I'm still playing 20/40 at Diamond Lil's 3 or 4 days a week, usually sessions of 12 hours or more. The games are so good I'm kinda wishing I could go there every day. Sometimes having a real J-O-B is SO inconvenient. :-) I'd retire tomorrow if I didn't like the web programming work (and the paydays) so much.
State law doesn't allow 24 hour operation, so Lil's games shut down from 6:00am to 10:00am daily. I used to try to get there right at ten, to start the 20/40, then play until mid-evening. But lately the second and third 20/40 games are starting sooner, so I'm coming in afternoons, and staying later. Where the day game is real good, the late night game is, well, awesome.
The swings can get kinda big in these games. Oftentimes it's a rammin' jammin' thing where some guys and even girls will raise or cap preflop with some the really wacky hands, because, "Hey, nobody is ever gonna put me on this !!" :-)
So you hang on, and play good hands, and keep reminding yourself what a huge chip-burning mistake it would be to try to run over these people. Instead, you let them try to run over you, then try to help them run into a wall (when you have a big hand), or maybe just a speedbump (when you have just a decent hand and they have nothing.)
And they WILL keep betting, without regard for whether or not they have anything. Have you ever called a heads-up river bet with absolutely nothing, like 45 suited on a draw that never got there, just for the pot odds that the bettor might muck his hand when you call? What? That sounds crazy, doesn't it?
But that very situation presented itself the other day. I had been studying the guy for some time, he had already "bet then mucked" three times within an hour, and I really felt like I could *tell* that he was about to do it again; after he bet, he was uncomfortably squirming the same way he had those other times. So I called with 5 high, the bettor mucked, and I stacked the chips. I roughly estimate this to be a situation that will occur about as often as a lunar eclipse.
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Friday night I came in on the button with Jd Td for five way action. Considered raising, but looked like the blind might raise, so I just limped, and, sure enough, she did raise.
The flop came with Kd and Qd, giving me a straight draw AND a flush draw. The blind raiser checked, and someone bet early. I just called, expecting the blind to raise for me, and again she did not disappoint. So I 3 bet, and she capped it. Still five way!
Both my draws got there on the turn: 9d! We capped it. Then we capped it again on the river. She had the A high nut flush, and kept raising me back with no hesitation. Either she didn't see the possible straight flush, or else just refused to accept that she might be beat.
In addition to that really nice pot, my straight flush also won the bi-hourly $500 High Hand cash bonus. The next night Mrs. Rock made a Royal, so she took down a $500 bonus too.
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Franklin
This guy is a wildman. I mean, look up "Maniac" in the Poker Dictionary, and you'll see his picture in there as the example. When the mood strikes him-- and it usually does-- Franklin will call or raise or cap, with just about anything.
Couple days in a row recently, he sat beside the dealer with a huge stack, sometimes over seven thousand, and ran over pretty much everyone. For a while. Eventually the wild play catches up and the stack dwindles (doh), but along the way it's quite a ride. Everyone has a real good time.
My man Franklin made a play the other night that was, well, just remarkable. It was mid-evening, and the barmaids had been kept really busy for a couple hours. In other words, several players, especially Frank, were severely hammered. No shortage of rammin' and jammin' in this game.
In this hand the pot is capped 6 ways before the flop, then on the flop is bet and raised by the time the action reaches Frank. He three bets. No surprise yet.
It takes a while for the action to get back around to him, and by this time it is capped again. Then, for some reason, Franklin is taking forever to make his decision to call. He's just sitting there in his wrap-around shades, "thinking," and it takes about 30 seconds before the dealer and everyone else finally realize that, between the time he three bet and now, Franklin has fallen asleep. It was one of the funniest things I ever saw in the game.
Sadly, Franklin got himself 86'd about a week later. A new policy said that waitstaff will decide when an intoxicated patron should be "cut off," and that doing so also means they will be "picked up" from whatever game they might be in. In other words, if he's completely toasted, let's get him outta here and back on the road, where he belongs. Brilliant. And if there's some guy in the game you want to get rid of, and if he's drinking, just slip the waitress a big toke, get her to declare him cut-off, and, poof, he's gone. Sweet, huh? :-)
Same day this new "policy" starts, Frank shows up, and starts chugging. Next thing you know they cut him off AND tell him to cash out. He doesn't appreciate this, starts loudly expressing his unhappiness with liberal and non-stop use of some language that is not allowed in the cardroom. So then "go home for today" expands to include "and don't come back!" Tragic! I miss him already.
That policy changed within a couple days. Now they've found a way to circumvent the need to cut anyone off; instead, they "slow him down" by saying they can't serve him another drink "for a while," like an hour or so.
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Talk Dirty To Me
Sometimes the good laugh comes from someplace you wouldn't expect. Alex is a Southeast Asian transplant ESL kind of guy, nice friendly kid, always smiling, but kinda quiet; doesn't usually have a lot to say. Well, the other night there was this young Asian woman in the game who was going out of her way to impress everyone with how frequently and loudly she could say the F word. I guess the dealer is supposed to say something, but he didn't. Me? Couldn't care less, one way or the other. If anything, I guess I found it "amusing."
After a while, though, Alex pipes up and tells her "Miss, please watch your language. There are gentlemen present." :-)
But all these players throwing around the F word, and various other taboo letter-words, are kinda pathetic, and are just amateurs. They don't get it; they don't understand that a real professional knows how to talk dirty-- maybe even filthy-- without actually using any of those words that can get you in trouble. Here's an example, and we leave it as an exercise for the reader to imagine the reaction this outburst produced:
Shauna is a tough aggressive player, and a slender, sexy, bright and sophisticated young woman, with kind of a pixie look. She's in the game (or the 50 games at the Mucks) most days.
Recently she got her short dark hair tinted with some red accent streaks, and it came out real nice.
Next day she's in the game sitting next to me, with red fingernails and toenails to match the hair, and this guy comes over and starts, well, not really "hitting on" her, but just saying how much he admires the coordinated new look. Then, in a suggestive way, he asks "Is *everything* colored red?"
Shauna is not particularly shy. "Oh," she responds, "Are you asking me if the carpet matches the drapes?"
Hey, they started this, not me. I mean, I'm not gonna go there on my own, but they brought it up, and a crazy-good riposte immediately popped into my (admittedly somewhat twisted) head, and how could I resist? So I jumped right in, and said:
"Wait, can I guess? I'm gonna go with hardwood floors."
[Editor's Note: Almost immediately Sarge was told - but NOT shown - that he had guessed correctly.]
