Landed at LAX on Friday January 12th early in the afternoon. Walked to In-n-Out for lunch.
My frisbee friends driving down from San Francisco were 3 hours out so I thought about hitting up the casino. Decided to head to my hotel in Huntington Beach instead and meet the rest of the team. Enjoyed a meal and then conveniently at a CVS picked up a bottle of Crown Royal plus some Canada Dry ginger ale.
Saturday beach ultimate tournament day 1 pulled my calf during the first half of the first game. FML. Whiskey saved the day though. Found a way to have a good time even though I couldn't play.
Saturday night delicious Indian food. More whiskey. Passed out early.
Sunday morning woke up with hopes my calf would be better enough to play. No luck. Second half of the bottle of whiskey saved the day though.
Sunday early afternoon our tourney was over and we headed into LA for lunch. Delicious pad thai. I wasn't brave enough to use the handheld bidet attachment lmao
My friends got gas ahead of their drive north and I caught a Lyft to Hustler Casino.
$1,000 USD in my pocket. I was on the waitlist via PokerAtlas for the 5/5 PLO game. When I arrived at 5:00pm there were 4-5 tables of NL running in the Crystal Room, plus 1 table of $20 double board PLO. There was 1 table of 5/5 PLO running and I was first on the list.
I sat at the empty table next to it and watched the table trying to get a sense of the action. 8 players. Max buy-in 1000. Most of the stacks were in the 300 to 500 range, plus two stacks ~700, and two stacks ~1500. Few false starts when players got up from their seats but they were just going for smoke breaks. After 45 minutes one of the short stacks busted and didn't rebuy. I sat down in seat #4 at 5:45pm and bought in for $500. The first of my 2 bullets.
Most pots were raised preflop to 20 and sometimes reraised to 50 or 60. Lots of limping and cold calling of raises. My kind of game! Didn't hit any good flops for the first while. My stack dwindled to about 275. Thought about topping up given that most of the stacks were larger than mine. Decided to stick to my plan of 2 bullets.
Big hand #1. I'm in the BB, UTG limps, UTG+1 bumps it to 25, one call, button pots it to 90, SB folds. I look down at AKKx with AK of hearts. The math is perfect for a 4-bet shove of my 275 stack. With my hand I'm happy to either get it in multiway or scoop up the 150 dead money. Both the initial raiser and the 3-bettor called my shove. They checked it down. I don't remember the run out other than it was Q high, a low card paired, and no flushes were possible. Showed my KK for two pair and both opponents mucked. KK holds! I'm up to 800 and change.
Won/lost a few small pots after that. Stayed in the 750 to 850 range for a while.
Big hand #2. Flopped a set of 9s with no redraws, bet it the whole way, turn and river both weren't particularly scary. Neither the flush draw or obvious straight draws got there. Got paid off by one of the big stacks that showed he had flopped a set of 6s. Nice double up to ~1600.
I was earning a reputation at the table as playing pretty tight and having the goods. Saw one guy order a Caesar salad with salmon that looked really good. Made plans to order that myself if I got hungry. It was about 830pm at the time.
Big hand #3. I'm UTG still around 1600 in chips and I've got TT55 one suit. Bump it to 15. One fold, next guy bumps it to 40. 2 callers. I call to close the action. Flop T 7 4 rainbow. Beautiful! I bet 100 into ~160. The guy who made it 40 preflop pops it to 300 with about another 300 behind. Next guy to act has about 1400 to 1500 and thinks for a minute. Looks to me like he doesn't want to let his hand go. I try my best to play it cool. He seems somewhat reluctant but it's like he can't help himself, even comments on how I always have it. He says "Pot" which puts him in for more than half his stack. The player seated to my right shoves his ~700 stack! So it's looking like it's gonna be a 4-way all-in. I'm not going anywhere. When I shove the other players groan as it's pretty obvious what I've got at that point. Everybody calls. Pretty much everyone in the game was a gambler, there were very few folds after making large bets. So the pot is about $4000. The turn is a K and I kinda assume I'm dead at that point. River is a 2 or 3. No flush possible. I table my set of 10s expecting someone to show KK, I particularly expected the big stack to have KK - but he probably had AA and maybe a straight draw to go with it, or maybe I'm being generous. Probably a bunch of wrap draws with 89xx and other flopped sets. Everybody mucks and I scoop the enormous $4000 pot!
Coloured up $1000 worth of 5s and built a small wall of 100s in front of five stacks of 5s. That was fuckin fun :smiley:
