What a difference a day makes

Some of the players at last night's table of craziness had said that they would be back tonight, so I returned to Caesars to see if I could be on the receiving end of their spewiness again. I did see one of them--in fact, he was on my immediate right. But he was clearly losing and in a sour mood, and the bad beats and cold decks he was experiencing had taken the fight out of him. Last night he was the most aggressive player (discounting the ones who were just shoving blindly for fun), but today he was a pussycat.

This table was the polar opposite of last night's. Nobody was drunk. They all appeared to be studying the game closely. Nobody spoke. Nobody laughed. There were sunglasses, hoodies, and earphones in play. Players were deep-stacked, most buying in for the $500 max. This was not just poker. This was Serious Poker.

I left after 80 minutes with a $280 profit. Strangely, I actually thrive in this sort of game. I understand pretty thoroughly how the better players at this level think, because their baseline play is very similar to mine. To beat them, I just have to see what they're doing, make an educated guess as to why they're doing it, deduce from that what they're afraid of, then convince them that I have what they're afraid of. I started off by hitting a couple of lucky cards and showing down strong winners to establish a reputation of always having the goods, then used a combination of that image, position, aggression, and scare cards to steal pots for the rest of the session.

I ordinarily wouldn't bother writing anything about a session like this, because it didn't generate any specific stories. But it was such a stark contrast to last night's that I wanted to make note of it. This was a much more typical Caesars Palace kind of table. Last night's was the one that was out of character.