To the Moon!

I had a very good session yesterday in the Oceans 40 game.  I headed up to the casino after my morning class and got there around 11:15 or so.  The 40 game was full, so I sat down in a 5/5 game and played 2 orbits.  I played only one hand where I opened with 99 in early position and took down the blinds and one limper.  I booked a $5 win there.  Then I went to an 8/16 game that had just started and played for about an hour and lost $172.  Then we fired up a second short handed 40/80 game that I started around 1:00pm or so.  By 8:00pm when that photo was taken, I was up over 100 big bets.  It may not be clear from the photo, but the first base is a triangle of 28 stacks.  The middle layer is 21 stacks, and the top is 3.5 stacks, for a total of $10,500 in chips I have in front of me.  I bought in 2 racks, so at this time I was up $8500.

Of course, at this time I had my designs on breaking my single session win record of 125 bets.  But alas it was not to be.  For the next 4 hours, I pretty much treaded water.  I actually gave back like $1500 or so, before I went on a mini rush before I quit around 11:45pm to get up to my peak at $10,700.  So for the first 7 hours, I could do no wrong, but the last 4 hours not much happened.  Oh well.

Nights like these don't happen very often so you definitely need to appreciate it when it does.  Of course on nights like this, it always helps to have more than your fair share of big pairs, and flop sets galore and have most of them hold up.  And have more than your fair share of semi-bluffs get there.

I got to own Helen one hand.  I opened with KJs button - 3, she 3-bet the cutoff and we went heads up to the flop of AQx, 1 of my suit, but 2 diamonds.  Check/call.  Turn was a blank, and I check/raised and she called.  River was ten of diamonds.  I checked.  She hesitated and thought for a little bit, bet, and I insta raised and she called, saw the bad news and flung her cards at the dealer in frustration.

I have varied up my turn check raises against Helen quite a bit here lately.  I would go into my reasons and rationale, but I'm not sure I want to get deeply into how my poker mind works in such a public forum.

That's a wrap

Well my first month of law school is in the books.  I am having a grand time.  I really like being back in school, being intellectually challenged and thinking critically about the assigned reading.  So far, I have not felt like the work load has been anything that I can't handle.  Although the next month, I may regret having said that.  This week looks fairly full.  And all 3 of my substantive courses have midterms.  I thought that wasn't supposed to happen in law school.  Oh well.  I have midterms scheduled on the 8th, 22, and 28 of October.

This week is going to be fairly busy.  I need to study up for my midterm next Tuesday in civil procedure and I have a 1250 word legal memo due this Friday at 9am.  I have read all of the cases regarding the legal memo, but need to pencil in some time for actual drafting of the memo, which I imagine will take at least 8 to 10 hours minimum.  That and the studying I need to do for my midterm will make me a very busy guy this week.

September poker wise is also in the books. I had my best month of the year dollar wise, making 11k in 49.5 hours, so I am happy about that.  In other news Helen who continues to hate me, had another bad night on Friday, in no small part due to me.  I got her good quite a few times, with bluffs, value bets, and suck-outs (maybe).  Here's one hand I played, in which I think I sucked out on her, but it's possible I flopped the best hand.

Amos, drunk and spewing, live straddles.  UTG+1 folds, I 3-bet next up the QdJd, Helen caps next up, and it folds around to Amos and he calls, and I call.  Flop comes QJ5 1 diamond.  Checked to Helen, who bets, Amos calls, I raise, Helen calls, Amos calls.  Turn T.  I bet, Helen raises, Amos folds, I call.  River J.  I check, Helen bets, I raise, and she insta calls, and I win.  She lost probably somewhere in the neighborhood of 4 racks on the night and was super frustrated and on tilt most of the night.  I am beginning to think that she comes pre-tilted.

October is shaping up to be a light poker playing month for me.  I will probably play this Friday, but the next couple of weeks after that I have family commitments on Fridays that will likely prevent me from playing.

Absent

As I expected the spot that kicked out last Friday night was nowhere to be seen this Friday.  Don't know if it was because he was away on business, or if he made a conscious decision to not come.  We shall see.  It will be a shame if he stays away for a while, due to the poor treatment he received from the casino management.

Odeng

Really?

You gotta love Oceans-11 sometimes.  They make some of the stupidest decisions I have ever seen.

Friday night 40 game going strong and with all appearances that it will go well into the early AM hours of Saturday, when the inexplicable happens.  The spot is kicked out of the casino!

