The road to the Bash...paved with Atlantic City (Dawn)
“What? No poker at the Bash!?” I was agog and aghast.
But before I convulsed into full 24 hours without poker meltdown, F-train said that there was going to be a poker blogger tournament in Malvern on Friday and then, since we were already leaving early for the Bash…well, we might as well stopover in Atlantic City for the night.
Yep. Might as well. I pitched the idea to Karol.
I think she said something like “you had me at Atlantic.”
Oh yeah!
Three days of poker and poker bloggers!
I couldn’t wait till Thursday.
I was sending F-train “road trip woooo!” IMs all week.
Like this: dawnsummers: ROAD TRIP!! WOOOOO…
He wasn’t that excited though.
Like this: F-train: Stop imming me, you crazy person. It’s only Monday.
But now, it was Thursday.
Sure, my mom was sitting shotgun and I had a trunk full of bottled water and salmon and I was sitting still in Midtown traffic caused by the police blockades for the UN session that Karol and Alceste assured me was over on Wednesday.
But my roadtrip waits for no man. I would be at a poker table my midnight if I had to walk.
I called Karol.
“You have to meet me down here. Get in a cab. And ixnay on Atlantic Citynay in front of my momnay.”
Fifteen minutes later, Karol and her knapsack were in the backseat. F-train was next.
How to pick him up without blowing my whole “Atlantic City? No way, mom. Karol and F-train and I are going to a charity ball Saturday night…we just want to get there a few days early” alibi.
I used my nascent telepathic abilities on him as he got in the car.
“We are not going to Atlantic City…We are not going to Atlantic City…We are not going to Atlantic City.”
All was well, I was within a mile of dropping off my mom and her groceries free and clear and then…
“What are we listening to Dawn?”
“Clay Aiken’s new album…it’s kind of disappointing, you’ll hear it on the drive down.”
“You know Dawn, we don’t need you to go to Atlantic City…we just need your car.”
D’oh.
Karol pinched him.
“Yeah, the trip to Atlantic City that we’ll be taking in three weeks…cause we’re definitely not going this weekend.”
Crisis averted.
We were finally on the way to AC.
I don't remember much about the drive down, but we got to the Borgata at 11.
"Ok, let's hit the food court and then say hi," F-train suggested.
"Uhhh...no. Let's say hi and then go eat," said the redheaded girl that didn't want anything coming between her and the Resorts poker room.
I introduced Karol to Falstaff, who gave her a big hug.
"Yeah, this is my worse half...or worse one-third at best."
"I'm standing right here, you know. He can see for himself that I am the better one."
Then she met Carter, StB, Boy Genius and the Rooster.
Well, nice meeting you guys...I'm going to Resorts now! Well, she didn't say that...but she was thinking it.
After having my bankroll murdered there the last time, I told Karol I wouldn’t play there unless she bankrolled me.
And Karol had no intention of bankrolling me.
We decided to check-in to our hotel room at the Hilton (a process which always takes forty-fifty minutes for some crazy reason).
I didn't want to go to Resorts, so while she checked in, I went to the poker room.
I left Karol spelling out F-train's name for the front desk clerk, so that he could pick up his key when he got back from Borgata.
"T-r-a-i-n."
"Wait...P?"
"No...T...as in Tom."
Yeah, I'll have plenty of time to scour the poker room.
Unfortunately, the game consisted of four guys sitting around a single sad table.
Well, I guess Resorts it is.
We went straight to the back of the casino floor.
“Hey, do you have any one-two No limit seats?”
“Sure. Joe. These girls want 2-4.”
Uh…no dude.
“Actually, we want one-two…No Limit.”
“Oh…um…sorry…we don’t have a game. We had a couple of people here earlier, but they didn’t want to stay and wait. Want to put your names on the list?”
Sure.
We walked out to the boardwalk and settled on the nearest poker room…Taj.
“Might as well, I don’t have bad associations with that room yet.” I said.
Finally. Poker.
I suggested we play the fifty dollar tournament, but Karol said no. And instead, I sat at the lamest no limit game I’d been party to in a while.
Our table was fairly tight and we were only eight handed.
“Hey, nice shirt,” Karol said to the young guy to my left wearing shades.
He had on a Reagan T-shirt and they started talking about how hard it is being young and conservative.
Yah. As the black woman at the table, I cry salty salty tears for you both.
I was fairly card dead, but Karol had two interesting hands.
She raises to $12 and gets called by five people. The flop comes J 8 3.
