India Trip Report (Part 1)

I've got a lot to share, so I'm going to divide it into a couple of posts just so this doesn't turn into an epic RobVegasPoker style post. (I figured he wouldn't mind the ribbing as long as I gave him a reference link.) Just returned from India and wanted to share some anecdotes, insights, and observations.  It was a long and eventful journey to reach India.  I was initially scheduled to leave on April 9th, but some of you may recall that was the day there were some pretty serious storms in the Chicago area that spawned at least one deadly tornado.  Since our initial flight was from Des Moines to Chicago we had to reschedule until the next day.  Work didn't come into play until Monday, April 13, so that delay just cut one free day off our trip.

It also altered our travel itinerary.  The initial plan was to fly from Des Moines to Chicago, Chicago to Frankfurt, then Frankfurt to Pune, India.  Since the Frankfurt to Pune flight only runs three times a week we had to find a different option.  We finally settled on Des Moines to Chicago, Chicago to Frankfurt, Frankfurt to Mumbai, and Mumbai to Pune. That added about 4-5 more hours to the travel, but hell what are 4 hours when you've already been traveling for 30+ hours?

I was booked in business class for the entire flight, but due to rescheduling had to fly economy on the Des Moines-Chicago and Mumbai-Pune legs.  Neither of those flights are very long, so I sucked it up and took one for the team.  It was so much nicer in business class for those longer flights.  I didn't drink all that much, but it sure is nice to be pampered.  I snapped a few photos of the food and drink options on the first long flight. 

Warm nuts and a very stiff bloody mary.

Braised short rib and a Chilean shiraz

Salmon appetizer with fresh green salad and German riesling.

First here is a look at the amount of leg room I had in my seat.  The flight was on a Boeing 777 and I had what seemed like acres of space.  The seat reclined fully and had a leg rest that elevated.  You could lay the seat completely flat, but I didn't dare or nobody in my section would have gotten any sleep thanks to my snoring.  This flight also had a really great selection of recent movies and hit TV shows.  On the way I watched Big Hero 6, Birdman, and Whiplash.

Dessert was a simple ice cream sundae.  I didn't remember to snap a picture of it before I dug in, but it was nothing unexpected in either flavor or presentation.

The second long leg was a Lufthansa flight on an older Boeing 747.  The seats were way better than any economy seat, but after flying on that more modern 777 the day before they were a disappointment.  They didn't lie all the way flat and if you reclined it as far as it would go it felt like it was trying to dump you onto the floor.  I didn't take any photos of the food this go around, but the courses were a seafood appetizer, leg of lamb main course, and a pass from me on dessert.  The movie selection on this flight was also lots worse than the earlier one.

We arrived in Mumbai at about 12:45 AM local time.  The others in my group that have been to the Mumbai airport in the middle of the day said it was much more bearable in the wee hours of the morning.  I wanted to snap a picture of the massive immigration area, but was afraid they might not take kindly to me snapping photos. Four of our group of seven had cleared immigration when it became apparent that something was up. One of the other guys in our group appeared to be having a fairly animated discussion with the Indian immigration official.  They called the other two from our party that were in line to the counter and they got in on the hand waving and passport pointing. 

I won't go into details as to why, because I don't honestly know all of the particulars, but suffice it to say that one of our party wasn't allowed to enter India and was put right back on the very same Lufthansa airliner we had just exited for a return trip to Germany and eventually the USA.  I can't imagine doing that trip both directions over the course of 3-4 days.

We finally made it (down a person) to Pune at about 5:00 AM Sunday morning.  We checked into the Hyatt Regency and made our way to our rooms.  Here are a few shots of the room:

I took a shower (using great care to keep the water from getting into my mouth) and after 36 hours traveling it was heavenly.  If I wasn't terrified of the bacteria in the water I would have stood there for 20 minutes. After getting connected to the hotel WiFi and chatting via text with my family for a little while I hit the sack and slept like the dead until about noon.

After waking we went to lunch at a local micro-brewery called Independence Brewing.  We got a quick tour of their brewery and, believe it or not, they make beer exactly the same way we do in the USA.  Here is a shot of the brewery.

After a lunch of chicken chendatta and 3 of their house beers we headed down to MG (Mahatma Gandhi) Road to do some shopping for souvenirs for our families.  We went to a couple of shops that specialize in Indian knick knacks called The Bombey Store and Heritage. The proprietor of Heritage spotted me as a sucker and talked me into going into the room where all of the scarves and high end cashmere pashminas were displayed and sold. He showed me several items and there were a couple in particular that I thought my wife might like, but others from our group had told me about this amazing scarf shop we would be going to later.  I convinced the shop owner that I wanted to comparison shop and would return.  He dropped the price several times, but I held out.

After that we went around the corner to a local grocery store so one of the girls in our group could purchase some local tea for her dad. It was very interesting to see the difference in products and selection at a grocery there as compared to here. We then made our way to the local Nike store so I could by team India cricket jerseys for both of my boys. They are big sports fans and are more into soccer, but I wanted to get them something that had more of a local Indian flavor. The two girls that had been to India before wanted us all to experience what they referred to as "the scarf guy," but unfortunately his shop was closed on Sunday. (I later found out the scarf shop in question was called Guru Nanak's Cloth Store.)

