A $10k Pot in the First Hour

No warmup.

Wheels on the ground in Austin at 6:05pm and I message Busi just after touching down and switching off airplane mode:

“Just landed.”
“Crap weather.”

The Uber driver tells me on the ride to the hotel that it was 85 degrees yesterday! Now it’s 40 and drizzling. Seems pretty unlucky, but hey, we’re here, en route to Round Rock where the happiest card room on the planet resides, 60 poker tables worth of action waiting for me.

I check into my hotel room on the 3rd floor, and find that it’s surprisingly frigid when I step inside. I locate the thermostat which indeed confirms a super brisk 50 degrees in here. Not exactly what comes to mind when thinking “room temp,” I crank it up to 73 and unpack toiletries, wash my face and open up Uber Eats. Chipotle, ever dependable—burrito bowl with chicken, medium salsa and all the other fixins. Should be here in 25-35mins.

But it’s been 10 minutes and the temp in the room hasn’t budged more than a single degree up to 51. I put my hand over the vent and it’s cold air. That’s not good. Call the front desk chick and let her know it’s not much warmer in here than outside… she says the engineer isn’t on property at this hour but she’ll come take a look. She does, and confirms that I am not insane: It’s not only freezing in this room but the heater is not providing the advertised results. Seems pretty unlucky, but hey, there are other rooms with working heat units.

She heads back to the front desk to prepare new keys for a second floor room. I repack toiletries, then meet her downstairs, then move into my new room. Also chilly, but this time, when I crank up the heat… You know that smell that emits from a working heater? This one has it. Heat is on the way.

What’s not on the way, however, is my Chipotle. It hasn’t even been picked up yet and we’re almost at the promised delivery time. Wtf? I lay on the bed, scroll twitter, and swap back to the Uber Eats app every 3 minutes to slowly see my food en route. Over an hour later, the food arrives. A new issue though: No plasticwear that I requested. Sigh. Seems pretty unlucky, but they serve breakfast at this hotel in the morning so surely there’s a fork to be found downstairs. Sure enough, utensils. The food is eaten, a new Uber is called, and we are en route to The Lodge.

9:31pm and Doug is still playing his 5/5/10NL game, which has become 5/10/20/sometimes 40/sometimes 80 which started at 4pm. Looks fun, and after chatting with him about all things business and life, I swap him out and take his seat with my $3500. I might be a little on the shorter side when the multiple straddles get put on, but it’s a workable stack in the 3-blind game.

A hand develops almost immediately.

$5/$10/$20
The cutoff opens for $80, and I’m on the button looking down at pocket queens. An obvious 3b here, I reraise to $250. Small blind folds and the big blind thinks that’s still not enough money. He 4bet’s to $800 and action folds back to me. I have about $3000 total in my stack at this point having raise-folded a couple of prior hands. I can flat since my 5b bluffing range won’t be all that big, while looking to navigate through some safe flops and turns. That doesn’t seem great to do with Queens though, since they benefit from protection and face shitty flops more often than Aces. That hand seems like a better flat call in position. This one seems like a jam.

I do, and I hear, “At least I’ll make the vlog if I lose.” Followed by a snap call.

$5/$10/$20/$40
The cutoff raises to $125, and I flat behind him with AdQs which seems like a reasonable option, mixing in 3b’s sometimes too. We face the undesired squeeze from the SB who makes it $350 to go, and Scotland cold calls in the $40 straddle spot. The initial raiser surprisingly folds, and closing the action with a good ace and a fair price I make the call.

($1205) 3 ways to QdJh5h. The SB continues with a bet of $450, Scotland calls and I make the obvious call with top pair. We lose to the really good hands but beat everything else.

($2555) 3 ways to the 3s on the turn. A total brick which doesn’t change the above statement. But this time the SB checks, and Scotland checks too. Now I feel way better about that statement and can assume we’re always good, barring some weird trap that basically nobody would perform multiway on a wet board. I bet $1200. The SB thinks for a brief moment before folding his underpair/AK type holding. Scotland thinks for a much less brief moment, but then slides out a call. All I can think is to fade hearts, a 9 or an A for the obvious draws.

($4955) Heads up to the Jd on the river.

It’s not one of those cards. That’s cool, this pot is big. But it gets potentially much, much bigger when Scotland moves all in on this river for about $3800 effective. What is this? All draws missed and you can’t have a J plus flush draw, because the Jh is on board. I unblock all the draws with the AdQs. I should have the strongest hands in this line, not you.

I call.

A few hours go by. People call it a night, because they’ll be back for the tournaments and cash games happening across the next couple of weeks at The Lodge. Despite playing heads-up with a nice guy from Seattle for about an hour, I couldn’t make any progress out of the depths of Stuckland, TX and this sizable poker game broke leaving me $4870 in the red. Seems pretty unlucky. I request a Lyft back to the hotel. Night one of trip two at The Lodge is a wrap and I’m pretty tired from the day of travel and poker.

When you get back home after a poker session, your brain is too wound up to just hop in bed and shutdown. The required decompression time must be adhered to. On this occasion, as it is on so many others, the twitter feed provides a relentless stream of activity in the world. But this morning, at 5am, there are the reports that Russia has begun an assault on its neighbor Ukraine, complete with on-the-ground video capturing cruise missiles, explosions, and a war unfolding in real time. And I’m wishing for anybody who is there to have anywhere near the amount of luck that I’ve had every day of my life, to never experience anything such as that, and for them to be ok.