Day Nine: Home Again

14 hours, +$633

After some time off recovering from my trip I’m back into my home LA card room. It’s good to be home.

I started out at a nitty table and stayed there way too long. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, table selection is the most important decision in poker.

Our table was rarely full, but I still managed to escape to the table right behind me and sit immediately behind a very obnoxious young drunk with over $3000 in chips. Half the stacks at the table were over $800, and the chips were flying.

The cards were not cooperating. As far as I can tell I played brilliantly in a lot of ways.

My number one mistake was paying too much pre-flop to play speculative hands, especially out of position. Even though I was very likely to get paid off if any of them hit, when you have a $300 stack there aren’t a lot of speculative hands that are worth $20 or $30 pre-flop.

Another possible problem was being too tight post flop. But when all I have is AK or KQ and player who will play nearly anything are making big bets I don’t want to commit there. I could be up against J-high, I’d seen it happen plenty. But given that they weren’t playing completely randomly (at least not all the time,) I always folded.

For the next few hours I mostly celebrated losing minimal amounts. I could have easily been stacked several times, but I made the right reads over and over again. Money saved is just as valuable as money won, and I would have lost at least $600 if I ignored my reads and stuck my money in every time I had a great hand.

The drunk got kicked out (he’d already been banned on a previous visit) and the table broke.

I got moved to what looked like a very soft table, with very deep stacks. Again, five stacks of $1000 plus each, and me with $800 due to a lucky hand just before moving. It was 3am but I had to give this a shot.

A new drunk showed up, with a homeless man he claimed was his brother rail-birding him and fetching him cans of beer from somewhere, despite the fact that it was well past last call.

I treaded water for a few hours, then in won several very large pots in rapid succession. Now that the drunk was busted the table was not longer profitable so I packed up and left, turning a cold decked night into a decent profit.