Canadia

I am up in the Buffalo / Niagara Falls area so I was able to put in a live session yesterday at Casino Niagara, also known as the red-headed step child to Fallsview Niagara Casino. Casino Niagara was the original one in town until the new casino was built a handful of years ago. Casino Niagara has the 1/2 game and Fallsview has 2/5 5/10 and 10/25 games. When I got there they had 4 1/2 games going and was put on the list in 14th spot. Luclily there were a number of call-ins ahead of me and they opened a new game within 15 minutes of arriving.

Thanks to Canadian casino guerrilla math my $100USD was good for $97CDN (good addendum to this story later), so I bought in for the full $97. In the second lap at the table I had limped 86ss and it was raised to $15 so I pitched it. Very next hand I get 86hh and limp again only to see it raised to $10. I played it vs the crasian raiser and we saw the flop 3 ways of K88. HE leads for $15, I call and the other player folds. Turn is a 4 and he grabs a stack of reds to put me all in. I call for the $75 or so in front of me and he turns over AK which doesn't improve and I get an early double.

I sat on $200 for quite a while folding like the nit that I am. I picked up QQ on the button vs an aggro 20's player. First hand that I saw him play he raised to $6 with K5 off, flop top and bottom pair and check the flop and turn before finally betting the river when he was behind. I flatted his $12 raise (he had $42 behind) and we took the flop heads-up. Flop comes Kxx and he checks. I bet out $25 and he shoves for his $42. I call, he doesn't show and the board runs out xQ and I flip over the set and river his KJ. Meh, ahead pre-flop, right?

Not long after that hand I play a pot vs the other tough tricky player at the table 3 seats to my right. He was a solid player, knowing when he can steal, etc but I had position on him and used it a number of times before this hand played out. The 20's kid opened to $6 again and tricky guy called and I called with AQ from the blinds. Flop comes 10,5,2 and 20's checks, tricky bets $12 with most likely air, I flat and 20's gets out of the way. There is the spot where I think I can throw in a check-raise to win the pot, and that's exactly what I SHOULD have done, but didn't. Turn pairs the 10, I check and he bets $22. I'm thinking over the hand and I really really don't think he has the 10 in that spot. Just the way he bet seemed like he had air. I tanked to a bit and decided to call and plan on calling most river bets with my ace high. If he valuetowns me with a 5 or something goofy like that so be it. The $30 river call when the Q hit made it much easier. He ended up having a weaker ace than I did. He said "you are not calling unless the Q (or A) hits the river, right?" I told him that I was pretty sure I was calling a river bet.

That hand took me north of $300 and an almost guaranteed winning session as the biggest stack at the table was only around $150 or so. The last significant pot was vs a younger kid who raised to $6 pre and I called with 76ss. Flop comes A24ss. I call his $8 cbet and call $15 when the Jc hits the turn. An interesting 3s hits the river and he fires $25 (leaving $30 behind). I don't think he can value bet an ace or some odd two pair there. I opt just to call thinking I'm going to see a bigger flush. Nope, he rivered two pair (presumably A3) and I take the pot. I really suck at extracting max value in these hands and I apparently give 1/2 players waaaay too much credit.

I played for a couple laps after that and got up with $390 for a nice profit on the day for 4 hours or work or so. Later on in the night I went to Fallsview and played my favorite 1c 100 play video poker (winning $6) only to lose a total of $30 over there on random shit (including ice cream). When I take my $360CDN to the cashier I get back $349.25USD. The fucking get you coming and going. Can we please tie the US and Canadian dollar together for once, similar to the Bahamian dollar? One time!

Oh yeah, also played Mini-FTOPS Stud8 last night. I hung within 1k of the starting stack for over two hours before losing a bit pot and losing my internet connection back to back. In total it dropped 3 times and was slow the rest of the time. Right before the 3rd break I got the internet working again and had 1k left. In back to back hands I upped it to 2100 only to spew it back to 700 the last hand before the break. I called it quits and went to bed.