Last Friday was a new chapter in the history of Sherwood Casino. For the first time ever, the poker players made a field trip. Mid-way through the game we got up for a brief visit to The Angry Scotsman pub down the street, the Angry Scotsman, of course being another “underground” establishment. Everything was great at the Scotsman, but after we were there for a while we realized that Harry had disappeared. So, we went back down to the poker basement, but no Harry. Oh well, he’s gotta be around here somewhere. Let’s give him another fifteen minutes and then we’ll call 911.

To usher in part two of the evening, I brought out the tourney chips and we fired up a sit-n-go with our cash game chips still on the table. Harry showed up before the end of the first blind level. His eyes were glassy and movements rigid. It turns out he was sucked into a gap in the time space continuum while we were at the Scotsman.

I had been drinking a lot, yes.

We tried out the new low hand jackpot. Andy won it with an ace high with a jack kicker. I had hoped the low hand of the night jackpot would usher in a lot of post flop bluffs, but I think because people were not used to it, it didn’t create the action I hoped it would.

My memory of the evening is kind of fuzzy, so you’ll have to excuse my lack of clear descriptions here. I know that at one point I was up a ton, but then I took a series of three of four bad beats slash coolers over a thirty minute period. Andy R. seemed to get a real kick out of this and nicknamed me David “Downfall” Prior. The worst of the hands was when I had tens filled with queens and lost to tens filled with kings. To be honest, I didn’t feel exceptionally confident with that hand, as there was also an ace on the board too, and who plays with 10s except people with KT and AT? So, luckily, when I was raised on the river I just called. Who says I can’t play poker drunk?

After that I lost a hand where I flopped two pairs heads up with somebody, and another where I think I had a straight. Andy was loving watching me lose again and again like it was some kind of painful comedy show.

At the end of the evening after cashing everybody out I stumbled upstairs to bed without even putting my chips or the rest of the cash away. We had to hit the road early in the morning to visit some friends on Cape Cod. I didn’t think about the poker game again until Sunday morning, when it occured to me that I had no idea how much money I’d won. I started thinking about how foggy my recollection of the end of the game was, and how revealing it would be to get home and look around poker basement.

Last night I counted up the remaining stacks that I’d paid out. This person had a hundred or so, that one around forty, I had $218, which wasn’t bad for buying in for $63 for the cash game and losing $20 in the SnG.

Some poker rooms have a high hand jackpot, and some do a version of a low hand jackpot with the 27 rule. Here is a new low hand jackpot idea I am toying with for my next poker game:

Worst Hand of the Night JACKPOT

When buying in all players will contribute $3.50 to the WORST WINNING HAND OF THE NIGHT JACKPOT.

1. You have to win with it
2. You have to show it obviously
3. Game starts at 8pm and whoever has won with the worst hand at 11pm gets the JACKPOT
4. This is a little different than the 27 rule in that you have to win with a 5 card hand. The jackpot winning hand would be a lowball type hand not a Razz one, ie the worst possible hand being a 23457 without a flush.
5. If you find this confusing you will be required to donate an extra $5 to the JACKPOT!!

Usually when I am visiting my parents there isn’t a whole lot of time for doing something like playing poker, but that doesn’t stop me from looking at the nearest casinos on my phone and figuring out how long it would take me to get to one. Unlike Boston, where you have to travel an hour to the nearest casino, Philadelphia has a few casinos in it. The nearest on to where my parents live, Parx Casino, is only a few miles away.

So, on Saturday night, when things seemed pretty mellow, I said, I think I’m going to check out the casino, hopped in the car and drove over.

I should preface this by saying I didn’t really do much research before venturing out there. I figured that with a bunch of other options for poker in town, the room would be small, but when I got there I was blown away by how big it is. There were eighty filled tables and the wait for getting in a 1/2 game was probably around forty minutes. I honestly was expecting like four tables tops.

While waiting for a seat I talked to a guy who plays there and at SugarHouse Casino downtown like once or twice a week. He told me that he liked SugarHouse a little better, and that part of the reason it was so packed at Parx was due to a big tourney happening. Eventually I got a seat. I was listed 33rd for 1/2, but a lot of people ahead of me either took off, or played 1/3 or PLO or whatever.

Since most of the games I play are home or underground games, I generally know who I am up against. It took me a while to adjust to playing with strangers. Like I said, I am rarely in situations like this, but my general presumption here is that everybody else at the table is a casino regular, who is better than me. After forty-five minutes, I saw some mistakes made. As far as the people playing tight, I couldn’t tell you how good they were, some of the loose people though were making some pretty nice mistakes.

There was one guy who was kind of the table loudmouth. To be honest, I got a kick out of him, but I guess that feeling wasn’t really shared with the rest of the group. I started talking to the loudmouth guy when the kid sitting between us mentioned he was from Maine. “Oh, so you’re from New England,” I said. “Wow, how’d you figure that one out, genius?” the loudmouth guy interrupted. I cracked up, mentioned I was from Boston and then loudmouth guy was telling me that even though he grew up in Philly, he loved the Red Sox from “around 1976 until 1993. Then I met some actual Red Sox fans, and I never could like that team again.”

