Back To Detroit

Move over Rancho Mirage; I think Greektown has become my new favorite casino.

I played in the tournament with a $75 buy-in. By Detroit standards, that would be a high-roller tournament. In fact, only 26 players showed up to play, counting me. I played a grand total of three hands over a two-and-a-half-hour period, and finished in ninth place. They only paid the top three. The structure was dreadful, with several levels that doubled the previous level (i.e. 50/100 went straight to 100/200). This makes it more of a luck-fest than a poker game.

My first hand came in the third level. By that point, three people had already gone out, one during the first level. That’s just incomprehensible to me. Regardless, I took Ace/King to showdown and beat my opponents Ace/Four to double-up (the board had two Aces on it, so my kicker played).

My second hand was a Jack/Ten. I flopped top pair, bet, and took the pot.

My final hand was pocket sevens. By this point we’d all combined to one table. I went all-in preflop (the first into the pot) and was called in two spots, by a King high and by a Jack high. A King and a Jack both flopped, so the Kings took us both out. Even though I finished out of the money, I played spectacularly well and not at all disappointed.

I made my way over to the cash games. The $1/$2 no-limit was the only NL they were spreading, although they had a $3/$6 limit game going too. The buy-in at the $1/$2 table was $50-$200, and most people were buying in for just $50. The crowd at the Detroit casinos is so different from anyplace else. One player was complaining because they had just cut off his phone service. There were a lot of discussions about lottery tickets. One guy said, “I’d played the same numbers every week for years. The one time I didn’t play last week, they hit. I woulda won $75,000. I couldn’t even sleep that night.” Another two players got into an argument over which of the Jackson brothers was the very first lead singer of the Jackson Five – Jermaine or Michael. Being a Jackson Five fan, I already knew the answer (they both were lead singers at the start and traded lead on different songs). But I kept my mouth shut and just raked in the chips. The players were so appallingly bad. I made a decent amount of money; actually a shocking amount of money given the fact that this was only a $1/$2 table and folks were losing their stacks at only $50 at a time. The only reason I left is because the table finally broke up – too many players lost all their money and had to leave. But I am sure that I’ll be back.

Visiting Former Hometowns, Chapter Two

I was in Kansas City last week, another burg I used to call home. After wrapping up my business, I decided to check out the Harrah’s out that way. I don’t recall having ever been there before (as in Detroit, the casinos were all built after I moved away) but I probably have been. I know I’d never played poker there, though.

I started out at the cash games ($1/$2 no limit), but between felting the other players and them just up and leaving, I soon found myself with only three opponents. I’d rather play Bridge than Poker when it gets that short-handed (and I don’t even know how to play Bridge), so the table just broke up.

Serendipitously, a $30 buy-in tournament was starting to get underway, so I bought into that and decided to play some tournament poker for a while. Fifty-three other rounders had the same idea.

Long story short – I finished in second place, which put me in a terrific mood. It was good for $294, so not a bad payday for four hours’ work.

There weren’t really any big hands that stood out; I just played pretty tight and let the cards come. I won more than my fair share of coin-flips, but my theory is you need to in order to win anyhow. There are a couple of hands I played really terrible though, so I’ll post those. Maybe I’ll even learn from them.

In the first hand, I was the table’s chip leader by a wide margin. I’d just taken out two players with AA, and I was still stacking the rewards when the next hand got dealt. A spankin’ new player had just sat down to my right, and was under the gun. He had a medium-sized stack. He glanced at his hand immediately went all-in.

I looked at my hand: JJ. For some reason, I thought about what I should do! The answer of course, is you muck immediately. But I was on a big high from just winning a huge pot and taking the chip lead. I didn’t know the player who just sat down, and couldn’t get a read on him. He was older than me (maybe in his 60’s), so if anything that should have cautioned me that he probably wasn’t a maniac. But like a fool, I decided to re-raise all-in myself, to isolate him.

Naturally, the rest of the table folded. Naturally, my opponent had AA. And naturally, he won, as he deserved to. My stack was so big at that time that it barely made a dent, but gee what a stupid way to play Jacks, when the under-the-gun player goes all in!

The second hand was against the player who was probably the best in the tournament (counting me as well). I was in the big blind; he was in early position and doubled the bet. It folded around to me; I had King Ten so I decided to play.

The flop came King Eight Deuce. I decided to go for the check-raise. I checked; my opponent bet, I raised a big amount, and he re-raised all-in. He had me covered, but just barely (we were the two big stacks at the table). I should add that this guy was playing really tight and I had a lot of respect for his game. Nevertheless, like a doofus I called his all-in, and put my tournament life at stake with top pair.

