A nice win at Mandalay Bay !
Poker can be SO grueling, tiring, and time consuming if played properly. If you are not prepared to put the time and effort into it, you might as well not play. I honestly did not expect to last very long with my horrible luck lately, so I decided to enter into the 7:15pm $500 NL at Mandalay Bay, which was hosting a series of WPT events. It was my wife’s birthday, so I decided to get a suite at Luxor, have a nice romantic dinner, play a little poker while she went to the Mamma Mia show (you wouldn’t catch me dead in there), then relax for the evening. Boy, was I in for an unexpected marathon.
I felt kind of bad when I finally reached the final table at 1:15am because it was her birthday, but was happy to hear that she had some luck at the video poker machines, liked the show she saw, and was having a blast. I am so lucky to have an understanding wife when it comes to poker. But that was just the beginning.
I had come to the final table as chip leader. One guy was nicknaming me “Superman” because the next closest stack had 1/3 the chips I did, and I was lucky enough to run into some monster hands, and people were just, basically, dumping their chips to me. Then, I went completely card dead for the next 3 hours! I just sat back and watched everyone kill each other. When it got down to 3 left, one player resorted to either folding or moving all-in. This strategy stayed the same even when he took the chip lead! I told him that that strategy works every time, but once. But, he was persistent until he tried it once too often. I limped with AKo in the small blind, thinking that there was a good chance he would push. Sure enough, I heard “I’m all in”. So, with authority and happiness, I said “I CALL”, and was elated to see him turn over 52o, LOL. I just don’t’ understand this strategy. Why commit all your chips when the only hand that will call you is one that will probably beat you? To my horror, the flop came 2QJ rainbow. For once, the poker gods were nice to me and blessed me with a T on the river. He was pretty upset, but I just said “With that strategy, what did you expect was going to happen?” It ended 3 hands later when the runner-up ran into my KK and he called all his chips off with QTs. 9 1/2 hours later, I was finally going to enjoy the Jacuzzi suite. A Jacuzzi never felt better.