Home Away From Home

On my return from Australia I had planned a one night visit at the Commerce Casino in California. After arriving here and realizing how much I like live poker and how poorly I have been doing online, I decided to change my return flight to Boston and spend a little time in LA playing some poker.

I have been playing mostly 100-200, with a little 60-120 and 10-20 nl mixed in, when the 100 game is not going.

Heres a couple interesting hands, these hands are great because they could have NEVER taken place online!!!

100-200 limit holdem, the game is great with plenty of action. UTG raises, and gets called in 4 spots, including the small blind who is a Commerce regular ( I am not involved in this hand). Anyway the flop comes 8-10-J, the SB leads into the field, the preflop raiser raises and it gets called in a couple spots before the SB can reraise and everyone calls. Four or five players to the turn, which is a small unimportant card. The SB bets and is called by the preflop raiser and one of the weaker players in the game. The river pairs the ten, making a final boar of J-10-10-8-x. The SB bets out, the preflop raiser folds and the fishy player raises. The SB agonizes and hems and haws (basically whinning), shows there hand Q9, for the floped straight. Asks the fish if they want to chop, the fish doesnt say anything. Some more time/ whining goes on, before the SB asks if the fish wants to chop the pot (there is about 5k in this pot). Finally the fish says "fine you want to chop, lets chop." Immediatly the SB calls and drags the whole pot with no chopping !!! The floor is called and chaos breaks out. After some yelling and arguing, the floor rules "there is No Chopping." (Although chopping is not allowed by the floor, in California there is more chopping and giving back chips then anyplace I ever played. And it may not be allowed by the floor, but it is a very very very common practice) Mingha, I think this is one of the lowest moves I have actually ever seen in all my days playing live poker.

10-20 NL, again I am not involved in this hand. There is a player in the game who is very aggressive and is firing 3 street bluffs without a problem. He has lost his stack a couple times and rebought. Now several players limp in for 20, and when it gets to this guy in the BB he raises to 120, and is only called by this pretty clueless player in the game. The flop comes K67, the BB bets and the fish calls. The turn is a Q and the BB counts his total cash remaining (he has no more chips) and he has 1700. He bets 800 the other player whines (seems pretty common in live poker I guess) and says something allong the lines of "I know you dont have a King." After saying this, he calls. As soon as he calls the BB bets his remaining 900 dark, before the river car is dealt. The river is a 9, for a final board of KQ967. The fish instantly calls and proudly tables 89...everyone looks puzzled, and the overaggressive player mucks his hand, unable to beat the pair of nines. The fish later said he thought he made the straight...doh.

I will post a full Aussi "trip report" when I get back home and am able to upload all of my pictures to my desktop.