She bets fifty and is called by one young kid, whose claim to fame had been cracking aces and queens in the first two hands we watched at the table. (With hands like K2 and 49off)
The turn is a queen, Karol bets and the kid raises, Karol calls.
The river is another eight and Karol moves all-in and the kid says “well..I guess I gotta call.”
He does and turns over pocket aces.
Karol turns over pocket jacks.
The kid throws his arms in the air.
“YES!”
“I have a boat,” Karol clarifies.
“FUCK.”
A few hands later, she and persecuted conservative boy get involved in a hand.
There is a $10 pre-flop raise and when the flop comes J 6 4, the guy bets, Karol raises and the guy goes all-in. Karol inexplicably folds.
“Man, I’ll give you guys ten bucks to know what y’all had there,” says the guy who was soon to take all my money.
Me too, guy who was soon to take all my money.
I was fairly card dead and ended up losing all my money on Top Two vs. a set and TPTK.
Oh well, at least I have a bad association with the Taj room now.
Next up, the Boat Show.
The Boat Show wasn’t much better. There were two girls with maybe eighty dollars between them, a guy with about two hundred, a curmudgeon, and me and Karol.
But one by one, the table became the IHO dream.
First, a showboating man with $200 sat down to my left.
He immediately raised to $22.
Four callers and when the flop came 6 8 2, he moved all-in.
He was called by pocket tens and showed AQ.
When the Q came on the river and he scooped the pot, he said happily “I came here to gamble boys!”
“I don’t gamble, I invest in cards,” grumbled the curmudgeon.
“I’d rather be lucky than good,” he replied.
“Me too,” I said “I’d rather you be lucky than good too.”
Karol glared at me.
He kept playing fairly recklessly all night and to make up for my faux pas, I massaged his ego a little.
“Wow. You’re really good. I would never have called a raise with 92. But I guess you can’t just wait for aces.”
“That’s right,” he said beaming.
“How long have you been playing?” I asked.
“Three years.”
“Cool…I just started in January…”
30 minutes later, I stacked him when he moved all-in against my higher pocket pair.
Ahh…nothing like the smell of stacking chips in the wee morning.
And boy did Karol stink of it.
In addition, to the Chip Reese to my left, we also got a drunken guy to the game. A drunken guy with an endless supply of hundreds.
Karol raised with pocket aces, he called.
“Sure, why not,” he’d say tossing in his calling chips.
She moved all-in, he called. He then turned over 3c 7c, for no pair, no draw.
“Sure, why not?”
He sure why notted her to $600 in profit.
After she took his forth hundred dollar bill, the whole table eyed her with hate and anger.
How bout you leave some for the rest of us, dammit.
In the end, I ended up taking his last buy-in with a brutal suck-out on the river. He left, and the table broke.
We trudged back to Resorts, where we parked and drove back to the Hilton. It was 6 a.m. and the sun had already started to rise.
Ah...haven't seen AC bathed in dawn for a while...good times, good times.
We went back to the room and got ready for bed.
As I went to turn out the light, the phone rang.
"Oh...god...we're being watched...the Gambler's Anonymous people sure are quick."
But no. It was the front desk.
"We have a Mr. F-train here...can we give him a key?"
Sure.
Of course, the knocking eight minutes later would suggest that the Hilton front desk clerk on duty at 6 a.m. was as awesome as her counterpart eight hours earlier.
Karol pretended she didn't hear the knocking, so I got up to answer the door.
"Sorry...I didn't think you guys would be in bed already...I guess I'm the crackhead
tonight."
Hmmm...I guess I should throw in a yawn or two here...
"Yeah (yawn) been sleeping for...um...hours (yawn). I can't believe you woke us up (yawn yawn) you owe me big time for this."
Yawn.
"Hey, do you mind if Carter crashes on the floor."
"I don't care."
(Although, if I'd known, I wouldn't get any credit in his post, I have protested.)
I woke up again around 9 to see, Carter, fully clothed, lying on the carpet and F-train on the cot bed.
Deciding that I couldn't make it down to the poker room without stepping on one or both of them, I went back to sleep.
Long day of drinking tomorrow...I'd better rest up.
I yawned, turned away from the windows and fell asleep. Visions of Malvern dancing in my head.
But before I convulsed into full 24 hours without poker meltdown, F-train said that there was going to be a poker blogger tournament in Malvern on Friday and then, since we were already leaving early for the Bash…well, we might as well stopover in Atlantic City for the night.
Yep. Might as well. I pitched the idea to Karol.
I think she said something like “you had me at Atlantic.”
Oh yeah!
