seat change to sit next to Victoria to be able to talk. She immediately informed the dealer that we were together and shouldn’t even be at the same table (since we are obviously trying to work the 1-2 game). She was one of those people who never shuts up, has an opinion on everything, is an expert on all things poker and not poker, etc..etc….you know the type. Watching her play, I thought she actually did have a clue, but then got busted on a bad beat, and proceeded to berate the crap out of the guy who stacked her. Following that she polished off another 3 buy-ins (2 of them to me with retarded play). She also got into it with another player sitting next to me, threatening to slap him upside the head (which would have likely gotten the guy into a lot of trouble if he had said it to her). Apparently she is a regular there, so she got the benefit of the doubt, which I was happy with as she was dusting off money. In the meantime, the guy next to me busted Victoria when he made a 25X pre-flop raise with 55, and outraced Victoria’s AK.
After that hand, I set for myself 3 very simple goals; 1) Drink every Heineken in the building before last call at 2am, 2) Bust the annoying bitch again, and 3) Bust the guy that took Victoria’s money. As far as #3, I told the guy that I was making that my mission, mostly saying it as a joke, as we were enjoying drinking together and poking fun at the queen bitch. But in reality it really was a goal, as his play wasn’t very inspiring.
I accomplished #1 as best as I could, and also accomplished #3 when I flopped the nut straight, and got the guy to stack off on the river with 2nd pair after flopping top pair. #2 failed though, as she eventually left. Finally around 3:30am I called it a night, as I could tell Victory was mad at me for staying down there after a text message she sent. I ended the session about 550-600 to the good.
The next day I was worried about the border crossing, given the photocopy of my birth certificate, as well as the long line over the bridge. The trip over the bridge ended up taking over an hour, as we arrived at 11:00am and didn’t get across to the US until about 12:15pm. The crossing was very smooth though. The border agent was more interested in asking poker related question than anything pertaining to our citizenship, and never once mentioned that my birth certificate was a copy.
All in all it was a nice trip. A relaxing time, a profit of about 1400, and a good meal or two.
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