Lovin' the ATL?

Not really. I don't dislike it, and I think I've located the hotel that I'll make my base of operations whenever I'm here, so that's helpful. It's a straight shot down 85 to the office, and there are plenty of places to eat around the hotel, plus it has the most important thing for me - comfortable beds!

But I promised the story of my amazing fall from grace in West Virginia, so here it is in short order. I spent the first four hours of Friday night on the most amazing run of cards I've ever experienced, picking up aces, kings, queens, jacks, tens and most of them multiple times. I also found action almost every time, which is always a bonus. My table started off a dream, several very loose-passive players, with a couple of gambooly bigger stacks. I managed to chip up from my initial $100 buy-in to $300 in short order, then doubled through the other big stack when I picked up aces for the second time in four hands. He didn't give me credit for yet another big pair, so he paid me off on every street with an inferior hand. He didn't show, but I'm assuming he had top pair on the king-high board. With him gone, I had the rest of the table covered.

No, add everyone's chips together, and I had them covered. Now it's not that I had that much money in front of me, about $650. It's that these guys were playing that short. I looked around and decided that I should probably rack up in a little bit, since only one other guy had more than $300 in front of him, and he was pretty tight.

Then I stacked him to bring my total chips up over $850. I was looking at a +$750 night, and didn't rack up when the table went to shit. It's all my fault, I could have gotten up, checked on the others, and maybe gone to the hotel early. Or not. Just gone south with my profit and tried the Stud game for a little while. Or just gone south with my profit and moved to a better table. Or played slots. Or whatever.

But since I don't often get the chance to play casino poker, it's hard for me to get up and cut my sessions short. And this time it got really expensive. Three young guys who could play all sat down at my table, then T and Special K moved over, and by the time the night was over I'd given away $500 in profits. So I learned a lesson - if I've got the table covered by such a huge margin, move on to greener pastures. At that point there was no significant reward left for me, just risk. And as I doubled up short stack after short stack, I kept on risking. So rather than doubling my bankroll on the trip, I finished down $100 after playing like ass the next day.

Yeah, winning $750 would have almost doubled my paltry bankroll. After some Christmas purchases, and the Macbook I bought last summer, not to mention a gross losing streak the last half of 2008, I've barely cracked a four-digit bankroll since October. At one point at Bad Blood's last month, I was within one buy-in of busto again before Brian the Red gifted me his stack a couple of times. So I'm trying not to play like as much of a dumbass without playing too much like scared money, which is a delicate balance. And really, I'm typically neither delicate nor particularly well-balanced. I'll keep you posted.