The Bat Cave

On the last day of July, I went hiking with ChowMein. This is something that has been bubbling for a while now. I think I first started crossing paths with Chow 7-8 years ago, noticing him and his crew at the Pendleton Round Up and in the Muckleshoot series. We started becoming friendly over the last couple years and for a while now we’ve talked about doing something outside of poker, particularly when we bumped into each other on a hike at Rattlesnake Ledge last year and realized we had another mutual interest. But that was roughly a year ago and we still hadn’t made anything happen. When I saw ChowMein in the 20/40 O8 game two Saturdays ago, we said the same shit we always say except this time I made a point to let him know we are really going to plan something.

We agreed to do a hike on Wednesday morning and after getting five questionable hours of sleep, my alarm went off at 5 AM and I met him around 8 AM at the Otter and Big Creek Falls trailhead in North Bend. It wasn’t the most challenging trail I’ve done, but after doing 8+ strenuous miles on Sunday, my calves were still burning and I was happy to take a more relaxing hike. Even so, Apple Health says I walked 11 miles and took over 24,000 steps on Wednesday, so it’s not like we didn’t get a workout in. Also, it was nice to get to know Chow on a more personal level and I’m pretty excited to develop a friendship with someone that likes to travel for poker and can help me elevate my own game.

My dogs went with us and we took a lot of pics and I thought a lot of them came out pretty good, so here are some of the best ones:

I think we spent about 4-5 hours on the trail and after a two hour drive home, it was nearly 4 PM. My plan was to play PLO when the game started at 6 PM, but I was lacking good sleep and I’d been up since 5 AM, so I knew it was questionable whether I should be playing at all. PLO has been lucrative for me over the past month and I didn’t want to miss a good game, so I was there for the start of it, but I knew I was walking on the edge. I figured if things went well, I would be fine, but I was conscious of the fact that I might not be in the mental condition to grind out a grueling session.

The lineup was a bad start. The game was 8-handed and featured the likes of Bulletproof, Mr. Freeze, and Charlie Hustle. One of the Huey, Duey, and Louie triplets was making a rare appearance and there were a couple other non-regulars that weren’t good action as well. There were two players in the game that I was excited about.

I started with $700 and had another $700 in my pocket for topping off. I was about 40 minutes into the session with maybe $650 in front of me when this hand came up:

I made a rather loose open to $15 with QJT5 triple suited (three spades) from the hijack, the button called, and Bulletproof defended his big blind. This is a hand I should definitely be folding. I have an extremely loose player on the button and I have a three card hand. When my hand is triple suited, the fact that I have a useless dangler is magnified. It just makes no sense to get involved with a handicap when I know I won’t even have position in the hand like 80% of the time.

The flop is pretty good for me: T53 with two hearts. I have top two pair and some interesting backdoor potential on a board that shouldn’t flop many sets or quality straight draws. So when I bet $30, the button folds, and Bulletproof check-raises me to $80, I think my hand is in pretty good shape. Considering I am still over $500 deep though, my hand plays less well if he’s willing to get stacks in here, so I just call and I’m planning to fold if the flush comes in and he bets, but otherwise mostly continue.

The turn is an offsuit king and he bets the pot, which I believe was $205. I added straight outs in addition to my two pair, so I’m definitely not folding now. After calling $205, I’d have just over $300 behind and, in the moment, I thought that if I jammed now, I could avoid making difficult river decisions and it seemed like my hand should still be good most of the time. Of course, he could have flush draws that now made kings up, so that’s something to consider. Also, if I just call on the turn, I can save myself $300+ when the river brings the flush and it’s not like my hand is in a commanding position here. I think calling and re-evaluating on the river is the best line, but unfortunately I stuffed it and Bulletproof put me all in and showed me a king high flush draw… that turned a set of kings. My two pair was dead, but I had six outs to the nut straight. The river was the queen of hearts and BP won with a flush.

I was stuck $700 already and as I pondered my future for a few hands, I realized that I didn’t love the lineup and I wasn’t in prime poker playing condition, so I called it a night… and a month. I played a hand I should have folded and got myself stacked. Then I jammed the turn and got it in extremely bad, when I could have called and folded when the flush came on the river, saving myself $300+ and giving myself a chance to salvage my session.

Ah well. At least I left instead of possibly compounding my problems. Not the way I wanted to end my month though.

July Poker Highlights

*Playing the WSOP Main Event for the second time
*Rivering the nuts and getting paid off by Steve Gee in the Main for 50% stack increase early in the Main
*+$1392 in 8/16 and +$3789 in PLO in my first two sessions back from Vegas
*Getting a 15/30 Mix game off the ground
*Winning my first MTT on America’s Cardroom
*Winning $1400 in less than 3 hours of 5/10 6-max on ACR
*Increasing my ACR bankroll by like 600%
*Randomly sitting in Pai Gow because Radio Mike was playing and making a Royal Flush for a $150 bonus (lifetime winner!)

July Poker Lowlights

*Busting the Main Event
*Global Poker shutting down Washington state players
*Getting my face smashed for -$1837 in the 20/40 O8 at Muck
*Punting $700 on the last day of the month

Overall, I ended up winning about $5500 last month, basically all of it from playing PLO and that’s pretty cool because I was souring on that game leading up to the World Series and I feel my interest level being reinvigorated.

On Deck in August

*traveling to the Oregon Sand Dunes for a weekend getaway
*seeing Nas in concert for the first time at the ShoWare Center in Kent
*watching Angels top prospect Jo Adell play at Cheney against the Tacoma Rainiers
*traveling to L.A. for the $2100 H.O.R.S.E. tournament at The Bike
*possibly going to Universal Studios so Dina can check out the Wizarding World of Harry Potter and we can go on the new Jurassic World ride