Wednesday, May 25, 2011

Turning Stone Poker

Buddy Chuck and son John were going up to Turning Stone for the Weird Al Yankowich concert, and I decided to visit with him at his place, and then ride along doing more visiting, and play poker while they listened to Weird Al.
John is a huge fan.
I was a bit worried about all this lack of sleeping lately because it meant a 45 drive home from chuck's alone at 1a.m. but I did not need to worry. I was awake for the entire drive, even when I thought I was running out of gas, and in a panic skipped my plan to run the tank to near empty, so I can use my Price Chopper 40 cent a gallon discount.
I paid full price for gas in Troy.
Today buying a few more things at Price Chopper means when this gas is nearly dry I can get 20 gallons at 50 cents off per gallon.
Except for driving to Red Rock Canyon, it has been about a month since I have driven a car. It felt good to be in the van, although something is not right with it.

So the first treat of the day was a slice of Mary's rhubarb pie.  Some of the rhubard is home grown.  The crust is something out of distant Iowa past.  There is no use thinking about being on a diet when Mary's baked goods are around.  Later, at one A.M. I invited myself for a chocolate chip cookie for the road.
Chuck insisted I take two.
 It was a day of eating things I never eat.

An entire thermos of hazlenut coffee consumed on the way meant that I could talk faster than my mouth could move, and Chuck is the only person I know who is willing to listen to so many Vegas stories.  He told his stories of being Dean and renovating his bathroom, and traveling in a world where the characters he meets are just delightful.  He had great family news as well and with all I had gathered from Chicago and Denver, we got caught up on that as well.
The fishing is also part of Chuck's interests.  
It was easy to keep the talk going in both directions.

The poker was just great.  It is fine to come back from those tough games in Vegas to a truly soft game at Turning Stone.  Folks were just giving me their money in the first part of the night, and I built my $60 buy in up to $135 at one point.  Unfortunately, I did not leave at the peak and lost back about half before I quit at $69 profit.  I'd have made money in the latter part of the game as well if I had been able to get cards.  i had good opportunities and did some early pot building and got free cards.  Nothing worked for winning.
I got river lucky early in the night.
My K-8 blind flopped trips and then clearly a woman turned a heart flush.  I river an 8 for the full house and check raised, trapping the other trip kings for $4 and getting the full $8 from the flush player.  Her flush was just a 10 high too.  She still called the check raise.
Sometimes my luck was the other way.  I remember trip 7's that I just could not bet because there were so many hands that could beat me, and yet I won anyway.  The dealer was even amazed.

There were no really good players at the table.  Two guys to my right were regular no limit players.  One older guy just talked all the time about his cards, even during the hand, making it easy to know what he had.  Another young guy talked no limit talk, but he was intimidated by my preflop raising and he played such crap I just could not see him at a not limit table.
All were friendly. We talked about the old movie "Paint Your Wagon" and I remembered the theme song.  Lee Marvin was great in that movie.  I'll have to see it again soon.

It was a friendly crowd.  No great stories.  But it felt good to be in a game where I never was behind.

And Chuck and I chattered all the way home, so i got to hear about Weird Al and his concert takes as well as plenty of other funny things.
Oh....okay.......Chuck chatted; I chattered.  The coffee still was working.