Good Bye Tunica, Hello Tulsa

It has been a lovely stay in Tunica and everyone was very friendly with no real issues. I decided to play in the 60+20 buyin freeze-out Thursday at 1 PM (kind of early but I managed to get up for it) and it got 29 players for almost 3 full tables. Blinds went up every 15 minutes and the whole tourney only last about 2.5 hours. So you can imagine it was a bit of a crap shoot... We are down to 7 players and I have a decent sized stack, but the blinds are going up fast now and even though I am not short stacked the blinds still hurt. I am in the big blind when a very solid lady to my left who plays a lot of these and the No-limit cash game pushes all in. All-in pushes are common at this stage as a blind steal will add 20-30% to most stacks, folded to me in the big blind and I look down to see glorious pocket rockets. I apologize and call, she has King's and the Aces hold up bringing us down to 6. A few hands later the short stack goes all-in with 3's and is called by K's to get knocked out. We chop 5 ways for $337 off an $80 entry, not bad for 2 hours of work. I was the chip leader and could have been an ass to the short stack who was about to put 50% of his stack in the Big Blind, but decided not to as a chop was fairly standard practice and I didn't want to one of those "I caught a hand, F all you guys", and I would want that kind of courtesy if I was the small stack.

Well apparently my karma was good for that as I sat down in a 4/8 game and was grinding along pretty well when I lost a series of big hands to set myself down 130. In the process of walking around steaming from the last beat (A8 off limp/reraise/cap UTG flopping 2 pair, then racking and leaving) I notice my favorite people from the weekend all at the same table. There is "I just wanna see what you have Lucy" who has dropped 1100 in 2 days while I have been watching her, "I like the big pots Fred", and "This is fun Hippie Sam". Add in the tilting "I know how to play an you are all idiots" guy, the flush raiser, the calling stations, and the I always bet top pair even if you just check/raised me people... it was a gold mine. I turned down 130 into up 300 in about 2 hours and went to bed after 3 of my favorite fish left.

One funny story from Wednesday night. The weekdays in Tunica are all pretty much 80 year old retired men sitting there for hours on end not generating much action. The games are very beatable as they still play 40% or so of hands, and play them very passively. But you are only getting 4-5 to the flop, no raises and often folded on a flop-bet. So it is hard to take much out of it... The old guys are also all pretty quiet and other than a few don't talk much. After a few hours of almost sullen silence at the table someone gets their aces cracked, and I mention that if that had happened between 4 AM and 8 AM they would have gotten a rack of whites (aka $100). One of the older gentleman tells me that he heard about that and considered getting up a few hours early to play at 4 AM! A few hours EARLY! F That... I was just going to stay up a little later... So I inform them they could just play until 8 AM from now. You would have thought I suggested they eat their first born. That got them all going... 8 old guys all talking at the same time about how late they could stay up, and this one time when they stayed up until 11 and slept in until 6! And then I said the magic word that REALLY got them worked up. I felt like I was on Pee Wee's playhouse and had said the magic word "RV Park". OMG! They flipped out... I swear heads were turning around backwards they were talking over each other, comparing stories. "The RV park here is kind of expensive", "You know they don't even have a laundry", "If you book for 2 weeks you can get it for about 49 a week", "Oh I generally average about 35 a week if I plan ahead", etc. It was freaking hilarious.... I thought one of them was going to have a Coronary right there and then.

That is it for the first week... Not a bad session at all. I played 59 hours of poker in 7 days and 1 hour of table games. Up $1,125 over that period ($945 of that at poker) playing 4/8 or under, and one tournament (and 1 hour of table games netted me 180). Everyone was super-nice, the floor at Sam's Town and Grand were awesome as were all the dealers. I only went to the goldstrike on Saturday and maybe they were having a bad day, but they were horrid. My last visit to the Gold Strike was good... this time I really felt unwelcome and unimportant. I didn't go back there the rest of the week... the games at the Grand were just too good, and the people were as nice as they could be. A special thanks to Terry and Barbara for getting all the room issues sorted out and going well above and beyond to make sure I left a happy customer (of course I did put in 35 hours in their room so they got a good deal of rake from me which I am ok with). Now it is off to Tulsa and the Cherokee Resort in Catoosa...