Trip Report: Day 3

Since we had such a good night the previous evening at the poker tables, my wife and I decided to spend a couple hours at the Spa at the hotel. A good massage does much to relieve the tension created by a long poker session!

After our massages, we headed over to the Tulalip for some more poker. I sat down at the no-limit table ($3 and $5 blinds, $200 max buy-in) and after about 2 and a half hours with no eventful hands, I was up about $100. (Mostly blind steals, a couple of well-timed bluffs on the flop, and two decent hands.) I was at a must-move feeder table, and when they came over to make me move to the main table, I took the chance to take a break from the game and have some dinner. I grabbed Rachel, and we had a fantastic dinner at the cafe. The food at Tulalip is surprisingly good if you actually go to the restaurants, but the food you can order to your poker table can be pretty bad… do yourself a favor and go to the restaurants if you play there.)

After dinner, I sat back down at the feeder table… the third hand I was dealt was pocket aces. I raised it up to $15, and got two callers. The flop came JT2 rainbow. I made a pot-sized bet, one player on a short-stack called all-in, and my other 0pponent made a pot-sized raise. For some reason, I was certain he had flopped a set. I thought for a moment, studied his reaction as I counted out the chips for a call, and finally folded my pocket aces face-up. The whole table gasped in disbelief… they all thought I was crazy to fold! However, the all-in player showed a pair of jacks with a king kicker, and the raiser turned over JTs for top two pair. The whole table was just amazed at the laydown I had just made (although I don’t think it was particularly impressive– I think that it’s a very common mistake to get married to good pre-flop hands when it’s obvious you’re beaten.) From this point forward, everyone was afraid of me– I was just plain running the table. The next hour is a complete blur– I don’t remember a single hand… but what I do know is that at the end of just 55 minutes of play I was up about $600. I barely even paid attention to my own cards, just betting when my opponents were weak, and folding when they were strong. My table image allowed me to take just about every chip off the table.

At this point, we decided to head back to the hotel and watch a couple movies.

A great vacation– we were up well over $1600 at the tables, which left us with a VERY healthy profit even after paying all the expenses– food, hotel, spa, etc. We’ve already started planning out next outage: we’re going to spend my birthday weekend at Qunault casino.