Pendleton Fall Poker Roundup

So here I am in beautiful tiny Pendleton.  I flew into what was certainly the smallest commercial airport I have ever flown into -- and I've flown into plenty of tiny airports.  Long Beach, Santa Barbara, and Traverse City come to mind.  As for this place -- the waiting area was smaller than the turboprob plane that brought me there!  Since it's only 40 miles away from Walla Walla, I'm surprised that it's even still open.

The motel I'm staying at reminds me of the places in Kansas City they used to close down because of all the drug trafficking.  Sometimes I'm so cheap I can't even explain it to myself.  The difference in price between this joint and the casino hotel is basically one decent no-limit pot, so it's not like I wouldn't be able to afford the upgrade.

Then I popped over to the casino, expecting to be seriously disappointed.  The casino itself (the Wildhorse) looks like any other Indian casino, the kind that you find every thirty miles or so in Michigan.  I thought, okay, their poker room has maybe six tables in it, if I'm lucky (turns out it has four).  I wandered about the slot area (smoking section of course), looked through the gift shop, then walked over to the convention center to take a peek.  Many times, big tournaments are held in the convention area rather than the poker room (like the WSOP).

I ended up walking into one of the largest poker rooms I'd ever seen outside of Las Vegas and L.A.!  There must have been 50 tables set up, maybe more.  It was extremely impressive.  So, just to get the feel for the crowd, I sat down at the $2/$5 no-limit table and bought in for $400.

That $400 lasted me around six hours, but I had one of the worst runs of cards I can remember.  In fact, there's really only two key hands that I played where I put in more than $15-$20.  In the first, I had pocket Queens, and my opponent had Ace/Jack.  The board flopped a Jack, and the third Jack came on the river, so I lost a decent pot there (around $200).  The second hand, I had Ace/Jack suited on the button, and I ran into a flopped full house (pocket nines caught a nine-five-five flop).  That pretty much did it for me.

When I have a session with bad hand after bad hand, I start to think, well, I hope I got all the bad hands out of the way so next time I get better hands.  I'll see whether this holds true, because I'll be playing the $500 no limit tournament today.  Some of the dealers said they expect around 500 players -- this would make for a prize pool of $250,000!  I think it will be fun.

Tomorrow is a $1000 tournament.  I will probably play that one too, but to be honest I haven't decided yet.