I did get to play in the Thursday night game last week. I almost wish that I had been banned. Not only did I manage to not win the tournament (or come in the money), but because my table was playing so loosely, I felt compelled to buy in a second time after my AQ suited flopped a queen, and someone called with a flush draw and hit. That certainly was not the worst of the night, however. I lost $60 before the tournament in the cash game, partly by failing to call when I should have, and partly by failing to fold when I should have against the same player. In the cash game afterwards, I sat down to find a lot of players who could play fairly well and who had deep pockets. They were giving a lot of loose calls, however, and it looked like it might be promising. There were two high quality players at the table, and one of them caught the deck for the first three hours, amassing a huge stack of chips and proceeded to play them pretty well. I helped out a lot in his stack building when we both flopped a set (mine were only twos, his were fives) and I lost about $180. Rough going for the casual no-limit player. After that I dropped into my super tight-aggressive game, hoping for good cards since I knew I would still get action from these call happy fools (they weren’t really playing foolish, as all their action more or less cancelled each other out). The cards just never came. At one point I took the opportunity to tell about the time I pulled the lever one hundred times on a slot machine without a single pay and described my run of cards as something akin to that. After all, I didn’t want them to think too much when I finally did raise. By 3 a.m. I was busted out when I went over top (about $60) with a pair of sixes with K88 on the flop, when the blind stealing player to my left bet $20 after limping pre-flop. He had an 8. What can you do? Altogether I was down $330 for the night, which was all but a hundred of what I’d won the weekend before. I was a little humiliated, and I say that in the strictest literal sense.

One notable event did occur that should have made me go home and lick my wounds when I was only about a hundred down. The loosest player at the table, the one who was keeping it a profitable situation for me, got mad at the dealer and left. He must have been on tilt pretty badly at that point, since he got hopelessly confused about how much money was to be in a side pot in a hand in which he didn’t win a piece, and then wanted to argue about it. The dealer wouldn’t hear it. I think in the dealer’s position I would have just apologized and let everyone else at the table think the offender foolish behind his back. In any case, the player left in a huff. I was actually going to switch to a different table right then, after having a good look around at who was left, but unluckily for me, the other table broke up at that very moment. If that dealer happens to be reading this, I hope he understand that I wasnt upset with him when I got up to go to the other table, I just felt like the guy who left might have been all that was giving me the best of it.

The next night was our comfortable little home game and I won $125. It was enough that I didn’t leave the weekend with a sour taste in my mouth. It would have been more but I made a terrible mistake in reading the board. I started with KQ suited and flopped a four-flush of diamonds. It had been a lot of hands since I had such a good draw. On the river the deuce of diamonds fell, and I’d made my near nut flush. I checked, was bet into $25, and then I raised $50. We both had much larger stacks than that but Anthony announced as he called that he figured unless I had 2-2 we were going to split anyway. You know that reaction you get sometimes when you try to lift something you didn’t know was heavy, or when you think you’re drinking Coke but it’s really Doctor Pepper? That was how I took those words. I had failed to see that the deuce didn’t just make a pair on the board; it made two pair. Anthony showed his five for the full, and with resignation, I announced that I just had the king-high flush. Reminds me of the guy who lost the back forty betting inside straight draws, and then lost the rest of the farm when he finally hit one.