Several months ago I received a free offer to travel to Canada and spend a night at Caesars Windsor (formerly Casino Windsor) and get a free $150 at Nero’s Steakhouse. Last weekend was the weekend I selected, so Victory and I made the trek over the bridge to Windsor for a night. The laws require a birth certificate (not yet a passport, which is good since I don’t have one yet). However, I only had a copy of mine, so while concerned, felt like it I would be allowed to cross. There was a $100 buyin tourney starting at 10am, so I wanted to leave the house by 8:30 to ensure making it (they close entrants at 60). Victory took a long time getting ready though, so I was worried we may not make it on time.
The Canadian border guard gave me a hard time, but he let me across (which was important since the wait to get back into the US spanned the entire bridge as well as some Canadian sidestreets). Driving to the casino was easy (as I know the roads decently from traveling there often in my formative gambling years). Upon arrival I entered the garage and noticed they had a lot for diamond members (my first good fortune of the trip). So I was able to immediately park on the ground level and enter the casino. It was my first trip there in at least 4-5 years, and it has significantly changed. They don’t allow smoking there now, and they completely gutted the inside. It was quite nice inside, and the poker room was very nice as well (though somewhat small).
We arrived in plenty of time for the tournament, and my friend Al from work, along with his wife, came for the tournament as well. Right before the tournament started, I tried to get a bloody mary to start things off right, but Canadian law doesn’t allow drinks until 11am. They only got 25 entrants, which meant they paid only the top 3 players (breakdown of 1375, 750, 375).
Here are a few of the key hands from the tournament (starting chips 2000, blinds start at 25/50, with only 20 minute levels until level 4 when levels are increased to 30 minutes):
Hand #1: My stack is around 1800, blinds 25/50. UTG+1 raises to 200, I flat call with 77 (almost re-raised all in, but decided I could flat call and evaluate and find a better spot if necessary). One of the blinds came along as well. Flop was 985r, checked to the preflop raiser, and he bet 500. The bet was large, and into 2 players it screamed strength to me. I elected to fold, even though I had a feeling I should have moved in there. The blind folded too, so I never saw the hand. Later I saw a similar situation with the same player, and his 500 bet was bottom set, so I felt better about my fold.
Hand #2: My stack is about 1550, blinds 25/50. UTG (woman who had been fairly active and raising) raises to 200, folds to me, I am on the button with KK. I debate how to play this one, and figure she will fold if I move in, yet I want to get more money in, so I make a small re-raise to 600, and after some debate she folds what she says was JJ. I’m not convinced at all of this, but file it away.
Hand #3: I’ve started to chip up some getting KK again and AA once. My stack is about 4500 and blinds are 50/100. I raise from the CO or Button to 300 with TT, folds to BB (woman from previous hand) and she calls. Flop comes Axx (x is lower than T). She checks to me, I reach for chips, and then decide to check. Turn is a J, she bets out 500…. I debate and call. River is another A (good card for me). She bets another 500….at this point I’ve deduced she has either trip aces or nothing, and decide that her small river bet has priced me into a call. She turns over K2 and my hand is good.
Hand #4: I have about 6K, blinds 100/200. I raise 5s4s to 600 from LP, BB calls (3000 behind). Flop is KsQsJx. BB leads 1000. I think that there is a real chance of him folding if I move in (because live people love to do this), so I move in, and he looks disappointed, but say’s “I have to call”. He has QT, the turn blanks, and the river is the As. He shouts “Yes”….but not so fast my friend, your straight loses to my flush.
Hand #5: I have 9K or so, blinds still 100/200. I raise to 600 with AhAx, button calls, leaving himself 1200 behind. I have been very active for a while now that I have accumulated some chips. Flop is Kh9h2x, so I decide to give him some rope to hang himself, not worrying about a free card, he bets 800 of his 1200, and I move him in. He mutters to himself “Why did I bet so much?”, and I keep thinking “Because you did what I wanted you to do.” He asks me if I have a flush draw, and I just stare straight ahead. He finally calls with 44, and doesn’t hit his 2 outer.
Hand #6: After a few players have given me some chips. I am around 12K, and there are about 12 players left. Blinds are 200/400. I raise Kh2h to 1000 from the button. The BB calls (leaving only 1500 behind). Flop comes AhTx2x. He checks to me, and I put him in. He debates and then calls with KQ, and the turn and river brick and I knock him out.
