The Table From Hell

Meant to be a light day of poker while I spend some time with friends and doing some shopping. Morning began with breakfast at the Sherwood Café. Had the omelet, okay but nothing special. I stuck my nose in at the Excalibur Poker Room. They had their morning tourney going with a couple limit games on the side. I put my name in on a 1-2 NL interest list. After about 20 minutes I gave up and headed over to the Venetian.
First, I absolutely love the Venetian. I consider it the top poker room in Las Vegas and always make a point to spend at least a few sessions there. I was sat immediately in a table they were opening.

Label this THE TABLE FROM HELL. Most of the players were a bunch of old time Vegas nits who did more gossiping and angle shooting than a church quilting group. That I could handle, except there were two foreign tourists at the table, I believe Israeli because they mostly spoke Hebrew and only a pidgin smattering of English. The problem was when the Hebrew next to me threw his hand away he started talking to his friend at the other end of the table in Hebrew, which of course is a violation of the “English Only Rule” and the Hissy Nitty (HN) to my immediate left got hissy at the repeated problems. The floor was called three times, and the Hebrew to my right finally figured out what was required, but he sat grumpily not talking at all. Problem fixed, except HN kept harping about it forever – which caused Hebrew to tell HN to “Don’t Talk to Me!” which meant HN had to continue harping about “Of course I can talk as long as it is in English.”

Generally tables like this are profitable, but the nits sitting here would make it a long process and I would probably either shoot someone, HN or myself, before I got far enough along to do any good. Finally I couldn’t take it any longer and asked for a table change and almost immediately was whisked away to another table.

And as bad as the first table was the new table was POKER HEAVEN. A whole table of tourist poker players who all thought they were better players than they were, all over betting and going AI with hands like 2ndPrMK against a scary board. Chips were flying and I couldn’t wait to cash, except I played some of the stupidest poker of my life. There was little doubt I was by far the best player at the table, but I fell into the zone Mike Caro calls “Fancy Play Syndrome.” I was throwing off check raises on scary boards and being called by people with 3rd Pair bad kicker. I’d raise big with KK and be called by five people and see aggression on a flop of 379 one-suited (not mine) then after I fold I find the winning hand was a different suit 89. I started playing too loose trying to get lucky and ended up not lucky. I cashed out down $350.

After that I met up with some friends and we found the lounge at the Excalibur where they were having karaoke, good times and some of the singers were awesome. Some were not, of course.

We finished up about 10pm so I went to the Excalibur Poker Room for another session. No hands stood out by again I was playing too loose, calling thin draws and basically being a donkey. I ended down $200 by 1am when I called it a night.