Commerce, Paul Shirley, and a Win

I called up Henry to see if he wanted to head down to Commerce for a little action on Monday night. He wasn’t up for it but I figured I would run into Pauly or someone else I knew so I drove down by myself.

Upon arrival I scouted the high-stakes area. After sweating the pros, I headed up to the tournament area where I saw them preparing to film the final table tomorrow. I called Pauly but I had missed him by a half hour and he was already gone.

What to do in a casino?

I figured I might kill an hour or two to make the drive worth it. I found a $100 NL table and planted my butt in a chair. There was an empty seat to my left that was soon filled by a guy with Mickey Mouse ear sized earphones. Interestingly, he wasn’t listening to music. He had a portable DVD player and was watching Rounders. This was going to be a profitable evening.

Unfortunately, I lost my first buy-in when LAGgy guy 3 spots to my left raises and I look down and find ATs. Flop comes ATx rainbow. It checks around to me but I know LAGgy will bet at any pot if it’s checked to him AND I actually put him on a strong ace. Sure enough, he fires out an oversized bet and everyone folds to me and I push all in for about twice his bet. He goes into the tank and calls with AJo. Turn is good but the river brings a J and I’m calling for more chips. There’s nothing worse than having a plan go exactly as you wanted it to but still losing the hand. Oh well.

It wasn’t long before we lost Rounders man to my left and he was replaced by a youngish kid who was a pretty solid player. Our end of the table (1s – 5s, I was in the 4s) started a good little chat session going and it turns out the 6′ 10″ guy sitting two seats to my right is Paul Shirley from the Phoenix Suns (he’s also a blogger). We take turns buying each other beers on our end of the table as we pick off the 6s – 10s. Shirley ends up with $600 or $700 in front of him and I’m still struggling to keep ahead of the blinds.

Well, until I got “the hand.” I pick up pocket sevens on the button. Another LAGgy guy, who replaced the original LAGgy after he busted, raises it to $15. The new LAGgy guy is sort of a pain in the ass. Every time the action was to him he called time and acted like he was trying to solve Fermat’s last theorem. After a few rounds of that crap I told him that the tryouts for the WPT were upstairs.

I’m never crazy playing small or medium pocket pairs without some callers but to my surprise we get some and I’ve got nice odds to suck out. Flop comes 723 with two spades. I, obviously, don’t have a spade. Solid player to my left bets $30 into the pot and the original LAGgy raiser calls. I had just re-bought about 10 hands earlier so I had a good stack of chips in front of me and I come over the top and make it $100 total. Solid guy starts muttering and says “I know you didn’t play seven deuce here,” and calls. To my surprise LAGgy pushes the rest of his chips in for another $30 or so on top of my $100. I, of course, call. Solid guy thinks about it and calls.

Now, our little group at the end of the table sort of had an unspoken agreement to check hands down like this and Solid guy and I do exactly that. I could have taken a few more chips off of him but there was no reason to disrupt the little thing we had going to make a few more bucks. The pot was huge and if he had the flush draw he would still check it to me if he made his flush so it’s sort of a courtesy.

Turns out, a spade doesn’t fall and Solid guy turns up JJ. LAGgy turns up two pair with 23. I scoop a monster pot which puts me up solidly for the session.

I end up cashing out up over 3 buyins. Not a bad way to spend President’s Day.

[tags]paul shirley, poker, commerce casino, NL Holdem, John Juanda, Todd Brunson, WPT, LAPC, Los Angeles Poker Classic, LA Poker Classic[/tags]

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