Trash Talking Tuesday

At the Hard Rock Casino, they have been running a pretty cool game a few nights a week. I kept hearing at this game when I played at Bellagio so I decided to check it out. First off, I have been trying to play more and more live poker lately, as it feels a lot less stressful, at least to me, than online.

Plus, online keeps getting tougher and tougher. If the UIGEA thing doesnt get repealed by the end of the year, expect things to get even tougher. I guess I always prepare for the worst possible situation, which would be online poker being totally banned at some point, which will probably never happen. However, if it does, I want to be well ahead of the curve when it comes to all the online kids transitioning to live poker. Also, assuming online poker stays fine, I can write off the time spent as another way to improve my game, as if I do lack in any area, it is deep stacked play.

On to the game...it is a $500 - $3000 buyin game with $2/5 blinds and a mandatory $10-$100 straddle on the button. The way this works is first position goes first, then it goes around to to the cutoff like normal. The button, who has a straddle out, then gets skipped and the blinds act.

After they act, the button has the option to check or raise. Basically, it makes the button 10x more powerful. There is one little catch in that if there is a raise and a reraise before the action gets to the button, the button then acts in turn.

One more thing about the game, if you win a hand with 7-2, reguardless of whether or not it is shown down at the river, everyone at the table has to give you $10. People are usually fairly transparent when they have 72, making 10x the blind preflop raises and 3x potting the flop. There was one player at the table last night that raised to 6x preflop then made it 3x pot over someones lead on some random flop. He showed the 72 and we paid him off.

A little while later, he made it 6x preflop with QQ and got some callers so I called with QJ on the button. It came Q73. He bet around 2x pot and I called, assuming I was just going to call down. The turn was a J and he 2x potted it again. I called. The river was a 9 and he 2x it again. I snap called and he showed me the QQ. I was sad. All in all though, I think against weak players that really are transparent, it is good for the game. You just have to man up and get it in there with A7o preflop.

As for my results in the game so far, they havent been too good. I am down like $500 over 12 hours of play. I have made the 2nd nuts around 5 times and every time they had the nuts, so I am not too concerned about the results although I would obviously rather do better. Both nights I have played, someone has been at my table just dumping away money. Last night some super hot girl that couldnt have been older than 26 came and dumped off $10000 over an hour.

The night before an old guy gave away $5000 pretty fast, calling a guy down on a AKT42 with 4 spade board. The other player, who was also semicrazy, showed T6 with no spade and took down the $6000 pot. Just looking back over the last paragraph, this game sounds like the best ever. The only problem is that there are usually 7 other players at the table that play fairly well. Because of this, I may check out Bellagios games on a random Tuesday to see if there are no pros there, as I assume they are all at Hard Rock.

All in all, the game is fun. It is a cool social thing with a decent amount of action. I am just hoping I have one of the people that show up to give it away give it to me next time. Bellagio prelim events started today. I will be playing most of them starting tomorrow. The winner of each event gets a $5500 rolex. That would be nice.