After that we went over to the modern mall in town called the Phoenix Mall.  It was pretty much identical to any mall in the USA with a few exceptions among the stores.  Stores I saw that were familiar were Apple, Sunglass Hut, Forever 21, Sephora, Bose, JBL, Starbucks, Dunkin Donuts, Burger King, Papa Johns, , and McDonalds. (The only difference is that all of the beef options are replaced with chicken and veggie options and anything that would normally be beef is actually water buffalo.)

After that we went back to the hotel to rest and clean up for dinner that night.  Dinner was at a place called Exotica. It was on the top floor of an office building and was sort of indoor-outdoor.  The restaurant was indoors, but there were screens they could roll up to let the breeze in.  Here is a picture overlooking the road below over the balcony.

It was a package deal that included an all-you-can-eat buffet with unlimited beer or wine.  A dinner like this in India is a very social and relaxed affair. There is no hurry to eat and leave. We probably ate appetizers and sipped drinks for a good 80 minutes before somebody finally suggested we go get main courses off the buffet.  I honestly didn't know there was going to be a buffet and thought the many appetizers we ate was all we were going to have and would have been satisfied with that.

There were a lot of Indian options on the buffet, but everyone in my group from the USA except me opted for the made to order pasta so they could control their Indian spice intake...chickens.  I went through the buffet line with an Indian co-worker and he told me what each option was before recommending whether or not I try the dish.  The only surprise I had was that the lamb in the lamb biryani was not boneless (discovered only after I shoved a rather large hunk of very bony lamb in my mouth).

The next day we went back to MG Road to visit "the scarf guy" and to pick up some items in the Indian souvenir shops that we missed getting the day before.  The scarf guy didn't disappoint. He was super personable and funny and just bombarded you with options.  There were so many scarves of different colors and qualities there that it made your head spin.  We all purchased an item or two and afterwards there were probably two or three hundred scarves and other clothing items strewn on the pillow they sell from.

After scarf shopping we went to the Hard Rock Cafe to get lunch.  The menu was pretty much the same as any other Hard Rock except once again the burgers would be water buffalo instead of beef. We then headed in for our first day of work.  I won't bore you with the details of training and dealing with the information security department.

Tuesday we went to a Hindu temple just as their pre-lunch ceremony began. You couldn't wear footwear into the temple, so the most exciting part of the excursion was the walk from the window where you had to leave your shoes and socks to the gate of the temple. The sidewalk and street were HOT.  Not like "Oh this is kind of warm" hot, but like, "If I don't get off this pavement in the next ten seconds I'll need skin grafts on the bottoms of my feet" hot. 

We arrived just as the ceremony was beginning which was signaled by the monk blowing a very loud blast on a conch shell.  Then there was about 15-20 minutes of singing and chanting while the monk waved various items first at the idols then at the worshipers. Two of the items were a bowl of I think burning incense and what I can only describe as a tiny menorah of incense. These were walked through the group of worshipers. I was busy paying attention to what the monk at the front of the room was doing, so I didn't see what was happening with the burning items behind me, so when the gentleman approached me with the bowl of burning incense and offered it to me I froze. I had no clue what I was supposed to do.  Luckily our host from Pune mimed for me that I was supposed to kind of collect some of the heat and aroma and sweep it over my face and head.  After they walked away he explained that it is a blessing...a collecting of positive energy if you will.

A short time later one of the parishioners at the back of the room urged us to move closer to the front to receive another blessing. The monk at the front started throwing what appeared to me to be handfuls of rice or some other grain at the worshipers. He was slowly working his way across the room from right to left.  I was the first of our group to be in the line of fire, so to speak, and didn't realize it wasn't rice until the drops of water hit me square in the face. I was positively douched with that scary bacteria laden Indian water.  Oh well...at least none of it got in my mouth.  As the ceremony drew to an end an adorable little Indian girl walked up to us with a handful of flowers and flower petals the monk had given her to pass out.  We each took one and the man with her (her dad I assume) mimed for us that we were to smell the flowers.  After that our guide told us that we were to leave the flowers at the foot of the idol in the back of the temple. 

Here are a couple of pictures I snapped of the interior of the temple.

Our friend told us that they undress and bathe the idols and change the clothes every day to a different colorful outfit. I didn't understand the meaning behind all of the rituals, but have to say I was moved by the fervor of the believers who were in attendance. They were singing and dancing and lying prostrate and generally just really getting into the whole ceremony. 

After the temple visit we headed over to a local restaurant called Prem's.  We shared a lunch of tandoori chicken, butter chicken, chicken biryani, prawns piri piri, some kind of kabob, and the most delicious garlic and cheese naan (Indian flat bread) I've ever had.  I would go back just to feast on the bread alone, but everything we were served was delicious.  It is an outdoor dining room covered by trees and these balloon and umbrella like awnings.  They also have misters spread around the dining area in case it is overly hot.  This day it was the perfect temperature for an outdoor meal in the shade, so the misters really weren't needed, but they fired them off once I think just to show off a little. Since we reacted to the misters they fired them off 4 or 5 more times I guess to kind of put on a show for the American visitors.  The only problem is that we had to assume they were now coating all of our utensils, cups, and food with more scary Indian water.  Here is a picture I took of the dining area at Prem's.showing the offending misters.

