Alright my excuses are dwindling. I've pretty much played 0 poker from February to July. No time and mostly no real desire to play. I jumped back online last week for a nice little score. Why? Well Pennsylvania has opened up its casinos for table games and poker. Now being only a half hour from a room as opposed to a little over an hour has my itch back. Finally care to start playing again and being able to shoot out for a few hours after kiddies are in bed makes it a whole helluva lot easier.
The skinny. There are going to be three rooms eventually in the immediate Philadelphia area. There are others in the state but for my purposes, these are the ones that sooooot me. Harrah's Chester opened it's doors to tables and poker this Sunday. Parx Casino at Bensalem Race Track opened on Sunday for table games and their poker room is supposed to open mid September. Finally Sugar House Casino is in the finishing stages of being built on the river just north of the Ben Franklin and set to open fully (table games and poker) in mid September. Ultimately this will be my most likely destination as it is the closest to my house. Actually both rooms that aren't open are a bit closer, but for the time being beggers can't be chosers.
Last night, I trucked over to Harrah's Chester to see what the deal was. Interesting side note for all those married men out there, if you give your mother grandchildren she will drive you to play poker while she plays slots. Scouts honor. Casino itself was packed as was the poker room. I was about 40 on the list for 1-2 when I got there but they cleared it pretty fast and I had a seat in about 15-20 minutes. The room itself has 25 tables, and they crammed them in there. not much room to move at all. As of now they are not offering any tournaments but the should change when the crowds die down. I don't know if there is any talk of expanding the room. One of the nice things is they have the electronic tables to punch people in and out, so the open seat count is pretty quickly relayed to the front desk. Now given the crush of people that were there and the newness of the staff working there things were not without a hitch. I heard some grumblings from the players but in all honesty I didn't think they were doing that bad of a job. Open seats were getting filled fairly quickly and I didn't see many player/dealer/house confrontations.
The actual poker part of this post. Obviously I played 1-2, which I still think I suck at but am trying to improve and last night I felt like a did a better job. There wasn't much to talk about really. Key hand of the night I get AA UTG and I have about 250 behind (started with 200). I limp, another limp, 1 off the button pops to 15, I reraise to 35, first limper calls, original raiser calls. Flop is K96 rainbow, I bet 80, limp/caller folds, original raiser calls. Turn comes out a Queen, I'm not thrilled with this card. I tank for a bit here, wondering if he could have kings but thinking AK is a stronger possibility. I don't like the Queen but calling 80 there with QQ seems a bit of a stretch. I'm also thinking 66 and 99 are possibilities too. I decided to check and he insta shoves, at this point my gut just told me he's not doing that with a set and I snap called. River blanks and he turns over K10. Um yeah, exactly what I thought. There were three other hands that I think I misplayed that cost me. One that I should have bet the turn OOP when I hit, that cost me money. One where I bluffed at a small pot that probably wasn't worth it and didn't tell any kind of story that would make someone think I had a hand. Finally one where I had a good feeling I was beat but couldn't let the hand go.
All said and done it was a good night. I walked off +225 for the night so I can't complain. Starting to get excited to play again which is nice and now that I have children that get at least a medicum of sleep there is a little time for poker. Come September I'll definately be doing my best to check out the other rooms.
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