Pud at the WSOP – Day 43: Booking a Win in the Cash Games

Day 42’s entry was rapidly reaching the too long didn’t read (TL;DR) stage so I neglected to write about watching Taxi Driver before I decided to hit the hay and call it a night.

After mentioning watching Leon: The Professional a couple nights ago, a few people said that I had to watch Taxi Driver because it was an all-time classic and that I should love it. With a few bits of magic, Taxi Driver found its way onto my hard drive during a live reporting shift and I settled down to watch it knowing that I didn’t have to be up early the next day thanks to having back-to-back days off.

When I was told that it was an all-time classic, I didn’t realise they meant an all-time classic piece of shit. Fuck me, I’ve had more enjoyable fillings in my teeth than that film. While I have to concede that it looks amazing for a film shot in the 70s, the rest of it fucking gash and I went to bed extremely disappointed with the experience as a whole.

Some have said that it gets better the second time of watching, so maybe next time there isn’t a documentary about a girder rusting or what’s inside a ping-pong ball I may give it a second viewing. It’s got goodreviews on IMDB, all I can say is whoever reviewed it must have been off their tits when they watched it.

Woke up much later than planned on my day off, which put me on the back foot from the word go. Decided to do my last lot of laundry and settled down to do some work, but for some reason I couldn’t get into the swing of things and struggled to get anything done.

Then I received a procrastinator’s dream, a Skype message asking if I wanted to do something. Jason also had a day off work and wanted to know if I wanted to hit the curry house that is inside the Rio and with boxes for eating spicy goodness and not having to work ticked I agreed.

I ordered a lamb Kahari medium-to-spicy, some rice and a tandoori naan. The food was really nice, with just the right amount of spice and tons of flavour. Wasn’t overly impressed at the fact they charged me $12 for a bottle of Kingfisher beer or the fact my half of the meal came to something like $50, but it is not like I have been blowing my budget on lavish celebrations and meals while I’ve been here, and if you can’t enjoy a nice meal when you’ve been away from home for six weeks then what can you do?

Finished up with the meal and said goodbye to Jason who was working the next day before heading home to his family and because I wasn’t due to work it would be the last time we saw each other this trip. I’ve enjoyed working with Jason these past few weeks and with us working a lot of shifts together, both having a family back home and having shared similar experiences within our families we became good friends.

Jason headed off to the tournament area to say his goodbyes to the people he wouldn’t see on his final day of work and I headed down to the Strip to play some $1/$2 cash games. Jumped on the first free shuttle that arrive, which turned out to be the one that drops off outside Harrah’s.

Harrah’s isn’t one of the trendier places on the Strip so it doesn’t attract the younger crowd who are usually better at poker than the oldies. When I got there, there wasn’t a free table available so I was tempted to head elsewhere. Then the floorman said he would open a new table for the seven people on the waiting list, myself included, and that we should take a seat.

Within a few hands I picked up pocket queens and raised to $8 only to receive four callers and thinking I was setting fire to that $8. The flop fell Qs-7s-3d which is pretty awesome for my hand, obviously. It checked to me, I bet $26 and one guy called. The turn was a blank like the 2c or something and it checked to me. I bet $53 and this guy ums and ahs for about 45 seconds before calling. At this point I put him squarely on a flush draw and am praying for the river not to be a spade. The river was a spade, but the 3s giving me a full house and unless he had pocket threes I have the nuts.

He Hollywooded for a bit before taking a pissy $25 stab at the pot. I look at my stack, then at his and ask what the bet was. Then say “I’m all-in.” Fucker bit my hand off and I flipped over my queens that are now a full house. He triumphantly showed As-Ts for the expected flush and starts high-fiving and fist-bumping his mate at the side of him thinking he’d won. The pot got shipped to me and he was like WTF, then realised his flush was crushed.

Lost a pot that I shouldn’t have when I opened pocket jacks UTG and an old guy wearing a t-shirt with fishes printed on it and the text “The whole trout, and nothing but the trout, so help me cod” three-bet on the button. I called and the flop came down Ad-5d-8c. I checked and he checked. The turn was the Ts. I checked and he checked behind. The river was the 5h and I checked again. He bet $20 and I thought to myself “he wouldn’t have check an ace on that board twice” and made a loose call only to be shown As-Ac for a boat.

Played aces like a pussy against a tricky younger guy for a small pot, had nines lose to an old guy’s sixes who had squeezed all-in for $40. Then won a nice pot when I did the old raise pre, bet flop, check turn, bet blank river with pocket kings and an Italian guy looked me up light saying he thought we were splitting with ace-king. That last pot took my profit to $251 for the night and I left shortly after.

Headed back to the Extended Stay via the TGIs at the Gold Coast where I treated myself to a rather tasty mixed grill with my free money. If only I’d played some cash games sooner into the trip.