I'm going to leave it there for now and will do another post in a couple of days with more stories and pictures.

Indian Food Anyone?

I guess it's been long enough since I posted on this old thing.  I wish I was motivated to post more, but I just never am unless something big happens.  As it turns out something kind of big is happening tomorrow.  I'm leaving on a business trip that will take me halfway around the world. 

I'm leaving in the morning for a little over a week in Pune, India.  Pune is a city of about 4.5 million people in Southern India just southeast of Mumbai in Maharashtra Province.  I've heard the food there is spicy, but not as spicy as northern India with a little bit more sweetness thanks to their use of sorghum.

I'll be training a couple of people to provide IT support to our staff there in Pune.  We used to always fly them here for training but discovered that receiving training in the USA (no matter how lame or insignificant) made them so much more marketable that they almost always left for greener pastures soon afterwards.  So I get to go like 8,000 miles around the globe to train two people.  Training that would normally take 2-3 days.  Training that I now have to try to stretch to 5 days.  I guess we will go real slow and do a lot of review and repetition.

I was actually supposed to leave this morning, but my flight from Des Moines to Chicago was cancelled due to inclement weather in the windy city and we couldn't find an alternate that allowed us to make our international connections.  So I get to try again tomorrow morning to make the trip from Des Moines, to Chicago, to Frankfurt, to Mumbai, to Pune.  Leave at 8:00 AM CDT on Friday and arrive in Pune at 5:00 AM Sunday morning their time.  There is a 10.5 hour difference (yeah...ten and a half) so actual travel time in airplanes and waiting in airports is about 34-35 hours. FUN! 

At least my company was generous enough to book me in business class for the international legs of the flight, so I'll get a comfy seat that lays flat. (People sitting near me are going to have a long sleepless flight if I have a couple of adult beverages and start sawing logs in my lay flat seat.)

I'll be sure to come back here and post along with stories and pictures when I return in a couple of weeks. 

On the home front I have played a couple of sessions of poker at my home base casino, Prairie Meadows Racetrack and Casino.  Nothing all that exciting to report.  I had one  session where I got my money in good against a loose player with an overpair and he hit a two outer on the river to stack me. Another time I lost my stack flopping a full house and losing to a better full house on the turn.

My last session was an entertaining one, but I only left with a small profit of about $40.  When I arrived at the table there were two players with pretty big stacks for a $1-$2 no limit hold em game.  One was an elderly gentleman I had played with before and he was tight, but not nitty. The other was a guy I had never played with before, but he was very clearly drunk.  Like slurring and cursing drunk.  He was getting warned on about every other hand about his language by the dealers.  At first he was playing relatively conservatively, but then he decided he had a problem with a couple of the guys on my end of the table and started playing really loose.

If one of his villains from my end of the table entered a pot, when the action would get to him he would just pick up a random handful of red chips and splash it in the general area in front of his seat. It was usually about $40-$75 each time.  A lot of times he did this without ever looking at his cards first.  Then if people folded he would tell them what pussies they were and ask why they came to a casino if they didn't want to gamble.  At first the drunk was getting lucky and hitting weird two pairs or unexpected flushes, but eventually his luck started to turn.  It was pretty clear he was going to lose all of that money he had in front of him if we all just kept him happy and gambling. 

The old man to my left (different than the one with the big stack mentioned earlier) did not appreciate this style of play and started to loudly and aggressively tell the drunk how he felt. I started whispering under my breath to him to not tap the glass, but he didn't care.  Eventually drunk guy started to lose some significant hands and his stack that at one point had ballooned to almost $2,000 dropped back to just above $1,000.  The old man's needling, which didn't seem to bother him when he was winning, finally drove him from the table.  Myself and three others immediately cashed out and left.

I took a quick walk through the table games area before leaving and found drunk guy sitting at a $10 blackjack table betting $100 a hand.  Apparently he was determined to try to lose all of that money one way or another. 

See you back here in a couple of weeks. 

Disney Douchebag

A conversation here at work got us trading vacation stories which reminded me of two pretty funny stories from my various trips to Walt Disney World.  One of the benefits of my work with the show choir is that I get to travel quite a bit for essentially nothing.  I've been to Walt Disney World about 10 times and only paid for admission into any the parks once.

These are two stories where I was somewhat of a douchebag to other Disney guests; once was intentional and the other was not.

The first (intentional) one happened when I was much younger...like in my early 20's.  I was young enough that the students in the program still thought of me as one of their peers and not as a chaperone or authority figure of any kind.  I had spent the day with a half dozen or so of the members of the choir and we all decided we wanted to watch the nightly electric light parade at Magic Kingdom.  We stopped and got some ice cream at the shop on main street and went to find prime seating right on the square.  We got there probably an hour before the parade started to get a spot exactly where we wanted.