Three days of poker and poker bloggers!
I couldn’t wait till Thursday.
I was sending F-train “road trip woooo!” IMs all week.
Like this: dawnsummers: ROAD TRIP!! WOOOOO…
He wasn’t that excited though.
Like this: F-train: Stop imming me, you crazy person. It’s only Monday.
But now, it was Thursday.
Sure, my mom was sitting shotgun and I had a trunk full of bottled water and salmon and I was sitting still in Midtown traffic caused by the police blockades for the UN session that Karol and Alceste assured me was over on Wednesday.
But my roadtrip waits for no man. I would be at a poker table my midnight if I had to walk.
I called Karol.
“You have to meet me down here. Get in a cab. And ixnay on Atlantic Citynay in front of my momnay.”
Fifteen minutes later, Karol and her knapsack were in the backseat. F-train was next.
How to pick him up without blowing my whole “Atlantic City? No way, mom. Karol and F-train and I are going to a charity ball Saturday night…we just want to get there a few days early” alibi.
I used my nascent telepathic abilities on him as he got in the car.
“We are not going to Atlantic City…We are not going to Atlantic City…We are not going to Atlantic City.”
All was well, I was within a mile of dropping off my mom and her groceries free and clear and then…
“What are we listening to Dawn?”
“Clay Aiken’s new album…it’s kind of disappointing, you’ll hear it on the drive down.”
“You know Dawn, we don’t need you to go to Atlantic City…we just need your car.”
D’oh.
Karol pinched him.
“Yeah, the trip to Atlantic City that we’ll be taking in three weeks…cause we’re definitely not going this weekend.”
Crisis averted.
We were finally on the way to AC.
I don't remember much about the drive down, but we got to the Borgata at 11.
"Ok, let's hit the food court and then say hi," F-train suggested.
"Uhhh...no. Let's say hi and then go eat," said the redheaded girl that didn't want anything coming between her and the Resorts poker room.
I introduced Karol to Falstaff, who gave her a big hug.
"Yeah, this is my worse half...or worse one-third at best."
"I'm standing right here, you know. He can see for himself that I am the better one."
Then she met Carter, StB, Boy Genius and the Rooster.
Well, nice meeting you guys...I'm going to Resorts now! Well, she didn't say that...but she was thinking it.
After having my bankroll murdered there the last time, I told Karol I wouldn’t play there unless she bankrolled me.
And Karol had no intention of bankrolling me.
We decided to check-in to our hotel room at the Hilton (a process which always takes forty-fifty minutes for some crazy reason).
I didn't want to go to Resorts, so while she checked in, I went to the poker room.
I left Karol spelling out F-train's name for the front desk clerk, so that he could pick up his key when he got back from Borgata.
"T-r-a-i-n."
"Wait...P?"
"No...T...as in Tom."
Yeah, I'll have plenty of time to scour the poker room.
Unfortunately, the game consisted of four guys sitting around a single sad table.
Well, I guess Resorts it is.
We went straight to the back of the casino floor.
“Hey, do you have any one-two No limit seats?”
“Sure. Joe. These girls want 2-4.”
Uh…no dude.
“Actually, we want one-two…No Limit.”
“Oh…um…sorry…we don’t have a game. We had a couple of people here earlier, but they didn’t want to stay and wait. Want to put your names on the list?”
Sure.
We walked out to the boardwalk and settled on the nearest poker room…Taj.
“Might as well, I don’t have bad associations with that room yet.” I said.
Finally. Poker.
I suggested we play the fifty dollar tournament, but Karol said no. And instead, I sat at the lamest no limit game I’d been party to in a while.
Our table was fairly tight and we were only eight handed.
“Hey, nice shirt,” Karol said to the young guy to my left wearing shades.
He had on a Reagan T-shirt and they started talking about how hard it is being young and conservative.
Yah. As the black woman at the table, I cry salty salty tears for you both.
I was fairly card dead, but Karol had two interesting hands.
She raises to $12 and gets called by five people. The flop comes J 8 3.
She bets fifty and is called by one young kid, whose claim to fame had been cracking aces and queens in the first two hands we watched at the table. (With hands like K2 and 49off)
The turn is a queen, Karol bets and the kid raises, Karol calls.
The river is another eight and Karol moves all-in and the kid says “well..I guess I gotta call.”
He does and turns over pocket aces.
Karol turns over pocket jacks.
The kid throws his arms in the air.
“YES!”
“I have a boat,” Karol clarifies.
“FUCK.”
A few hands later, she and persecuted conservative boy get involved in a hand.
