LA Madness

Yesterday morning Todd Webb and I left the -45 freezer of Winnipeg and flew down to play a little poker at Commerce Casino in LA. The plan, at least for me, is to stay here until the LA Classic finishes and the action subsides, which should carry me into March. Suprisingly, my excitement level was not high about coming down. Don't get me wrong I am happy I'm here to give it a shot and on the one hand, I am cautiously optimistic about the prospect of making money and somewhat pleased about getting away from the cold, but on the other hand I am a little sore about leaving those close to me for 6 weeks (Yes babe, that means you and Braeden especially).

Coming down I had a goal, a lofty goal. Grind it out in the 2-5 until I make $7,500. Grind it out in the 5-10 until I make $30,000 and stabilize in the 10-20 for the balance of the trip, hopefully to cash out 100k in 6 weeks. During my play I promised myself not to lose more than 3 buy-ins in any game, no matter how good the game. I also promised myself that I would get into a routine that involved exercise, eating healthy, and not playing too many marathon sessions. We'll see what happens...

So, in the last 24 hours I've had the pleasure of witnessing the skills of California's finest. The 10-20 game was really tight and quite tough. Some of the regulars were saying that the action has died down a little in the bigger games over the last 3 months (10-20 and higher), however, that its expected to be crazy here in February. I did not play in the 10-20 instead chose to play 5-10. I chose 5-10 over my scheduled 2-5 because the cap buy-ins were very small. In the 5-10 you can only buy 400, which is ridiculas, but it does protect the bad players. The game is very preflop orientated until you build your stack and overall it plays a lot smaller than Vegas. However, if you can get it up to a couple thousand though you can make some good money because the play is soooo bad and there is usually one fish with a big stack to go after.

The players of California either check call everything or implement pure rage agression there is little middle ground. Last night I couldn't hit and took several beats (including losing ak to kq thre times to short stack all-ins...damn punisher), but managed a small $500 win. This morning was disguisting and I lost $400...even steven overall, this will change.

To give a litte taste of the play let me give you two examples. In one hand last night five guys limped and Todd raised to $40. The table was deep all over. I folded in the blind as I saw the utg limper grabbing for chips. The limper reraised to $90, which was rather small so 5 went to the flop. Flop qj7 two spades. The limper bets $125 into the $450 pot. 2 called including Todd who had a small flush draw. The guy in the big blind then check raised all in for roughly $450. The initial better immediately declared all-in for about $1000, both Todd and the other guy end up folding as it sure looked like a qqq or jjj. As it turns out the guy who check raised had a3 off and the preflop aggressor had ak...LOL. Todd would have made a flush on the turn and was upset when he saw what forced him out of the pot.

This morning after losing three consecutive pots to bs, I found 1010 in the small blind. Six guys limped so I made it $60 and had only 1 caller. Flop was 1096 rainbow and I decided to check to the goon. He goes all in for about 4 times the size of the pot. I call and he tables 74 of diamonds, turn 8 of spades, river dud...sweet.

In summary, I have to say LA is exactly as I remembered it. It is fully of egomaniacs that think its more manly to bet then check and who would rather payoff a player than take an outside chance of being bluffed. Everyone has sunglasses and everyone has headphones. Everyone is a legend in their own mind and everyone has watched the travel channel one too many times. All I have to say is they can't escape for 6 weeks, eventually they are going to have to pay.

Going to play event #1 in about an hour. $300 buy-in with expectation of 1600 entries. I'm going to gamble and try to get a stack early or I'll venture back to the cash games.

I'll update in a couple days, hopefully with some positive results to post.

Peace...