About five minutes before the parade begins this couple with two kids in tow forces their way between us and instructs their kids to sit down right in front of us in the street. The dad was alternating between standing and half squatting the entire time so he's majorly blocking our view. As politely as possible I said to the dad, "Excuse me, sir, but we got here over an hour ago to get these seats and now you're blocking our view.  You're welcome to stand behind us and your kids can sit here in front of us."

He replied in a very definitive NE U.S.A. accent (Boston, NY, NJ, CT...who knows), "You're too old for Disney and I'm not leaving my kids up there unattended." And with that he turned around and started to get out his giant 90's camcorder to tape the parade. I turned to my friends and said, "We're gonna make sure they can never watch that tape with their kids."

When the parade started we stood up (because we had to in order see thanks to mister east coast) and got as close as we could to the microphone on his camcorder.  We discussed the parade like we were Willard Scott on Thanksgiving morning with one exception...we used every curse word in our arsenal non-stop. 

"Oh wow look at that f-ing float. Have you ever seen so many f-ing lights before? Holy $%@# that dancer was really getting down. Oh eff, that is the most amazing f-ing thing I've ever seen."

The dad shot us a few perturbed looks and eventually asked us to pipe down. I just smiled and said, "You could always move!" They eventually packed up and moved to a different spot.

The second (unintentional) one happened on a much more recent trip. The newest attraction at Disney's Hollywood Studios was the Toy Story Mania. It's an interactive ride where you have a gun attached to the front of your car and you go through various exhibits firing virtual cream pies, water balloons, lazers, etc at targets.  It was very popular and according to the Disney staff we spoke to they said the best bet for getting to ride it without a huge wait was to get to the park before it opened and book it straight to that ride.

So, that is exactly what we did.  Just as we arrived at the entrance to the ride this older guy tried to sprint past us and shoulder his way in front of my group.  I stepped in front of him and blocked his path so he had to get in line just behind us. The whole time were winding our way toward the ride our group was loudly commenting on the "nerve of some people trying to cut in front of us" etc. 

When we were almost to the actual ride the lady in front of us with two small kids whipped around and said, "Would you like to go in front us?" I was a bit confused and just said, "Ummm...no?"  She said, "I really think you should. In fact, I INSIST!"

We traded spots with them in the line when suddenly it dawned on me...she thought we were talking about them. I turned around and said, "Uh, ma'am, excuse me. I hope you don't think we were talking about you before.  We were trying to give a hard time to the people in line behind you that tried to bump us out of the way to get in line in front of us."

A look of complete relief washed over her face and she said, "Oh my God I'm so sorry. I did think you were talking about us. You see just yesterday a couple of adults literally pushed my 8-year old daughter out of the way to get in line in front of us for an attraction that had a 20 minute wait. I'm just a little oversensitive because of that I guess."

I offered to trade them their spot back, but she refused. I felt like kind of a heel, but it all ended well in the end.

Have you ever accidentally been a douchebag before? It's not nearly as much fun as doing it on purpose.

It's About Time!

Wow...I haven't posted here in almost six months.  You can thank the crazy busy show choir competition season for keeping me so occupied that I never have the time nor motivation to fill everyone in on my life.  I guess I also think the mundane details of my existence would bore everyone to tears. 

Anyway, here is a quick update on what's happened in the last six months.  The show choirs I help direct had a mostly successful competition season.  We capped it off with a trip to Los Angeles to compete in an event hosted by Burbank High School. I got to help chaperone 130 teenagers through all of the touristy stuff in the L.A. area. Here's a quick list of stuff we did:

• Hollywood Walk of Fame
• Hollywood Bus Tour
• La Brea Tar Pits
• Getty Museum
• California Science Center and Exposition Park
• Sony Studios Tour
• Griffith Observatory
• Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum
• Universal City Walk
• Santa Monica Beach and Pier
• Disneyland

We keep  'em busy so they're tuckered out at the end of the day and stay quiet in their hotel rooms.  Honestly we don't have to worry much about them. They're very good kids and everyone we worked with in California from the bus drivers to the tour directors commented on how polite and well behaved they were. One of their assignments whenever we travel is to thank at least 20 people who help them out each day even if it's just a stranger that holds the door for them.

My wife is a few short days away from graduating from college with degrees in history and education with an endorsement in all of the social science classes (economics, government, history, psychology, cultural issues, etc.) She has to take her Praxis exam in May, but once that is done she is a full fledged and licensed teacher in the state of Iowa fulfilling a life long dream.  She's applied for about a dozen open teaching positions in our area for next fall and God willing she will be employed and bringing in regular income for the first time since her kidney transplant in 2005.

All of my time is currently being spent accompanying for rehearsals of the spring musical at our school. Performances are this coming Friday and Saturday.  I just have to survive a week of hellish four and five hour tech and dress rehearsals and then I'm free until August when show choir fires back up for the 2014-2015 school year.