Around this point they break for the final table. I have 15500, and the average stack is around 5500, so I have everyone way outchipped. Victory and Al both also make the final table, however both are really short with 2000 or so each. I raise the first hand UTG+1 with AsJs, and all fold. I decide to show to set the tone for me to be able to steal frequently and abuse my chip lead. The problem is that nothing seems to work out at the final table. Al busts in 6th or 7th by making a pretty poor play. Finally 5 handed, I double Victory up with 54s vs QJs. Then 4 handed I double up the short stack with JTs against A8. Victory also re-stole from me one time when I had T9o, and she moved in. I made a close fold, and she showed AQ. Hmm, this final table isn’t working out so well. I am at least able to maintain with some steals, but there is no chip accumulation on my part. 4 handed the short stack wants to talk chop, but we turn him down, and Victory busts him shortly after that. Once we are 3 handed, we are all pretty even in chips (around 17K). We all agree to chop equally (I was especially inclined to so that Victory would ensure a nice payday). Our opponent was eager as he feared we would not play against each other very hard (he was wrong in that regard), but it was probably a correct fear in most cases.
All in all I was pleased by my play, and Victory played a perfect final table, nursing a short stack most of the way through. She even made a very nice call on a flop of low cards with AQ.
Wednesday, November 21, 2007
Preakness trip report and a few notes:
First the notes...this blog has sucked with no activity for 6 months. Part of that is due to limited poker activity, part due to just being so damn busy and tired, and part due to laziness.
I had written up a trip report from my trip to the Preakness almost 6 months ago, yet never concluded it. Here is the somewhat complete trip report I had written. Enjoy.
Friday:
The trip started with Victory dropping me and Erik off for a 7am flight out of Detroit to Baltimore. The flight was smooth, and Paul picked us up at the Baltimore airport. We had about 9 hours to kill before the Phillies-Blue Jays game that night, so we drove to Philly in search of a genuine Philly Cheesesteak.
We got to Philly and saw some of the dumbest parking ever. Cars were parked in middle turn lane of roads, as well as just all over the place. We tried driving around for a while following our instincts for Cheesesteak, but eventually we had to ask someone. He directed us to Geno’s and Pat’s, which are across the street from each other. We drove through an area that looked like it was from the movie “Rocky”, with all of the houses close to one another. It was a one way street, with cars parked on both sides of you. It was quite claustrophobic for a road. After about 20 blocks of random houses, Italian bakeries, pizza joints, markets, etc….we found the cheesesteak joint.
We went to Geno’s, which is apparently very famous as they had pictures of famous people eating/cooking there. Included were Bill Clinton, Tiffany Amber Thiessen, Grant Hill….among many others. When you order, you order it with the type of cheese and with/without onions. For example, I got “Provolone without”. Other choices were American or “Whiz”. I don’t know what the “Whiz” was aside from maybe Cheese Whiz. The cheesesteak was actually kind of disappointing, low on meat, and overall not very flavorful. I’ve had better here in Michigan, but I wasn’t about to say that there, for fear of being killed.
After lunch, we drove through more of the local area on the way into the downtown district. It started reminding me more of a European/African market with all of the street vendors, people running around, and overall close quarters. Finally we got to drive through the downtown area. It was very nice, very clean, some interesting architecture as well. We didn’t get out as we were interested in drinking. By the baseball stadium we say Philadelphia Park (Horse racing) and decided to bet some races there, then walk to the baseball game. I wouldn’t be surprised if I drank 12 beers (Yiengling) while betting the pony’s for 6 hours. As I drank more, I bet more, and handicapped less, which is a very poor combination unless you are extremely lucky (I wasn’t). After all of us getting our asses kicked, we went to the baseball game. Our first order of business was getting beer and another cheesesteak. This cheesesteak tasted better (could have been due to the beer). We got there a little early, so I was able to take a decent number of pictures of the stadium. Overall a very nice stadium. Our seats were nice, about 26 rows up even with third base. We were very obnoxious by hassling every beer vendor for cheesesteaks, and even annoyed some girls that were sitting behind us, which amazingly did nothing to stop us from asking, and might have even led us to ask more. I recall pretty much harassing every player on both teams, but that is a little foggy right now. Going through my pictures I have several shots of a guy with what looks like pie on his face, but have absolutely zero recollection of that, nor does Erik.