For what?  Apparently shooting off his mouth to one of the floor men in the California Games part of the casino while taking a break from playing poker.  Now this guy is one of the biggest whales in the casino and in our 40 game.  He's super nice, gives great action, tips EVERYONE well, and is easily one of the biggest losers in the game.  He also likes to play the other table games, and I know he's a big whale in Las Vegas as well.  Even at Oceans-11, he's been known to play Ultimate Texas Holdem, and min-bet the ante and blind bet ($10) and max-bet the trips bet ($500).

Now all of this is hearsay, so I can't vouch for any of this personally.  So while on a break from our game around 2:00 am in the morning, he goes to the restroom and stops by the pit games and wants to play Ultimate Texas Holdem.  There is currently not a table open spreading that game.  He talks to the floor guy, and apparently he is reticent to opening a table for him to play.  Our gentleman says something to the effect, "get off your fat ass and get a dealer over here so I can play."

For this, the floor man has him kicked out for the night.  He is escorted back to our table around 2:15 am, security in tow, and is forced to rack up, cash out and leave.  The rest of the table is dumbfounded and is in awe of what a bad decision was rendered.  And of course, as soon as he is out of the building, the game insta breaks.  No duh, the entire reason for that game existing, walked right out the door, with like 5 or 6 racks, that would have inevitably ended up in the other players' stacks.  At least that's what happened last week.

Sometimes I just don't get it.  In Vegas, I have seen people get away with far more egregious behavior and get nothing more than a warning to the effect of please try and control yourself, and as expected, the bigger and more you bet, the larger the tolerance for obnoxious behavior, justified or not.  I'll leave it to you to decide for yourself what you think the appropriate policy on the part of the casino should be in this regard, although I tend to believe in the end, that money talks.

Overall, I did ok this week.  I was running really well, getting up 5 racks, but by the time the game had broken, I was only winning 2 racks, so that was a bit of a downer.  The game was off the charts good too, with the maniac who got kicked out, raising and capping most hands, and two others on his left, not knowing how to adjust properly 3-betting super light and doing all other sorts of stupid things.  We had more than one 8-way capped pre flop pots.  It was a sight to behold, if you could happen to win one of those behemoth pots, which I unfortunately, I didn't seem to win my fair share of those.  Oh well, as long as he shows up this Friday, it'll make for another good Friday game.

Law School and Poker

I have begun law school in earnest and I am really enjoying it.  I am taking Civil Procedure with Shaun Martin, Torts with Christopher Wonnell, Criminal Law with Jean Ramirez, and Legal Writing and Research with Lisa Pearl.

My weekly schedule is fairly full, but I have only one class on Fridays from 10:30-11:30 am, so it looks like I will still be able to play the 40 game once a week on Friday for most of the day and evening and into the night, depending on how I'm running and how tired I am.  Last week, I stayed until 4:45am in the morning because the game was so good.  Of course I only won $281, but that's not the point.

Interestingly enough, the class I thought that would be the most interesting and the one I would like the most, is actually my least favorite, criminal law.  I don't know for some reason, the material just doesn't "speak" to me.  Possibly because I am not particularly fond of the professor or her style, but whatever.  And ironically enough, the class I thought I would like least, Civil Procedure, is actually my favorite.  Professor Martin is engaging, energetic, quick-witted, and super fun to be in class with.  And the material is actually fairly interesting, and much more "technical" than other substantive areas of law.  It's likely my engineering background makes this area of study enjoyable to me.

I'm amazed at exactly how important language and its usage and meaning is in the study of the law.  Back in the Clinton era, I was fairly disgusted with Bill Clinton's response to a question with the response it "depends on what the meaning of the word is is."  I now have new appreciation for that quote.

Vegas Day 3

Some Friday morning insomnia finds me awake and stirring at 4:30 in the morning, so now is probably as good as it is going to get in terms of peace and quiet and solitude at home.

Day 3 in Las Vegas, as with most Las Vegas trips is usually about just recovering and taking it relatively easy.  This trip was no different.  After getting into bed a little after 4am and then up at around 9am, my body was completely worn out and I was pretty Vegased out at this point.  But my flight wasn't until 9:30pm that night, so with my last 12 hours or so in Vegas, it was necessary to actually try and accomplish something sort of useful, or at least in the realm of degeneracy.

After showering and taking care of my morning routine, I had some miscellaneous business to take care of.  I went down, finally said hi to my host, and dropped off an envelope for him.  My roomie was stirring as well, and I let him know that I had a bunch of little things to take care of, and he offered to tag along.  I introduced him to my host, and my roomie seemed interested in how the whole host-client relationship works and how it gets set up, etc.  So I let him know, what I know about how that side of Vegas works.