On the gambling front I've played a little poker here and there this year, but nothing noteworthy.  A few winning sessions and a few losing sessions.  I'm just a recreational player, so I don't keep meticulous records.  If I had to guess I'd bet I'm slightly better than break even for the year.  My oldest son turned 21, so now he accompanies me to the casino when he's home and doesn't have other plans.  I usually spot him a buy-in for blackjack or poker and then he and I split whatever profits we have from the night evenly.  We try to avoid getting seated together when playing poker so we don't have to worry about even the hint of collusion or soft play.

The most notable gambling story occurred on one of his very first trips to the casino. We were playing blackjack and I got dealt two aces. I split them and the dealer dropped an eight on the first ace and then another ace on the second one. I indicated I'd like to split them again and the dealer informed me that you can only split aces once. Now I used to play a lot of blackjack at this casino before I really got into poker and you used to be able to split aces up to four times.  I asked the dealer to call over the floor so I could ask when this rule changed and why. (I know why it changed...because it's more advantageous to the house.  I wanted to hear what kind of spin the pit boss tried to put on it.) 

He gave me some song and dance about wanting to unify the rules for splitting aces across all of their different blackjack variations to make it less confusing for the players when they can or can't split them. I replied, "So it wasn't because it increases the house edge on the game?" He looked confused and said, "No, that's not the way it was explained to me."  I just said, "Uh huh...sure...I'm positive that never factored into the decision. I'll be coloring up and cashing out after this hand."  My son and I were both up about $60-$70 at that point.  Not big money, but still we were on a pretty good run, so the floor looked at me like I was crazy and said, "Is there a problem, sir?"  I just said, "I don't like that you keep changing the rules to increase the house edge, so I'm voting with my gambling dollars by not playing."

My son was kind of bummed and not ready to leave yet, so he talked me into playing some Three Card Poker. We sat down, bought $100 in red chips each and I placed one $5 chip on the Ante space and one $5 chip on the Pairs Plus space.  They dealt out the first hand and I'll be damned if I didn't look down at the Q-J-10 of diamonds. I double-checked it to make sure I wasn't wrong about the suit and sure enough I had hit a straight flush on the very first hand. I put another $5 chip on top of my cards and smugly folded my arms and sat back in my chair. My son said, "Did you like your hand?" I replied nonchalantly, "Eh...I just won about $250 on that hand." He blinked and responded, "Wait, what?!?!? You won how much?"

About an hour later he also hit a straight flush so we wound up cashing out about $550 profit after about 90 minutes of play.  Add to that the approximately $120 in profit from the blackjack and it wasn't a bad night.  We grabbed a pie and some breadsticks on the way home from our favorite late night pizzeria and went to bed with full bellies and pockets.  He talked me into playing Three Card Poker again the weekend after that and we both dumped about $100 in less than an hour. It was brutal. I think I won maybe two hands that entire session.

Once the musical wraps this weekend I'll have a lot more free time, so hopefully I'll get into some more gambling shenanigans I can share here.

Guys and Dolls

What's this?  Two posts in a single week?  Is JT feeling okay?  I feel fine.  It's just that I only get motivated to post when one of two things happen.

1.  I play poker

            or

2.  Somebody pisses me off

As it happens both of those two things happened in the last 24 hours (unrelated to one another).

Prairie Meadows Racetrack and Casino hosts 3 or 4 no limit hold 'em poker tournaments each week. The structure in these tournaments is awful, but they're a fun and inexpensive diversion.  Depending on the tournament and its buy-in you get either 2,000 or 2,500 chips.  Blinds start at 25-50 and essentially double every 20 minutes.

The Wednesday night tournament started out as a ladies only event, but then ladies would often ask if their husband or boyfriend could play with them.  The fields for the ladies only event were only about 15-20 people which hardly makes it worth it for a $25+5 tournament, so they eventually opened it up to everyone and billed it as the "Guys and Dolls" tournament.  Corny, right?

My usual M.O. for these donkaments is to either bust by the first break or go very deep.  The blinds go up so fast that if you haven't chipped up by that first break you are already in shove or fold mode by level 4. 

On about the second or third hand I limped from UTG+1 with 66. I think 7 people saw the flop of 9-7-9 and it checked all the way around. The turn was another 9.  The blinds checked to me and I decided to donk bet my tiny boat.  I bet 200 into the pot of 350.  The older woman to my immediate left called and everyone else folded.  Now...in my experience when the 65+ ladies at the table call or bet they usually have the nuts or pretty near to it, so I was none to happy that my only caller was a woman with some cobwebs on the old cooter. I figured she had to have a bigger pair than me for a better boat or maybe even quads.

The river was a jack. I checked and she bet another 200.  I should have gone with my gut instinct and folded, but I couldn't talk myself into laying it down to such a small bet. I called and she shows J-10.  She called my turn bet with just a gut shot and hit one of her 13 outs to beat or tie me.  I guess I'm supposed to be happy that she called my turn bet when I was like a 70-30 favorite in the hand, but I was only disgusted.  I hatched a plan right then to take this old biddy to value town the next time I had any kind of hand.

