Warming Up

Yesterday I played a bit of baby NL (1-3 blinds, max $500 buyin) to warm up. Good thing I did, since it's been quite awhile since I've played live in a casino - perhaps not since the WSOP last year?

Anyway, I had a pretty bad case of the shakes on the first hand in but got over it pretty quickly. Originally I planned to play at the Wynn but the list was was too long there in mid-afternoon. I ended up back at Treasure Island since it was unbearable to walk more then across the street in mid day. I sat down at 4:00pm and didn't end up leaving until 11:00pm since the table was pretty juicy. There were a couple of really weak tight locals to my left, a couple of ultra aggressive pros to my right, and enough tourists to build pretty big limped pots so perfect position. Many people would sit down with only $100 or so, blow them off and rebuy, repeat then leave. One pretty good guy racked out about $3400 although he had been there longer than I had. Apparently some guy sat down with a ton of blacks ($100 chips) and just blew them off before I got there, although I'm not sure how he managed to get more than $500 in play. Normally you don't see black chips at a 1-3 table but there were about $1000 in blacks in play here.

The aggressive pros would straddle to $10 whenever they could, and induced some tourists to do so as well. Turned into a pretty volatile game but I had great position on the deep stacked pros and managed to win and lose my share of pots chasing straights. The two aggressive pros busted multiple times and probably were down over $1000 each. One of the other locals was just so weak tight it was unbelievable. He was sacred to play post-flop. Some examples: early raise to $10, a caller, and he jammed to $100 from the big blind with JJ, saying he was happy to win the $20 because he didn't want to see overcards on the flop. Another hand, I raised to $10 with QJs on the button and he makes it $40 from the big blind. I make a motion of kissing my chips goodbye and throw them in. Flop comes Kxx and he checks!? I check behind. Q turn and he checks again!? I bet and he folds!?

I stacked AK with 54o, on a A23 flop, called down a bluff with 22, flopped a few sets, standard stuff like that. Nothing too memorable but cashed out up $425, down from a peak of over +$600. One comment from a guy about me: "I'm scared of this guy, he probably does all the math and stuff".

A nice warm up but I will definitely have to tighten up and be more aggressive today. I didn't bluff a single hand last night but that will have to be part of the game plan today.