A Good Couple of Days for Live Poker

 

Day One

At some point I will get back to doing the WPBT weekend wrap-up. After getting my ass kicked playing poker in Vegas I had to wait a little bit to play after getting back. Wednesday was a day off and I wanted to get as much felt time in as possible so a little after 9am I headed to the Tampa Hard Rock.

They have a new room that was opened a few day prior that has somewhere near 50 tables in it. The room is laid out nicely with room to walk between tables no matter where you are in the room. One noticeable fail is the bathrooms. They are just for the poker room but they are way to small. The mens room has two urinals and two stalls. One positive is they have a computer right when you walk into the room where you can check your comp balance and sign-up for the wait lists. You get $0.60 per hour for games up to 1/3 and $1 for games bigger than that, which is more than you get from other rooms in the area.

Little did I know when I arrived there they were running a high hand promotion every half hour. You had to qualify with quads and both had to be in your hand. It was $500 every 30 minutes and if there wasn’t a winner it rolled over to the next half hour. When I arrived there was a good 15 tables running. I was able to get a seat at a 1/2 ($100 max) table as none of the 1/3 ($300 tables) were running yet.

I won a little bit and was up to around $130 when I picked-up A-K and raised it up to $10 and received a one caller. Flop comes Qh-10h-X. My opponent checks and I decide to check it back. Turn comes the Ah. My opponent leads for $15. If I’m calling the turn I’m going to call his $30 shove on the river which in all likelihood is coming. I tank call and the river brick comes and I call the shove. He turns over the Kh-Jh for the royal. He wins the $500 high hand for the half hour and a $500 bonus for a royal. One interesting thing is that you have to get to the river for the high hand to count. His $15 turn bet almost lost him $1k. He was damn lucky that I happened to have an ace in my hand.

After losing about $85 I moved over to the 1/3 table and sat with a full $300. After dropping down to $225 or so I picked-up the hand of the day. I called a raise to $8 with Qd-Jd along with a couple others and the flop came Kd-8d-5d. Pre-flop raiser bets $20 and I am the only caller. Turn is the 10d and opponent leads for $25. Does he have the Ad here? I call and see the beautiful looking 9d on the river. Opponent leads for $50 and I ship my remaining $160 or so. He immediately says “really?”. There is really only three hands I can shove on the river there, two straight flushes and the Ad. Well it’s obvious my opponent has the Ad now. He tanks for a good three minutes and calls. Now I have to wait 25 minutes for the high hand to hold. I really have to run bad if someone hits a royal before time is up.

So the half hour comes to a close and since the last half hour didn’t have a winner I am in line to win $1k. About four minutes into the next half hour I still hear nothing and I am in a limped pot with 8-8. Flop come 10-8-8. Flop gets checked through and I call a $5 bet on the turn. River is checked to me and I bet $20 and everyone folds. I show the quads and yell “floor”. The floor comes over and I ask if it’s a new half hour and they say it is, they just didn’t have time to announce it yet. That’s $1k in the bank and I get to sweat another half hour for $500 more. It ends up holding and I win $1500 in high hands. After tipping the dealer (who dealt me both) and my profits I walk out with around $1600 more than what I came with. Not a bad day.

Day Two

After working for my last half day of the year I headed to Tampa Downs. I waited for about 30 minutes before a new table was opened. I played for around 90 minutes and had a $3 profit. Not really wanting to play any more cash games I opted for the tournament. This is by far the best structure you will ever find in a tournament. Check it out here. We started with 20k in chips and 20 minute levels. There were 59 runners and it paid the top five.

The structure almost proved to be too good. We made the final table after 5 1/2 hours of play. I was never all-in for my tournament life the whole time. When we reached nine-handed I just wanted to go home. Someone proposed an even chop of $445 each and I agreed. Average stack at the time was 130k and I had 176k. I was probably 2nd in chips at the time. I wasn’t about to hold the deal up cause I just wanted to leave after playing 14 hours the last two days. I ended up with a little over $300 profit on the day.