As it turned out the only time I saw two cards worth playing from then on was on my final hand.  There was one hand where I had Q9 suited in the cutoff, but a tight player made it 500 to go preflop and I didn't feel like putting in almost half my remaining stack with that hand.  It turns out I would have flopped two pair and turned a full house. The original raiser had pocket kings and his only caller flopped a straight with KJ. I would have tripled up had I played that one hand.  It's hard not to be results oriented.

There was one other interesting hand that I wasn't involved in.  I missed the preflop action because I folded my rags early and kind of disengaged.  Things kind of caught my attention when one of the more TAG regulars in seat 10 bet the flop of 4-Q-4 and the even older lady than the one from the first story in seat 1 called.  The turn was a 2 and he bet again and she called.  The river was another Q making the final board 4-Q-4-2-Q.  He shook his head and checked.  She made a very small bet for the size of the flop and he folded pocket 2's face up and said, "That queen counterfeited me."  The old woman showed pocket aces.  He definitely had a full house to her 3 pair and had laid down the winner to a bet that was like 1/15 the actual pot.

On my final hand I shoved my paltry 725 chips in the middle with JJ and got two callers. They both checked the low flop of like 9-6-4.  I knew I was sunk when a king fell on the turn and one of them shoved his whole stack in the middle. He rolled over KQ suited and I headed for the door halfway through level 3 without even uttering a "good luck" or "good game" to anybody at the table.

One other thing about this tournament. Prairie Meadows has on the whole one of the best crew of dealers around. They're generally experienced, fast, efficient, friendly, and accurate.  They rarely make mistakes.  During the recent HPT event they brought in table games dealers to supplement the poker dealer staff.  Most of those table games dealers are mediocre poker dealers at best.  If you had one of them at your table you could expect to get in about half as many hands and expect at least 1 or 2 errors per down.  Players were regularly helping them determine the amount for side pots and preventing them from pushing pots to the wrong player.

Since I only lasted part of 3 levels I only had two dealers.  The first was a regular dealer mechanically he was solid, but he never called out raises or bet amounts.  People were constantly asking him how much it was.  The second dealer that came to our table was a recruited table games dealer.  I thought once the HPT left town we wouldn't have to put up with them anymore, but here he was.

He looked bleary-eyed like he had just woken from a nap.  Somebody asked him how many entrants the tournament wound up with and he kind of angrily said, "I don't know I just got here.  I got called in on my day off."  His very first hand at the table he never reminded the blinds to put out their bets.  Three people to their left had folded when I pointed out to them that they needed to post their blinds.  From there he was just as bad as any of the other table games dealers.

And now for the angry rant portion of today's program.  I've started riding the bus to work.  Several years back I rode the bus to work and I actually really liked it. I can just zone out and listen to some music and even doze a little along the way.  Then my schedule changed and my start time was before the bus route could get me downtown.

I recently discovered that there is a route that runs from the mall near my house to downtown that has a stop right in front of my building.  It gets me here with about 10 minutes to spare.  I drive from my house to the mall and park near where the buses pick up and drop off.  There are two routes that run from the mall.  Most mornings when I arrive in my car both buses are already sitting there waiting for passengers.  Today when I arrived neither bus was there yet.  I checked the clock and saw that it was 5:32.  My bus is supposed to depart at 5:38.

I sat in my car dinking around with my phone listening to the wacky morning radio guys to kill the time. A bus approached the stop, but its sign still read "Bus Garage." Since I wasn't sure if it was my route or the other one I didn't immediately leap from my car.  Finally after a minute or two he changed the sign to display my route info and I got out of the car to walk over to the bus.  To my surprise he shut the doors and started to pull away while I was still 50 feet or so from the bus. I sprinted after him and was able to catch up as he turned out of the bus dropoff area.  He stopped when I knocked on one of the windows.  I checked my phone, saw that the time was only 5:36, and held it up for the driver to see. He just frowned and shrugged at me.

So...talk to you again when I play poker or get angry. :-)

Heartland Poker Tour (Again)

The Heartland Poker Tour returned to my home base brick and mortar casino, Prairie Meadows Racetrack and Casino over the past week or so.  I was unable to make it out on any of the days when they were running the super cheap single table satellites, but I wanted to take a stab at winning my way into the main event for cheap. I came agonizingly close to qualifying the last time they were here.

A quick look back at my blog archives shows that I never updated anybody on my attempt to qualify that time around. It's been 6 months, so I don't remember any specific hands except the last one. I bought into an $80 single table satellite. The top two finishers earned their way into a $330+30 qualifier where 1 in 5 players earned a seat in the $1,500+150 main event. 

I placed in the top two in my single table satellite and signed up for the $330+30 event that was starting just an hour or so later. I played patient and made my way through the majority of the way with about an average stack. I only got short as the bubble approached.  Enough players signed up for the tournament that 14 players would get entry into the main and 15th place would pocket about $1,300. It's been too long for me to remember stack sizes, but I remember that I was short enough that I would barely survive another orbit with the current blinds and antes. I shoved from the cutoff with AJ of hearts and the big blind woke up with pocket aces. I think the turn gave me a flush draw to add some sweat for the BB, but it didn't materialize on the river and it was buh-bye JT in 17th place.

