I missed the DADI and didn't get shot in the process

So I didn’t play the DADI last night. Not that I have anything against rebuys, I just didn’t play. I also didn’t play the Mansion poker freeroll set up for folks on pocktfives.com that were playing the $1 rebuy when it crashed last week. You wanna talk about retarded? Think $1 rebuy tourney.

But anyway, I’m at work around mid-afternoon working on my third revision of a church lighting design, when I get a text message inviting me to a cash game in a rental house about 45 minutes from my house. I’d played there once before and was pretty sure they wanted me to come back, since I dropped $300 in less than 2 hours on my last visit. Queens just no good sometimes.

So I got permission from Suzy, which was no mean feat given the fact that Tuesday she got her walking cast on. Yeppers, my wife is now sporting a hot pink plaster cast for the next 3-6 weeks to correct her plantar fasciaitis. You listening, Mean Gene? Get that shit taken care of or it will come back to bite you in the ass. Or arch, more precisely. But anyway.

So I cruise in and there’s a pretty brand new cast of characters. The only one I recognized when I landed was Danny, the guy who runs the game. He’s a damn nice guy, looks like he bench-presses VW Bugs as a warm-up to his real workout. There were several young guys, including one with a shitload of tattoos and some brief fungus sprouting from his chin and lips. He might want to consider shaving until puberty really sets in, but that’s his call I suppose. An old guy named Willie and a young kid who really didn’t look old enough to drive after dark were playing heads-up for $100 a match when I got there, just killing time until everybody arrived. Kid looked like he had some game, and Willie looked like he had some gamble, so they were pretty evenly matched. They split two games and then we had enough to start a game.

This is a pretty good game, if a touch expensive. It’s standard $1/2 no limit, with 10% rake, no cap. They didn’t always take the full rake they could, I don’t think I ever saw the dealer take more than $5 for a rake, so I had no complaints. They provide drinks and food, and a pretty good dealer. Courtney is certainly better than the Luxor dealers I had to contend with my last day in Vegas. She played as well as dealt, since the game was a little short, but made it known to all the players when they came in what was going on. The only downside to that is that she’s good, so I tried to avoid getting in big pots with her.

It’s a pretty loose game, $12 is pretty much a standard raise. There’s no max buy-in, but no one bought in for more than $200. A couple of poor guys were the table ATMs, rebuying $50 at a time, sitting for 3-4 hands, busting, walking for a hand and then rebuying. Nothing really eventful for me for most of the night. KK no good, folded on the river to a tight player who I was sure was ahead of my when we checked around on the turn. He showed me that he filled up on the turn when another player paid him off.

Dropped QQ in a hand where Courtney had KK, the tattooed kid had JJ, Jason (one of the other guys that runs the game) had 88 and the flop came down A J 8 rainbow. Courtney and I ran away, Tattoo had folded to Courtney’s $50 re-raise preflop, and Jason showed his 88 when we rabbit-hunted. He woulda made quads on the river. I wasn’t sticking around that long. 88 v. JJ v. QQ v. KK. Live poker is so rigged.

Getting close to time to check out I was down about $50 and looked down at AA. Figured it was close to time to end it anyway, so I re-raised Danny’s $12 preflop to $25. Flop comes down K Q rag rainbow. I check, he bets out $50. I push my remaining $116 into the pot, making him pretty much pot committed for the $66 call. He doesn’t improve so my AA holds up against his KJs. Pretty much the perfect flop and flop action for my hand, so I was happy camper. Cashed out up $125 for the night and drove home, knowing I was gonna be draggin’ ass all day today. I was right. Ass is definitely draggin’. But with a little bonus whoring and that $125, the bankroll is back to pre-Vegas levels. I broke even with my play out there, but there were some withdrawals from bankroll to cover real life expenses, so I had a little dip coming home.

Now I need to assess my bankroll goals for the year and what I want out of poker. Right now what I want is a nice set of real clay chips for my home game, so that may be the next thing. I would like to get the ‘roll up to $3K so I could feel a little more comfortable playing NL100 and 3/6 Limit, and I’m only about $500 from there, so maybe those are the two things I’ll shoot for in the short term. Long term I want to build up enough to afford to go back to Vegas in December and party with my friends, so that’ll be the longer term goal, and I figure I need about another $1500 on top of gambooooling money for that. A little writing, a little real poker play and I should be there no problem.