There is a $10 pre-flop raise and when the flop comes J 6 4, the guy bets, Karol raises and the guy goes all-in. Karol inexplicably folds.
“Man, I’ll give you guys ten bucks to know what y’all had there,” says the guy who was soon to take all my money.
Me too, guy who was soon to take all my money.
I was fairly card dead and ended up losing all my money on Top Two vs. a set and TPTK.
Oh well, at least I have a bad association with the Taj room now.
Next up, the Boat Show.
The Boat Show wasn’t much better. There were two girls with maybe eighty dollars between them, a guy with about two hundred, a curmudgeon, and me and Karol.
But one by one, the table became the IHO dream.
First, a showboating man with $200 sat down to my left.
He immediately raised to $22.
Four callers and when the flop came 6 8 2, he moved all-in.
He was called by pocket tens and showed AQ.
When the Q came on the river and he scooped the pot, he said happily “I came here to gamble boys!”
“I don’t gamble, I invest in cards,” grumbled the curmudgeon.
“I’d rather be lucky than good,” he replied.
“Me too,” I said “I’d rather you be lucky than good too.”
Karol glared at me.
He kept playing fairly recklessly all night and to make up for my faux pas, I massaged his ego a little.
“Wow. You’re really good. I would never have called a raise with 92. But I guess you can’t just wait for aces.”
“That’s right,” he said beaming.
“How long have you been playing?” I asked.
“Three years.”
“Cool…I just started in January…”
30 minutes later, I stacked him when he moved all-in against my higher pocket pair.
Ahh…nothing like the smell of stacking chips in the wee morning.
And boy did Karol stink of it.
In addition, to the Chip Reese to my left, we also got a drunken guy to the game. A drunken guy with an endless supply of hundreds.
Karol raised with pocket aces, he called.
“Sure, why not,” he’d say tossing in his calling chips.
She moved all-in, he called. He then turned over 3c 7c, for no pair, no draw.
“Sure, why not?”
He sure why notted her to $600 in profit.
After she took his forth hundred dollar bill, the whole table eyed her with hate and anger.
How bout you leave some for the rest of us, dammit.
In the end, I ended up taking his last buy-in with a brutal suck-out on the river. He left, and the table broke.
We trudged back to Resorts, where we parked and drove back to the Hilton. It was 6 a.m. and the sun had already started to rise.
Ah...haven't seen AC bathed in dawn for a while...good times, good times.
We went back to the room and got ready for bed.
As I went to turn out the light, the phone rang.
"Oh...god...we're being watched...the Gambler's Anonymous people sure are quick."
But no. It was the front desk.
"We have a Mr. F-train here...can we give him a key?"
Sure.
Of course, the knocking eight minutes later would suggest that the Hilton front desk clerk on duty at 6 a.m. was as awesome as her counterpart eight hours earlier.
Karol pretended she didn't hear the knocking, so I got up to answer the door.
"Sorry...I didn't think you guys would be in bed already...I guess I'm the crackhead
tonight."
Hmmm...I guess I should throw in a yawn or two here...
"Yeah (yawn) been sleeping for...um...hours (yawn). I can't believe you woke us up (yawn yawn) you owe me big time for this."
Yawn.
"Hey, do you mind if Carter crashes on the floor."
"I don't care."
(Although, if I'd known, I wouldn't get any credit in his post, I have protested.)
I woke up again around 9 to see, Carter, fully clothed, lying on the carpet and F-train on the cot bed.
Deciding that I couldn't make it down to the poker room without stepping on one or both of them, I went back to sleep.
Long day of drinking tomorrow...I'd better rest up.
I yawned, turned away from the windows and fell asleep. Visions of Malvern dancing in my head.
posted by Dawn Summers at 11:07 PM
5 Comments:
He does and turns over pocket aces.
Karol turns over pocket jacks.
The kid throws his arms in the air.
“YES!”
“I have a boat,” Karol clarifies.
“FUCK.”
That's comedy gold, right there! Beautiful! HAHAHA!
I suspect, now that I've met her, that Karol said the "I have a boat" line completely deadpan too.
This post has been removed by a blog administrator.
I'm agog and aghast at how long this write-up is taking you. You usually have 3 pages up by the same night. Oh boohoo, poor baby has bronchitis. Suck it up and give the people what they want.
Take your time Dawn spinning out the details in all their glory, I for one enjoy your long posts.
Very fun to read, especially when you skewer FTrain.
You may have a bit of a poker addiction however.
Soxlover just wants favorable coverage in your later posts.
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