So I went out last Friday night and the only qualifiers remaining were single table $330+30 satellites where the top 2 earned seats in the main and a $165+15 tourney where 1 in 10 would earn seats in the main.  I didn't really want to spend the $360 for the single table event, so I decided I would take a shot at the tourney. I arrived at the casino a little before 6:00 PM when I thought the tournament started and discovered it didn't really begin until 8:00.

I decided to jump into a cash game and see if I could reduce the cost of the tournament buy-in through the other poker players. I got seated at a new $1-2 no limit hold 'em table that was just opening. I bought in for $200 and buckled up for the ride. One of the players at my table was a regular in the $2-5 games there and was notorious for his wild style of play. True to form he was raising about 75% of the hands to like $17 preflop and then firing $40-50 continuation bets whether he hit or not. He was calling or raising if he got any part of a flop and was getting lucky, so he quickly doubled his $300 buy in.

About 20 minutes into the session I looked down at the old German Virgin, 99 (nein, nein...get it?), UTG. I still had about $195 of my original $200 buy-in.  Normally I'd make at least a modest raise there to like $8 or $10, but I figured there was a high likelihood Mr. Maniac would enter the pot for a raise, so I limped. Oddly he folded preflop and it limped around with 8 players seeing the flop. The flop was 4-9-10 with two diamonds (neither of my nines were a diamond).

I bet $8 and only got one caller. The turn was another 10. This time I bet out $20 and the only other remaining player popped it to $75 leaving only about $50 behind. I'm not folding a boat there, so I announced all-in and he snap called. Since it was limped around he really could have had any two cards, so I was really hoping not to see something like 10-4. Neither of us revealed our hands right away.

I don't remember the river card except that it was definitely a third diamond which puckered the old pooper a little bit. We both flipped our hands pretty much simultaneously. He had A-10 and he seemed shocked to see that he was beat.  If he hadn't lost about $100 to the maniac already I would have nearly doubled up. As it was I went from about $195 to somewhere around $340.  I wound up cashing out about $360 an hour or so later making my tournament buy-in $20 whole dollars out of my own pocket.

Not much to tell about the tournament.  There was lower turnout for it than I expected with only 27 runners. That meant that two seats were up for grabs with third place getting about $1,000.  I was the most card dead I can ever remember being in a tournament.  I think I saw like two pocket pairs the entire time and only 2-3 hands with two broadway cards.  On the final hand with the blinds at 800-400 with a 100 ante I shoved my stack of about $7,500 from the button with 10-8 of spades. I figured I had pretty good fold equity there and could really use the 1,900 in tournament chips sitting on the felt.

Just my luck the big blind had pocket aces. He called and I never even sniffed anything close to a  draw and that was all she wrote.  I was out in about 20th out of 27.

Poker Content for a Change

I’ve been playing quite a bit of poker in the last couple of months, but have neglected to write up any post session recaps here.  I’m not the type that takes notes on hands after I’ve played them so if they’re going to wind up in the blog it will be based on my admittedly fuzzy memory.

About a month and a half ago I took $600 out of my income tax refund and set it aside to try to start a poker bankroll.  I hadn’t regularly played no limit poker in quite a while.  The first few sessions were unremarkable. I generally either broke even or lost or won about $100 or so. The roll stayed pretty much right where it began for about a month. Then two weeks ago the variance pendulum swung in my favor.

I had a really good weekend when the Heartland Poker Tour was in town. All of the poker degenerates that follow that tournament paid off my TAG playing style and I profited about $1,200 in just that weekend. 

A week or so later I had one of those nights where it seemed like everything broke my way.  My big pocket pairs held up. My suited connectors turned into well-disguised rivered straights.  My middle pocket pairs turned into aces cracking sets. The game basically played itself. Yes I made a few big lay downs and stole a few pots, but most of my profits came from just good old-fashioned run good. I cashed out about $600 in profit from a session where I was up almost $800 at one point.

The following weekend I played both Friday and Saturday night. Friday night I had about $100 profit and Saturday night I had about $650 profit. I decided to take a day off from work and play a mid-week donkament to see if my run good worked in tournaments too.  

The donkament often fills up and the only way to ensure you get a seat is to play in a cash game in the 2-3 hours prior to the tournament. If you are in a cash game two hours before the tournament starts they give you a line pass that allows you to sign up for the tournament before tournament entry opens to everyone else. I should mention that the tournament structure is really terrible. You start with 1,500 tournament chips. It has 20 minute levels and blinds start at 25-50 and pretty much double each level with no antes.

I had bought into the pre-tournament cash game for $300 and my stack had dwindled to about $175 when the floor came over and told our dealer to deal one more hand before breaking the game to setup for the tournament. LAG player straddled and the player immediately to his left raised to $22 preflop. I’d only seen him raise that much one other time and at the showdown he showed two jacks which he had stubbornly played all the way to river with an ace on the board. (He lost that hand.)