As a lifelong Red Sox fan, I could have been offended by that, but instead, I just threw out the standard nostalgic 1970s Sox icons “Oh yeah, Freddy Lynn, Jim Rice, Yaz… those teams were terrific.” Then he tells me that he can name any player from those teams, try him. So to be nice, I’m not going with anything tricky like who played first for them in 1990. Instead I go easy on him, and ask who played third on the 1978 team. Guy has no clue. As a hint I told him the player had like 30 home runs. “There’s no way I can’t get a guy who had thirty homers, there’s no way this guy had 30 homers.”

I guess we were both wrong as Butch Hobson only had 17 in 1978. He did however hit 30 in ’77 and 28 in ’79.

The kid in between us was an aggressive player. He was raising $15 plus almost every other hand. I guess that meant I had a good seat. Anyhow, he raises a hand pre to $35 with a stack that was around 150 to begin with and gets called by four other people, the last one being the loudmouth guy, who says he’s priced in. The flop comes down 789r. It’s checked to a mild mannered guy in his fifties, who makes it something like $100ish. The mild mannered guy and the loudmouth had been jousting with one another the whole time I was there. When the action gets to loudmouth, he raises his hands in the air and triumphantly declares “I call” with the remainder of his chips. Everybody else folds, loudmouth turns over 78 offsuit, the mild mannered guy turns over pocket 9s. I toss aside my earlier presumption that everybody else at the table is better than me. Loudmouth guy sticks around for a few minutes, getting his wife on the phone and handing it to the mild mannered guy in hopes that he’d explain to her what would happened. It was pretty comical to me, but nobody else had any issues when the dude was booted from the seat a few minutes later.

I was having a rough night when I put on my time to leave in thirty minutes timer. I lost with a full house, got counterfeited on another big hand, and had some poorly made c-bets called. I was down around $160. Not the worst night for 1/2, but I’ve been running bad lately and I can’t lie and say it doesn’t start to get to me sometimes. Then, with about ten minutes to go before I have to leave, I pick up aces when the mild mannered guy from the hand above had kings. Hey-ooo up $30 for the night. Not a big win, but I had a good time, and brought a nasty little Parx $1 chip home for my collection.

Dunno if you remember but I mentioned a few posts back that I succumbed to internet poker again. Generally I don’t like to fire up the computer when I am home. Not that I am above that kind of stuff, but most of my browsing is done on a phone now, so why bother. So, I hadn’t really played any Bovada since the night I put the $50 on it. Yesterday I was hanging out at work thinking, man, I sure would like to play some cards tonight… Oh wait, I can gamble on the internet now!

I was all excited to get home and fire up the computer.

So, kids get home, wife goes to bed, and around 9pm I finally log in. Hmm, here’s a tourney that costs $3.30 to enter with $2000 guaranteed in winnings. Let’s give this a whirl. Three plus hours later I was…. down $3.30.

I really don’t know how fun this is.

It’s not all bad though. I logged in this morning on my phone as the kids were eating breakfast, and won back the $3.30 playing “zone poker.” That took all of 5 minutes. There’s a lesson to be learned about efficiency somewhere in here that I am struggling to decipher.

I’m really tempted to cash out of Bovada. I’m just much more into the chips, the smack talk, the joking around, and just the company of live poker.

Speaking of which, I am scheduling a game in poker basement for the 19th.

I did some open mic comedy on Sunday night. I haven’t been doing that a lot lately because if I have a choice I will generally choose to play cards instead. It might be a wise move for me to switch to open mic nights because I have been running pretty bad at the poker table lately. Anyhow, Sunday night was one of those nights where I was out and about and then decided to play some cards when it was way too late to start playing cards. Such nights involve sneaking into my house to grab some money and then getting to Roger’s when I should be in bed.

It wasn’t the first time I came from doing stand up to poker at Roger’s. When I sat down next to Brian at the table he asked straight away if I had just told some jokes. I said yeah. I actually had an ok night on stage, so I was in a decent mood. Then we started talking about different clubs around town.

All in all I had a great time at Roger’s. The mood at the table was pretty good. On Sundays Rog runs the game with this kid Claudio, who brings a lot of his own guys. The Claudio guys tend to play looser and deeper, which makes for a better game. And Claudio himself is a natural entertainer. The loosest of the loose players, a big talker, who keeps things lively.

I played until around 3am. Left down $117 for the night. I rivered a straight and lost to a better straight at one point. There was a flush on the river as well but I still bet there, and then got reraised with a bet that was small enough that I had to call. I think that was the only big hand I really played. I ended the night hitting a set in a multiway pot, so that got me some money back before heading out the door, although it would have been nice to have gotten a little more money out of that one.

Definitely would love to host again soon but I am going to be out the next two weekends in a row. I will be in the Philadelphia suburbs, and maybe, just maybe, I will get a chance to sneak off to a casino. We shall see.