Naturally, he had flopped top two pair (Kings and Eights). Fourth street bricked, but I rivered my three-outer and handed him a terrible beat. His chip stack was crushed, and he was completely ticked off. He walked away from the table (ostensibly out of everybody’s earshot) and swore up a blue streak. I couldn’t really blame him either. As a sign of just how good a player he was, he nursed his micro-stack back up to a decent level and ended up going out third, just before I did.

Overall, the room (and the tournament) was a lot of fun. Since it was the Midwest, everybody was really friendly and nice. I had the final table in stitches with goofy jokes and silly behavior. When it got to heads up, the dealer could hardly shuffle because he was laughing so hard. By the way, the last hand (for the record) was my 44 against the Villain’s Jack-rag. A Jack flopped, and that was that.

A new poker show has made it to TV, “Face The Ace” featuring Full Tilt’s stable of champions and bracelet winners. I’ve only seen the first episode, but I thought it showed promise. The amateurs won every round, but only because they got hit with the deck each time. The host (some guy from The Sopranos) was pretty decent; Ali Nejad is also in the house but fortunately is subdued. The chatter at the table is probably the best part of it all. Erick Lindgren in particular gets an A+ in trying to keep the show interesting. Sadly, the show came in dead last in its timeslot. We’ll have to see whether it can find an audience. Here’s hoping!

Back In The Saddle: The Greektown Casino

It’s been almost two months since I played any poker. I don’t think I’ve had that long of a hiatus from poker since I started playing three or four years ago! What’s kept me from the table has been a seriously intense amount of work from my real job, at least mostly. But I finally had the chance to visit a card room and learn whether or not I could still play.

I found myself in Detroit last week, and decided to check out the Greektown Casino. I had only visited it one time before, right after it was built (which was right after I moved out, having called the Detroit area “home” for about seven years).

For those of us who remember the “old” Greektown – pre-casino, that is – what they’ve done with that neighborhood is a bit … jarring. I recall shopping in that little brick mall with quirky, crooked bridges connecting the different sides. Well, that mall is now the casino. Except for a handful of restaurants on the first floor (some of which are vacant), it’s entirely given over to that evil vice.

I can’t say it’s not an improvement, however. The “old” Greektown was more than a bit tattered at the edges. It was desperately trying to recapture its glorious reputation the way an over-the-hill call girl tries to deny the ravages of time by applying too much makeup. So spicing the neighborhood up with a casino has definitely been a shot in the arm.

The cardroom had two hold-em games being spread amongst the five or so tables; a $3/$6 limit game and a $1/$2 no-limit game. The no-limit game had a buy-in of between $50 and $200. Given the sad state of the Detroit economy, it shouldn’t surprise you to learn that most folks were buying in for the minimum.

The players were atrocious. Some of them made me wonder whether they’d ever played poker before. I’ve been at some easy rooms before (Harrah’s flagship in Las Vegas and Agua Caliente in Rancho Mirage come to mind), but this one beat them all. It was one of those sessions where you don’t dare bluff; just value-bet your good hands and fold everything else. I ended up doubling up during my two hours there.

I didn’t play very many hands, and only one hand actually stands out, although it played itself so posting it won’t give you any idea about whether I am a good player or not.

I was on the button. Three or four players limped in from early and mid position, which was happening quite a lot. A player two to my right bumped it up to $10. He had a short stack – but then, nearly all of them had short stacks. I looked down at A©A§ and min-raised it to $20.

The player to my left, the small-blind, was a maniac, splashing around in just about every pot and intimidating the entire table (except me, since I wasn’t in too many hands). He was also the only guy at the table who had me out-chipped. He looked at his hand, grabbed a stack of red chips and re-raised it to $100. Given his range, he could have had pretty much anything and just been trying to make a move on the pot, with all that dead money lying out there. I was thrilled about his re-raise; it made it more likely that the rest of the table would fold out, and I could go head-up with the maniac.

Indeed, the table did fold, until it got to the initial raiser. He only had around $50 left in total, so he called the re-raise and was all-in.

I had about $150 in front of me, so I re-raised all-in myself. I think he realized at this point he’d been squeezed, but facing only a $50 re-raised on a pot with around $300 in it, he pretty much had to call, so he did.

He showed the Q©Qª. The initial raiser inexplicably showed J§6§. In fact, I actually said, “I think I like your hand the best,” pointing to the suited Jack.

The maniac shouted, “Give me a Queen!” He got his wish, as a Q¨ came on the flop. But unfortunately, it was accompanied by a Aª and a 2ª.

The turn was the K§. At this point, the suited Jack actually had a better chance of winning the hand than the Queens did; the Queens had only a single out, but the other hand could river a straight with any of the four tens.

However, the river ended up being the 2¨, and my Aces full defeated the Queens full. The guy with the suited Jack left the table; the guy with the Queens was completely steaming but continued to play for a while longer. Me; I just stacked up my chips and went on to the next hand.