I called from middle position with pocket eights.  I was set mining or looking for a chance to bluff him off his hand if a scary card hit the board. The straddler called, but I knew that was going to happen no matter what. The flop was 6-7-8 with two clubs. I had hit my set of eights, but it was a very wet board. I didn’t like it, but I decided I needed to play the hand aggressively to get rid of any drawing hands. It checked to me and I made a bet of $40. Straddler min-raised to $80. Original raiser shoved for about $200. I made the crying call for the remainder of my stack and the straddler also called. 

The board ran out without completing the club flush draw and we all revealed our hands. Original raiser had unimproved pocket kings. I had a set of eights. Straddler had called $18 more preflop with 4-5 off suit and flopped the eight high straight. I was less than pleased.

I made my exit to the hallway outside the poker room to wait for the tournament to start. I was sitting texting my bad beat story to my wife when the guy walked up to me and started trying to explain his call and re-hash the hand with me.  As politely as I could I told him to I wasn’t really in the mood to break down the hand where he had just taken my whole stack and suggested perhaps he should move along. I think my exact words were, “Dude! Not right now. I would just keep walking if I were you.”

The tournament didn’t go much better. I shoved with about 10 big blinds left in the fifth level with pocket aces and got called by pocket tens. Ten on the turn and buh-bye JT88Keys.

This past weekend I was only able to make it out to the poker room on Saturday night. I almost didn’t go, but boy am I glad I did. I got called for a set at table 4 about 5 minutes after putting my name on the list. I walked over to the table and started to set my chips down at the open seat when the dealer stopped me saying the gentleman in seat 1 was moving there after the current hand ended.  I was annoyed, but waited for the hand to play out and took my spot to the dealer’s left.

The very first hand I get dealt pocket jacks. I raised to $12 and got three callers. The board contained an ace and I folded when there was a bet and call ahead of me. Both players had aces, so no big deal and a pretty easy fold on the flop.  My stack is now down to $188 of the $200 I bought in for.

About 3 hands later I look down at two red aces. The hand was straddled, so I made a slightly larger than usual raise to $18 and wound up getting four callers. Add that to the couple of other limpers that folded and there is now a little over $100 in the pot and I get to play my aces against four opponents. Yippee!

I was right in the middle…two to act before me and two to act after me.  The flop was 8-6-3 with two diamonds. I bet $55. The next guy to act shoved for about $225. The next player to act folded and the one after that shoved for about $110. The next player folded and now it’s back to me. I thought for a minute or so. It felt to me like the guy that shoved may have hit a set, but it seemed equally as likely that he had some kind of combo straight/flush draw.

I didn’t like it, but I resigned myself to rebuying if I lost and made the call. Nobody revealed their hands and the board ran out with another 6 and another 8. At this point I’m thinking, “Great…one of these guys probably called with just top pair on the flop and just went runner-runner for a boat.” I turned over my aces and the other two revealed pocket nines and pocket kings. As I was staking my approximately $550 in chips one of the regulars at the end of the table said, “I’m guessing that turn and river put a scare into you.” I replied, “I’m not gonna lie…my butthole was firmly clenched.”

The next big hand I called a preflop raise to $12 on the button with AK of diamonds. There were five players in the hand. I hit the nut flush when a 2-4-10 of diamonds flopped. It checked to me and I bet out $20 into the approximately $60 pot. I got two calls from the SB and the player in the hijack. The turn card was an inconsequential card. It wasn’t another diamond and didn’t pair the board. The SB bet $25 and the player in the hijack just called. Now I had a decision to make. Do I pull the trigger on the big raise now or just call and try to get more value on the river. 

I opted to just call after thinking it over for a few seconds for dramatic effect. I fully expected the SB to bet the river blank, but he surprised me by only betting $20 into what was now a $235 pot. The hijack of course called. I raised it to $100. The SB shoved his remaining $50 or so and the hijack confirmed that it was $100 total and made the call. I flipped over my flopped nut flush. The SB mucked and the hijack showed A-10 of spades. I guess he thought his top pair, top kicker was good there.

The only other big hand I won was another with pocket aces. The guy who had originally had the one seat raised preflop to $12. He is a pretty active player who will raise with lots of different hands, but usually has at least a little something. I raised to $30 with my pocket aces. A younger Asian kid who had played relatively conservatively all night shoved for his last $91. The original raiser tanked for a minute or two before finally folding.  I confirmed I was the only person left to act and called while turning over my aces. He revealed pocket sixes. Neither of us improved and I won another $100 or so. The original raiser said he folded AQ of spades. I wish he had called. Knowing his very aggressive style he probably would have gotten it all in on the turn when the board was queen high.

I left pretty soon there after. The kid I busted who had the pocket sixes left along with two of his buddies that were also at our table. I didn’t feel like playing five handed against a bunch of regulars I didn’t feel I had much of a skill advantage over. I cashed out exactly $953. I tipped 3 bucks to the cage and left with $750 profit from my original $200 buy in. My goal is to run my poker bankroll up to around $5,000 by the end of the summer and then use a big chunk of it to book a Christmas cruise to the Caribbean for my family.