A Tale of Three Johnnies (Part I)…

Just returned from my semi-regular weekend appearance at the Mirage in Vegas. Because I was staying with some friends who were in town for the weekend at Mandalay Bay, I didn’t actually get to the Mirage until 2AM on Saturday – and much to my chagrin, the 10-20 and 20-40 games had already broken up for the evening. Are you freaking kidding me? This is supposed to be Vegas, baby, and a Friday night… too many damned poker rooms open in more exotic locales, such as the Wynn and the Venetian, I suppose… but I’ll still take the Mirage any day.

So I needed to wait until later in the day Saturday to get my poker fix. And get my fix I did, playing for roughly 17 hours – from about noon until 5:30 in the morning on Sunday, with an hour break for dinner somewhere in the middle.

What an interesting day. Until later in the evening, I played pretty much even, getting up as much as $300 and down as much as $200 at different points… but it was a phenomenally underwhelming session in terms of both cards and action. Things started to change, however, as the evening progressed – owing primarily to the presence of two extremely loose action players.

The first was a tourist who flew in from somewhere and was scheduled to depart early on Sunday – he planned to play through the night until take-off. His modus operandi was, quite literally, to play any two cards from anywhere. And being sooooooted wasn’t a requisite qualification, either. I’m fairly certain the bottles of Sammy’s I drank outnumbered the hands he folded before the flop.

He was a generally passive player (except pre-flop, where he raised his fair share of hands), as I imagine one would need to be in playing any two cards under the sun. But he stuck around until the river on most hands, meaning a couple of things for the rest of us: (1) the starting hand criteria could go down somewhat, given the greater number of players desirous of taking flops with the guy, and (2) a hand was actually required to drag most pots. Normally, this is great for the game… except he was catching cards disgustingly well. And he was winning a lot of our money.

The second player, a local, didn’t materialize until after the midnight hour. He played lots of hands, too… but he played uber-aggressively through to the river, regardless of the extent to which his hole cards were coordinated with the board. His level of intoxication only added to his reckless style of play, as well as his consistent taunting of the bitter foreign immigrant sitting to my immediate left who had earlier, regrettably, commented that intoxicated local “didn’t know shit from shinola”. This ultimately provided for some much needed comic relief over the course of at least the next couple of hours…

I, unfortunately, had not been getting an enviable run of cards. I was happy with the fact that I stayed disciplined in folding a great deal of trash, was playing position well, and stole a pot here and there when the opportunity permitted. And because of this, I was actually up a little bit when my first set of jacks relevant to the current diatribe appeared…

I was sitting in the big blind when a young, aggressive local raised from middle position, only to be cold-called by a local female who seems to play fairly well after the flop, but who also seems to play too many hands (as this scenario will demonstrate). In this case, I elected to simply smooth-call the single bet with my pocket jacks, in part to disguise my hand, and to make it easier to depart the hand if the flop did not come well for me.

But come well for me it did, as I flopped top set. I checked, MP bet, LP called and I raised. I then led out the turn (another relative rag – although the board was beginning to get a bit coordinated), only to be raised by MP, and called by LP. At that point, the smooth call should have alerted me that something was amiss, but alas, I was focused on aggro-boy – and decided that LP was along for the ride with a slim draw of some sort. So I reraised aggro-boy’s presumed premium pocket pair, and was called by both.

The river came another harmless card, so I bet out – only to be raised by LP. What the… in taking a closer look at the board, I knew with certainty what she had - the T8 of purple horseshoes (I read that in Bluff or Cardplayer or something, and thought it amusing). How she could call a raise with T8 offsuit, I have no idea. But it gave her a straight, and sent my stack on a downward spiral from which it wouldn’t recover during the remainder of the evening. (It also sent aggro-boy on a tilt-inspired verbal assault on the girl, which was somewhat entertaining for me – in light of the fact that he hadn’t stopped to realize that if she had folded her hand, he would have lost precisely the same amount of money to my set of jacks, as he ultimately folded to her river raise. But being the gentleman that I often pretend to be, I admonished him, resulting in the redirection of his wrath in my general direction…)

The downward spiral continued until what, for all intents and purposes, was my penultimate hand of the session, shortly after 5AM. Stuck several hundred at this point – largely the result of several bad beats that even prompted a solid local to recount during the next night, unsolicited and with appropriate sympathy, how bad things were running for me during the course of the session - I again found pocket jacks, and again connected with the flop for top set.

In this case, the villain was player #2 (intoxicated local) referenced above. Because loose tourist and a couple of other players were along for the ride in – again – what should have been a relatively uncoordinated board, I decided to wait until a few bets were already in on the turn before raising. Which I successfully did, prompting all players to quickly depart the hand, with the exception of villain – who proceeded to three-bet me. I of course made it four, and saw, to my chagrin, that he only had enough funds in front of him to cover $15 of that final $20 bet.

I turned over my pocket set, and he was dead to a ridiculous gutshot draw. Of course, he hit it – to stunned silence at the table (with the exception of a couple of audible gasps). I mustered poise I didn’t think humanly possible, rapped the table, and said “nice hand”. He responded by announcing “Is everybody paying attention? You better call me with anything you’re playing…” How profound of him. I folded a few more hands so as not to appear defeated, watched intoxicated local eventually depart penniless and then headed out to the car at about 5:30, stuck just shy of $800…

Part II to follow shortly…