I needed to pick up some gifts for my girls at home.  So we headed over to Crystals at City Center which is within easy walking distance of the hotel.  Big mistake.  I should have known better.  I was looking for typical retail stores, specifically a Disney Store, while Crystals is a high end shopping mall.  We did stop off at the Tag Heuer store, the Donna Karan store, along with one other high end men's fashion store that I forgot.  I whipped out my handy dandy smart phone and searched for a Disney Store, expecting to find one in the Miracle Mile shops at the Planet Hollywood casino.  No luck, unfortunately.  So we ended up visiting the Aria gift shop and I got some earrings for my older girls and a pretty little Las Vegas dress for my youngest.  For my wife, nothing.  Instead I gave her 1k in cold hard cash when I got home and told her to buy something for herself.  Much easier that way, although I did make an honest effort to look for something for her at Donna Karan.  Unfortunately, they already had their fall collection on display, and there's not a lot in that collection that is appropriate for San Diego.  They did have a small discounted section with the previous spring collection that I quickly browsed but didn't see anything that caught my eye.

Eventually my roomie and I ended up in the high limit salon playing blackjack again.  I made lunch reservations at Olives in the Bellagio for 1pm.  Once again as has become my tradition, we ordered a feast of food for only 2, but managed to finish everything, and I was even still a little hungry when we left.  From the menu we ordered the Grilled Squid and Octopus, Beef Carpaccio, I had a Traditional Caesar Salad, I had the Scallops and Prosciutto, while my roomie had the Lobster Roll.  From off the menu we ordered an Olives Classic Flatbread and the Shrimp Skewer appetizer as well.  Mostly good, with the exception of the shrimp which was just plain awful.  I let our server know about that and she happily took it off the bill, not that I was paying for it, but it was the principle of the matter.  I got lucky in that I somehow managed to get the same waiter I had last time I was there and she remembered me and how much food I ordered last time and was still able to finish it, therefore wasn't too surprised when she took our order how much we requested.

After lunch we wandered over to the Bellagio poker room and fired up a 40/80 heads up game.  We tried buying in with Aria chips, but they wouldn't allow us so we just used cash.  We played heads up for like 20 minutes or so before a third player joined us.  My roomie ran extremely bad and ended up losing 2500 in 90 minutes or so, while I picked up 1200 and the third wheel got the rest.  No super interesting hands I played with the exception of my 62dd I had in the big blind.  Wheelie opened the button, roomie called the small blind, and I defended.  Flop came 245 two diamonds.  Checked to the opener, he bet, small blind called, I raised, both called.  Turn was an off suit queen.  SB checked, I checked, button bet, SB folded, I called.  River was a blank, and I checked, button bet, I contemplated and finally called only to be shown the bad news.  Button had A3 offsuit for the flopped straight.

Anyways around 4pm, we quit since my roomie had a 6:30 flight back to San Diego.  We headed back to Aria, ran into Cecil and some others from the bachelor party at the Aria poker room.  We chatted for a bit and then my roomie said his goodbyes and then ran off to the room to grab his stuff and head off to the airport.

I managed to find a craps table calling my name.  I played until about 7:00pm or so, giving back about 5k before quitting, hitting the cage, getting a check cut for the majority of my winnings and taking the rest in cash.  Cecil and his best man invited me to dinner at Julian Serranos, but I wasn't feeling up for dinner after lunch even though I was a bit hungry.  I think my body just hadn't adjusted to my weird sleeping schedule and odd meal scheduling from the past few days.  I hooked up with them in the high limit lounge after grabbing my stuff from the room and we shared my limo back to the airport.

At the airport we said our goodbyes and I had an opportunity to talk with Cecil's best man, who happens to be an attorney with DLA Piper here in San Diego about the profession and law school. Boarded an uneventful flight, besides the early turbulence, back home to San Diego and I offered to give Cecil's best man a lift home since he lived downtown and was on my way home anyways.  Stopped off at taco bell to grab a quick late bite to eat, arrived home around 11pm, chatted with my wife until a little after midnight and then slept like a baby until about 11 am the next morning.

I have the most awesome wife in the world.  She realized that I was in no condition to be actual useful to do anything and she offered to get the kids out of the house and told me to go to the Rancho Bernardo Inn, get a massage, relax and then meet her for dinner at Roy's in La Jolla.

So that's what I did.  Here's me enjoying a cup of wine by the pool before my massage.