Not a good omen

The poker room at the Horseshoe Casino (above) has 16 tables. All 16 were in use today and they had set up two more outside the rail.

I went there to play in their 4 p.m. tournament. This was a practice run/warm-up for the Delta Gold tournament tomorrow at the Gold Strike. I arrived around 1 p.m. and signed up for the Omaha-haha high/low game. They were in the process of trying to get it going, so I went to the Gold Strike (next door) to see what the tournament over there looked like. They had a ladies event that had around 60 players. The open event had about 170 (guesstimate).

Then I went back to the Horseshoe and wandered down to Starbucks (near the Horseshoe hotel lobby) to got a latte. Caffeine is a must before a poker game. When I came back, the O-8 game was ready to start. I played for a couple of hours, and it was uneventful.

About one hour into the tournament, I ran Q-Q into A-A and lost most of my stack. When you have plenty of chips, that shouldn't happen and I know better. Maybe I have it out of my system for the "real" tournament tomorrow.

Here's one cute hand: A guy had ♥K ♦K and made a big raise from the big blind, and got one caller. The flop was A-x-x (sorry, I don't remember which suits), and the guy with K-K shook his head and checked. The caller made a pot-sized bet and the K-K guy folded face up.

"An ace always comes," he said.

The caller showed his hand: ♦2 ♠2! He had made a nice read. Folks, it pays to keep a poker face -- I'm just sayin'.


Images by MOJO and taken with my P&S.