Landmark of sorts

This, my 300th post, comes to you from Las Vegas courtesy of the overpriced wireless access at the Imperial Palace. I'm here for the Lighting Dimensions International trade show, where all us lighting goobers get together and look at new flashy toys. If you'ire interested in following that, check out my Barbizon blog. The company is letting me blog the show with daily updates on new toys.

So after my 4.5 hour plane ride that took six hours (with a dead laptop battery and busted earbuds for my iPod), I got here around 3 yesterday afternoon. Ate, then played cards. The lucksack giveth, the lucksack taketh away, the lucksack giveth again. I got a pretty good run early to build my stack up to about $400 at 1/2 NLHE, then dropped back down to about $180 when I took two monster hands off the quiet guy at the end of the table, turning Broadway and rivering the 2nd-nut flush when he slowplayed a little too much. Gave away all my profits for the session (about $220) when I ran my Kings into Aces. I'm just not good enough to lay them down preflop. He raised to $10, I re-raised to $25, he pushed, and his eyes bugged out a little when I asked or a count. I put him on one of four hands, AA, AK, QQ, or JJ, three of which I was a favorite to, so I made the call. Nobody improved, so I'm back to even - and hungry. I tell myself I'm done when the BB gets to me, so of course when I'm UTG+1 I look down at biracial Jacks.

I pop it to $12, get one caller. He gets stacked when he lets me make small bets on every street, then bets out on the river when my Jack hits. I put him all in and he turns over 99 for flopped top set. He could have taken the pot with aggressive action on an earlier street, since the flop was K-high, but he slowplayed himself into a loser. I went to dinner up $179, a nice recovery and a decent way to start the trip.