"What do you do for a living?"

Saturday, February 25th

Saturday I don't get up terribly early... OK I slept in, deal with it. Got up around Noon, hit the buffet and then decided to make the rounds to see what tourneys, etc they had at the various rooms. Horseshoe has no freeze-outs under $100 and no rebuys under 60. So I will pass there. Goldstrike has their early bird at 11 AM (OOps.. I overslept. Darn) and nothing else that fit well. Heading out of the horseshoe I trip over a wheelchair, and almost run into a lady with an oxygen tank at the blackjack tables. I know retired people love casinos, and I love when they play poker there (Us young kids raising all the time and ruining their poker game. We don't play the game right!). However, if you are on an OXYGEN TANK you might want to STAY AWAY FROM THE CASINO! I mean seriously, how much excitement can you take if you are that frail. I really don't want to see someone die at the casino, seriously.

I head over to the goldstrike and sit in the 4/8 they are just starting there. The players are a normal mix, some good, some tight, some bad, and one who never folds. I look up to the TV and they have Bass fishing on, I remark that I am not a big fan of watching fishing on TV. The guy who calls every hand pipes in "I love to fish!" to which half the table erupts in laughter and I say "Of course you do... you seem to have a skill for it". I am running well and playing well until the Fisherman gets under my skin and I blow off a few hundred trying to "catch him". A bad idea in case you were wondering, and switch to a 3/6 table when I couldn't handle this guy anymore.
I sit down at the 3/6 with about 80 of my 200 buy-in in front of me and quickly go down to the felt and rebuy, going down to the felt again and rebuy for another $100. Tilting in a major way, pushing WAY to hard, and playing like I was a complete moron. Chasing gutshots, overs, bottom pairs, etc. Just throwing money away basically. The seat to my right is a nice gentlemen from Oxford, MS (University of MS) and his girlfriend is from Atlanta so we are chatting it up, jabbing back and forth about UGA vs Ole Miss and after my third buy-in at the table he asks "Wow, you have a lot of cash what do you do for a living?" to which I reply "Well I guess right now, I play poker for a living since I quit my job on Friday". To which he replies "I see THAT is going well". Oh boy... was *I* embarassed. I finally managed to get off tilt, hit a few hands finally and ended the afternoon shift down $50.

I decided to hit the night shift at Sam's town to finish off my hours and get some of my losses back. The 3/6 is just as crazy as ever. Sitting to my left is Charlie. Now Charlie has spent his entire life fishing, skiiing, etc on the river, and has obviously made a friend somewhere upstairs with his 11 Children and 27 grandchildren because Charlie cannot lose. If he has a draw it hits. Runner runner trips holding a naked ace, gutshots, river sets, etc. He never folded if he had ANY way to win and win he did. He ran his stack to over 700 before giving back some and quitting. I was holding my own in that game until I flopped a set vs A's and Q's to win a huge pot and put the guy to my right on tilt. He decided he was not going to fold anymore, he was playing every hand all the way to the river, he was tired of this. Now this was my cue to get up... but I am not all that smart sometimes. So I get K's and raise, 6 callers. Flop is J high and after bet/call, bet/call to the river tilting guy shows Q/9 for the runner runner straight drawing virtually dead. I was planning to get up after the K's hand and go to bed up a little for the day. Instead I stayed for 2 more hours tilted off another 200 before finishing the night down 215 for the day.