Poker for fun and profit

Last night I had dinner with two out-of-town friends, Jennifer Newell (aka WriterJen, previously written about here) and Jason Simon (aka Genomeboy, previously written about here). We ate at Burger Bar in Mandalay Place. I've been there a couple of times before, but this time had something different: "The Hawaiian," which is a marinated/grilled chicken breast sandwich with bacon and pineapple. Yummy!

From there, Jason and I went to the Aria poker room. We had to wait nearly an hour to get seats in a $1/3 game because of the long waiting lists. Jason jumped into a $2/5 game while we were waiting, and promptly lost $300 in one hand, all in pre-flop, when his A-K got four-flushed by another A-K. Sick.

But soon we were at the same $1/3 game. I left up $255 less than an hour later, all my profit coming in two hands. In the first I made the nut flush on the river (thanks, of course, to crubs), beating a flopped two pair. In the second, I got tricky with just 5-4 offsuit against the raise of a tight, solid player on my immediate right. The flop was A-9-4. I called his flop bet partly as a float (in case he had kings or queens, hated the ace, and would check the turn to me), partly hoping to hit trips or two pair. When the turn brought a second 9, he bet again, and I raised, figuring that he would put me on a hand like 8-9 or 9-10. He agonized for quite a while, but finally folded. Stole one!

I might have left about then anyway, but I was enticed away by several Tweets announcing that a cluster of poker media people had opened an alcohol-fueled $2/4 mixed game at Binion's. They included Pauly, Change100, KevMath, AlCantHang, and Kara Scott, plus PokerVixen, whom I've met on a few previous occasions. That just sounded like altogether too much fun to pass up.

The game only survived about 90 minutes after I arrived (most of the others having reporting jobs to perform in the morning), but it was a blast while it lasted. Highlights included:

• Kevmath open-raising from under the gun in 2-7 triple-draw, then drawing five cards.
• Al becoming the first person I've ever seen spill a capped bottle of water across a poker table.
• Vixen making a #1 in 2-7 and revealing her hand one street too early--which was seen by everybody at the table except Pauly, her lone remaining opponent in the hand, who continued to try to beat her.
• Bluffing Al off of a queen low in razz when I had secretly triple-paired, and showing the burn--shortly after we had talked about how fun it was to bluff in razz.

I lost only $3 in the game, and got 50 times that much enjoyment value out of it.