A man's gotta do what a man's gotta do

My first two visits to the Tropicana poker room were horrible experiences, as I chronicled here and here. It was my intention never to return. However, when I talk to fellow grinders that I run into in the city's poker rooms, the Trop keeps coming up as a place they find profitable and easy to beat. It has been almost a year since my last trip there, so last night I decided to hold my nose and give it another try.

I was pleasantly surprised. The staff were all helpful and professional. The players were all friendly. I had a perfectly enjoyable (and profitable) evening there. I'm going to relent in my previous decision to keep it off of my list of places to hit--might even go there again tonight.

One hand is worth retelling. Player A limps in from early position. Player B puts in a standard raise. I'm on the button and call with 7-8 offsuit. Player A calls, too.

The flop is 3-6-9 rainbow, giving me an open-ended straight draw. Player A checks. Player B bets $10, fairly small. I think both of them missed this flop. I don't typically raise with draws, but this is a spot where it seems right, because I could easily take down the pot if both of them missed, as I suspect, and if one or both call, it builds a bigger pot that I could win either by hitting my hand or by betting bigger on the next street. I make it $35. Player A calls. Player B folds. Player A is a tight, solid player who hasn't been out of line all night, so his call gives me some reason for concern. With no draws other than mine sitting there, he's now smelling like a big made hand slow-playing.

But the turn is my gin card--a 5, giving me the nuts. To my surprise, Player A bets out pretty big, something like $60. He has roughly $100 left behind. This looks to me like he likes his hand enough that he'll be willing to get all the money in. I have him covered. I move all in. He immediately calls. This makes me think that we may have the same hand, and I even say that as I turn over my straight. But when he sees it, he grimaces. He has pocket nines, and had flopped the top set. He understandably must have thought he was ahead, as he couldn't expect me to have played 7-8 or 4-7 (the only two hands that would have him beat) for a pre-flop raise. (Of course, that's exactly why I will sometimes call a raise with such junk, because when it hits, it's marvelously disguised.) The board doesn't pair for him, and I win a pot of something like $400.

This hand wouldn't be especially remarkable or worth writing up here except for one unusual factor: Player A is a guy I've met before through an allvegaspoker.com meetup. He's also a reader here, and the person I mentioned in this post, less than two weeks ago, who was kind enough to pass on a very helpful and profitable suggestion of a table change at Mandalay Bay.

Although I don't know him well, those previous interactions made taking his whole stack quite a bit more uncomfortable than it would usually be. In terms of emotion and social interaction, it's a lot easier to feel nothing about taking the money of a complete stranger with whom I've had no past.

I don't feel badly about it, exactly, but there is a twinge of mixed feeling going on. Given the choice, I'd rather have taken the chips from somebody with whom I had not previously shared a fun dinner, and who had not so recently showed me a kindness. But poker doesn't let us choose who will be on the bad end of those rare occasions when two big hands clash.

If the situation had been reversed--me with the set, him with the straight--or if the board had paired on the river to give him a full house, I would have disliked it, but I wouldn't take it personally, as if he had done me a wrong somehow. I hope that that will be true for him as well. I think we have to acknowledge that we are all sitting there in order to try to take each other's money. Crass as that sounds, it's the bottom-line truth of the game. So when somebody succeeds, it's hard to consider him ill-mannered for it.

Earlier this year, after losing a painful razz hand to a reader, I wrote this post about the experience. I said there, "It happens fairly often these days that I encounter a reader in the casinos or across the virtual felt.... Should you find yourself in that situation, give me your best shot, because I will be doing the same, with a promise of no hard feelings however it comes out."

That remains true. I think that taking money from somebody who has identified himself to me as a reader, or somebody with whom I have some other history from outside of poker, will always provoke mixed feelings about the awkwardness of the situation. Still, this is what I do, how I keep the bills paid, and I can't apologize for it with any degree of sincerity. All I can do is acknowledge that it's uncomfortable on both sides, then shake hands, shrug it off, and go on.



The Tropicana is one of the most prolific purveyors of collectible casino chips, so my tentative willingness to start patronizing the place more frequently will provide the opportunity of a significant expansion of my chip collection. The chip shown above is one of several I pocketed last night. I'm not much interested in sports, but when I saw this chip sitting in the pot last night, I immediately asked the dealer to trade it to me, because of one remarkable feature that I spotted: It is #1 in the limited edition of 1000. I have never before seen any #1 in a numbered series of chips in circulation, so I considered it quite a find. I doubt that it's especially valuable monetarily, but I think it's pretty cool.