Quads At The Quad

Good morning everyone.  Bad news this morning (more for me than for you) as I finished 49th out of 81 players in this morning's Flamingo Freeroll.  We started with 3K in chips, and in the 50/100 (2nd) round, I limped with 7's and hit nothing.  In the same round, I also limped with A Q, and called a raise to 300 that I shouldn't have (in retrospect).  This player was seated immediately to my left, wearing a Station Casino's cap (local, solid player), and I later saw him limp with QJ suited, and raise from 200 to 500 preflop with jacks.  I take this to mean that he was PRETTY STRONG in our hand, and I had to fold to his bet on the 5 K 5 flop.  Live and learn...  Anyway, I also folded some decent hands in early position today (every hand that I had seemed to be out of position).  These hands included 6's twice (would have won once, but would have never made it to the river to see it spike), 5's, KQ, and K 10.  I'm sure that we'll discuss later how I don't value small pocket pairs as much as others.  And the 7's were actually mid-position, not early, and I was the first limper.  My death blow came in the 400/800 round where I held 1,400 in chips, with 800 of those in the BB.  A preflop raise to 3,100 induced folds from the whole table, and I had a chance to be heads up, so I called with my Q 3 and only 600 left.  My opponent flipped A 9 clubs, and the flop brought a TREY, and a NINE..., AND A NINE...  Meh...  I could cry right now here in the poker room, but I have two more freerolls tomorrow, so not so much...  ;)

Let's talk about something more pleasant, and unusual.  Yesterday at the Quad (and let me stop here to say that you can find two very beautiful young ladies posing with me on my Facebook and Twitter accounts from after this session), I needed 3 more hours to reach 10 for tomorrow's freeroll.  I sat in the 1/1 NL game again, which we started 4-handed.  From a blind, I saw a 3-way flop with 22.  A 2 flopped, and we all checked (A 2 3).  A blank hit the turn, I checked again, and faced a bet of 3 (the other player folded).  I called, now making the pot nine.  The case deuce hit the river, giving me quads, and the Quad pays $50.00 for quads, IF there are TEN dollars in the pot...  Now I'm thinking...  If I bet, will he fold?  If check, will he check?  In either of those scenarios, I lose...  I finally flip out a single chip, BEGGING for him (not verbally) to call ONE DOLLAR.  He calls, and I show as I say, "Thanks for calling..."  I then explain the scenario to the pair of players at the table from out of town, and that I wasn't taunting the caller (a local), but was truly thankful for my $50.00 high-hand bonus.  Five for the dealer, a buck for the floorman, the local's next drink on me, and off we went...  :)  By the way, I won just over a bill in three hours yesterday, which is also helping to ease this morning's freeroll pain...  :)  Looking back, I'm kind of regretting crafting my trade (yeah, I'm using "trade" loosely) almost exclusively at the Mirage when I started playing poker.  I'm sure that I missed out on lots of money that I could have hit in high-hand bonuses playing in other poker rooms (not to mention facing weaker competition)...

You're now about to see my biggest break in posting since my return to the desert.  I wont make another entry here til at least after tomorrow's pair of freeroll tournies (Quad at 9:00 a.m., Monte Carlo at 1:00 p.m.).  If I decide to start playing immediately afterwards, it will be a little longer.  I hope that you have a great weekend, and I'll still see you pretty soon...  ;)