After the game (a 5-3 Phillies win) we went back to Philadelphia Park, but I was totally hammered and ready to pass out, so we left shortly. Apparently finding the hotel was difficult since Erik and I both passed out, and Paul was driving after about 15-20 beers (not sure why we felt that was a good idea).
Saturday:
Saturday (Preakness Day) started out miserable. First Erik woke up about 5am and proceeded to puke multiple times. I felt rough and decided to go try to find some Tylenol with my toiletries. I reached in there in the dark and sliced the tip of my left middle finger pretty bad on my razor, which bled a ton. After using a Kleenex to stop/slow the bleeding, I proceeded to run in the bathroom and puke. Erik had already puked all over the back of the toilet rim, so I compensated for that by hitting the front of the rim. Fortunately I only puked once, while Erik did about 6-7 times. After puking, I felt far better, but it effectively ended my drinking for the weekend.
We made the 90 minute drive to Pimlico after grabbing some breakfast. On the drive Paul pushed for just getting infield tickets. Since we were getting killed at the races, we decided to do it. We paid $30 to park in a decent neighborhood, that was not dfficult to make it back to…pay attention, this is important later on. We walked to the track and you could tell it was different from the Derby. There were a shit ton of school buses and motor homes, with people pounding beers, and standing on the top of said buses.
After buying the way overpriced $60 ticket (I wanted to sit grandstand, but due to waiting tickets weren’t available online anymore), but Paul wanted to save a bit of money and buy infield (first bad decision by Paul of the day). As were were in line to get in, suddenly the line stopped. Apparently Pimlico doesn’t have a tunnel under the track, so you have to wait from about 10 minutes before the next race until a few minutes after the race is over to cross the track again. This caused us to miss the first two races. Race 1 I picked the winner on but didn’t miss out on any money, the second race I pegged nearly perfectly. I would have 100% hit the trifecta to return $700+, and I would almost have assuredly hit the superfecta to return $2200+….definite bad beat for me!!!
Erik described the Preakness as “The infield at the Preakness is basically like Spring Break on steroids. When we first set up camp, Paul and Todd left to use the ATM and place bets. During that short time I had at least 15 beer cans fly over my head, a bottle of Gatoraid explode about 5 ft from me, saw about 5 chicks pop their top, and saw a huge dude get tackled into a foam cooler full of beer.”
The rest of the trip involved my friend Paul getting so drunk that we lost him on the way back to the car, then us spending over an hour driving around and looking for him, while speaking to his incoherent ass on the phone. In the time of trying to communicate with Paul, I accidentally dialed Sonny on speed dial multiple times. It became so comical that he pretended to be Paul, and directing us to a non-existent location, before I realized who I was talking to. Finally we found him walking by a random hospital on some backroad over a mile from the location of the car. In the process of getting lost, he had lost his Pistons hat, and camping chair that he was carrying. The rest of the night was quite ridiculous dealing with Paul, but none of it is really worth rehashing here.
I had written up a trip report from my trip to the Preakness almost 6 months ago, yet never concluded it. Here is the somewhat complete trip report I had written. Enjoy.
Friday:
The trip started with Victory dropping me and Erik off for a 7am flight out of Detroit to Baltimore. The flight was smooth, and Paul picked us up at the Baltimore airport. We had about 9 hours to kill before the Phillies-Blue Jays game that night, so we drove to Philly in search of a genuine Philly Cheesesteak.
We got to Philly and saw some of the dumbest parking ever. Cars were parked in middle turn lane of roads, as well as just all over the place. We tried driving around for a while following our instincts for Cheesesteak, but eventually we had to ask someone. He directed us to Geno’s and Pat’s, which are across the street from each other. We drove through an area that looked like it was from the movie “Rocky”, with all of the houses close to one another. It was a one way street, with cars parked on both sides of you. It was quite claustrophobic for a road. After about 20 blocks of random houses, Italian bakeries, pizza joints, markets, etc….we found the cheesesteak joint.
We went to Geno’s, which is apparently very famous as they had pictures of famous people eating/cooking there. Included were Bill Clinton, Tiffany Amber Thiessen, Grant Hill….among many others. When you order, you order it with the type of cheese and with/without onions. For example, I got “Provolone without”. Other choices were American or “Whiz”. I don’t know what the “Whiz” was aside from maybe Cheese Whiz. The cheesesteak was actually kind of disappointing, low on meat, and overall not very flavorful. I’ve had better here in Michigan, but I wasn’t about to say that there, for fear of being killed.
After lunch, we drove through more of the local area on the way into the downtown district. It started reminding me more of a European/African market with all of the street vendors, people running around, and overall close quarters. Finally we got to drive through the downtown area. It was very nice, very clean, some interesting architecture as well. We didn’t get out as we were interested in drinking. By the baseball stadium we say Philadelphia Park (Horse racing) and decided to bet some races there, then walk to the baseball game. I wouldn’t be surprised if I drank 12 beers (Yiengling) while betting the pony’s for 6 hours. As I drank more, I bet more, and handicapped less, which is a very poor combination unless you are extremely lucky (I wasn’t). After all of us getting our asses kicked, we went to the baseball game. Our first order of business was getting beer and another cheesesteak. This cheesesteak tasted better (could have been due to the beer). We got there a little early, so I was able to take a decent number of pictures of the stadium. Overall a very nice stadium. Our seats were nice, about 26 rows up even with third base. We were very obnoxious by hassling every beer vendor for cheesesteaks, and even annoyed some girls that were sitting behind us, which amazingly did nothing to stop us from asking, and might have even led us to ask more. I recall pretty much harassing every player on both teams, but that is a little foggy right now. Going through my pictures I have several shots of a guy with what looks like pie on his face, but have absolutely zero recollection of that, nor does Erik.
After the game (a 5-3 Phillies win) we went back to Philadelphia Park, but I was totally hammered and ready to pass out, so we left shortly. Apparently finding the hotel was difficult since Erik and I both passed out, and Paul was driving after about 15-20 beers (not sure why we felt that was a good idea).
Saturday:
Saturday (Preakness Day) started out miserable. First Erik woke up about 5am and proceeded to puke multiple times. I felt rough and decided to go try to find some Tylenol with my toiletries. I reached in there in the dark and sliced the tip of my left middle finger pretty bad on my razor, which bled a ton. After using a Kleenex to stop/slow the bleeding, I proceeded to run in the bathroom and puke. Erik had already puked all over the back of the toilet rim, so I compensated for that by hitting the front of the rim. Fortunately I only puked once, while Erik did about 6-7 times. After puking, I felt far better, but it effectively ended my drinking for the weekend.
We made the 90 minute drive to Pimlico after grabbing some breakfast. On the drive Paul pushed for just getting infield tickets. Since we were getting killed at the races, we decided to do it. We paid $30 to park in a decent neighborhood, that was not dfficult to make it back to…pay attention, this is important later on. We walked to the track and you could tell it was different from the Derby. There were a shit ton of school buses and motor homes, with people pounding beers, and standing on the top of said buses.
After buying the way overpriced $60 ticket (I wanted to sit grandstand, but due to waiting tickets weren’t available online anymore), but Paul wanted to save a bit of money and buy infield (first bad decision by Paul of the day). As were were in line to get in, suddenly the line stopped. Apparently Pimlico doesn’t have a tunnel under the track, so you have to wait from about 10 minutes before the next race until a few minutes after the race is over to cross the track again. This caused us to miss the first two races. Race 1 I picked the winner on but didn’t miss out on any money, the second race I pegged nearly perfectly. I would have 100% hit the trifecta to return $700+, and I would almost have assuredly hit the superfecta to return $2200+….definite bad beat for me!!!
Erik described the Preakness as “The infield at the Preakness is basically like Spring Break on steroids. When we first set up camp, Paul and Todd left to use the ATM and place bets. During that short time I had at least 15 beer cans fly over my head, a bottle of Gatoraid explode about 5 ft from me, saw about 5 chicks pop their top, and saw a huge dude get tackled into a foam cooler full of beer.”
The rest of the trip involved my friend Paul getting so drunk that we lost him on the way back to the car, then us spending over an hour driving around and looking for him, while speaking to his incoherent ass on the phone. In the time of trying to communicate with Paul, I accidentally dialed Sonny on speed dial multiple times. It became so comical that he pretended to be Paul, and directing us to a non-existent location, before I realized who I was talking to. Finally we found him walking by a random hospital on some backroad over a mile from the location of the car. In the process of getting lost, he had lost his Pistons hat, and camping chair that he was carrying. The rest of the night was quite ridiculous dealing with Paul, but none of it is really worth rehashing here.
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