A Business Trip to Remember

Back in November I had to go on a business trip. I don’t have to travel very often for my job but I do enjoy getting out of the office for these trips to our other facilities. This trip happened to be in northern Michigan about an hour south of St. Ignace. With this in mind I went to the Card Player web site to check out their poke room finder. It just happens that the Kewadin Casino is located in St. Ignace and they have a $20 re-buy tourney that will be going on while I’m up there. After my woody went down, I started to make my plans. If I leave the office by 4:30 I’ll be there in plenty of time for the 6:00 sign-in.

So Tuesday morning comes and I’m ready for a full day of work. I spend the whole day riding in a truck with a sales guy meeting customers who want to kill me for various quality issues that we have been dealing with. What a great way to pre-pair for a live tourney event. So as we get back to the office, the sales guy says” be careful tonight, it’s going to snow.” “It’s only lake effect snow. No big deal.”

Traffic is good as there are no people in northern Michigan and I make the 68-mile trip in well under an hour. Now to the poker room. Well poker room is an over statement of what I found. It’s really a poker closet that doesn’t have enough room for all of your coats. Anyway, I sign up and start to get focused by hitting the roulette table. You know, roulette is a great way to spend time if you want to give the house your money. As best as I can remember, I hit one number in about 45 minutes of play. At least I got to see some guy hit double zero with a $20 bet. He was on mega tilt and chasing his loses when his number came in. He was still down 2 balloons after the win.

The tourney structure is not good. T1500 with blinds at 50/100, unlimited re-buys, 1 all-in re-buy, add-on, and dealer tip add-on with 50 players. So in reality we have a $40 tourney. I draw the 5 seat and my table was like this

Seat 1: Old tough guy
Seat 2: Old loose aggressive
Seat 3: John Denver/solid player
Seat 4: Maniac grunge singer
Seat 5: Hero
Seat 6: Passive deer in head lights guy
Seat 7: Old comedian
Seat 8: Aunt Bee
Seat 9: Loose TV poker watcher
Seat 10: Solid player

I didn’t do much right away. I bought a few pot with raises. Maniac to my right was raising a lot and scaring people away. He became my first target. I check-raised him on the turn when I caught him bluffing. A little later I caught quad 7’s on the flop from the small blind with an ace as the third card. Check, check. Turn king. check bet call. River 2. I check he raises all-in. I call. He had a pair of kings. I’m sitting good at this point and begin to put pressure on the smaller stacks. As we move in to the later rounds this hand comes up. I get JJ in late position with 2 limpers in front. I’ve got 30,000, well above average, so I raise 4 x bb to 8,000. Solid player in 10 seat raises all-in to 14,000 total. All fold to me. I call. He has kings. No help and I’m down to T16, 000. I build it back up T25,000 with some steals when I look down at kings. 1 limper to me so I raised to 8,000. TV guy thinks for along time before calling. Everyone else folds. Flop is 10 7 3. I check and he goes all in for 10,000. I called and he flips over pocket 7’s. This was my biggest mistake of the night. I called as soon as he bet. I should have taken my time and put him on a range of hands. Pocket 7’s was a strong possibility in this situation but I didn’t see it. I could have folded and been in average position instead of being short stacked. I get knocked out a little later when my Q9 loses to Q8 in a battle of short stack blinds. I was the bubble boy.

Now it’s time for the cash games. They had two 2/5 NL games going and a 5/10 Limit Omaha game. I don’t have the cash of the Omaha game so I buy-in to the $100 max buy-in 2/5 NLHE game.

The table had just the right amount of loose players and calling stations to get the pots up to the fun range. An old man calling to my right dropped 4 buy-ins before he went home. I didn’t want to see him leave. The guy to my left was a LAG who would see any cheap flop and push people off if they didn’t hit. After a short time, he avoided me when I raised unless he had a monster. For the most part we didn’t bump heads. I played until 1:30 when they closed the room up about $280. A goodnight.

I go outside ready for my one-hour trip home to see 8 inches of snow all over the place. As I go over the bridge to the Lower Peninsula I realize I won’t be home for a while. The interstate has not been plowed and I was driving in ruts big enough to suck my car into oblivion. I finally got home about 4AM. Three hours of sleep before the sales guy picks me up for a day of customer abuse.
I love poker.