Back To The Grind

After a long 10 day vacation to Yellowstone/Jackson Hole, I am back to the grind. I have a few photos from the trip below. I did not gambool too much on this trip. We stayed in Mesquite, NV the first night, and I played some 1/3 NL at the Eureka Casino. It was a pretty interesting session. I did not have a ton of cash on me so I bought in light for $170. The table was running 6 to 7 handed most of the time I was there and 3 of the players were obviously regulars, who were playing pretty decent poker. I probably should have just passed, as I don’t like shorthanded no-limit, I had a light buy-in, and there was not much dead money at the table. I played anyway. It was a pretty jacked up session. I played tighter than you probably should play short-handed with the idea of grabbing a bunch of free drinks without doing much damage to my minimal stack. So I stayed on the sidelines most of the time. The two times I had a decent hand and played aggressively, I got re-raised all-in by decent players, and was put to the test. Both times I was able to fold, and not get stacked, but I bled down to below $100. An hour later, I had still not won a hand, and was pretty much over it. I picked up AQo and raised to $20 preflop willing to stack off as required since my stack was so low. I ended up stealing the blinds for my first pot, and walked away down about $90. I don’t play a bunch of live poker, but this was very close to my second live session of my life where I played for a significant amount of time without winning a single pot. Anyone out there ever play a live session, and walked without ever winning a pot? It’s a pretty tough thing to do, but when things are not going your way you just need to stop the bleeding.

So I walked out of the Eureka, and headed across the street to the Virgin River Hotel where we were staying. I ended up playing some $2 blackjack at VR and had a blast. It was a super fun table with some talkative drunk locals. We were messing with the dealers and getting as loud as a craps table does. I played for about 90 minutes and won $60. –EV games rule! What was I thinking playing poker?

Later in the trip, we were staying in West Yellowstone Montana. They had casino signs all over the place, so I was hoping to get in some poker action at night. What they actually had was video poker functioning as some sort of state lottery. They had old school video poker machines that had typical Vegas type payouts, except they were pair of Aces or better instead of pair of Jacks or better. I was never that into video poker or slots, so it was not very appealing to play video poker with a massive rake so I passed. That was it for the gambooling. I am looking forward to hitting the virtual felt tonight, and running some beginner S&Gs over at Bodog. I guess there was some kind of layoff at Bodog that got Smokkee to suspend his challenge. Not sure what is up with that at this point. I guess I will find out tonight. Hope everyone was profitable while I was gone.