Forget sparks, gimme jolt and cracker jacks at 2am after 6 hrs of poker.

I played 2 $400 tournaments waiting for a No Limit seat to open.

One I got busted early, the other, we got down to 5 people. There's 12,000 total on the table. Blinds are 200 - 400. I get AQs 1 off the button. There was 1 caller, so the pot is 1000, so to make a correct move I push all-in for 2200. The button takes like 2 minutes and finally calls. He flips over AJo.

Flop is 939, turn is a J, and the river a deuce, effectively moving me from 2nd to out.

That sucks, since afer the flop there was no flush possible and there were only 3 cards to save his ass.

Oh well, I played 1-3 and caught a boat on my second hand, making $35 then I got called for the big no limit game.

I bought no limit chips (they are different colors so that players cannot take NL chips off the table during play. The chips are only for NL play so it works well, since all other games you can buy chips mid hand. (This is a weird quirk of the charity games, as no casino will ever allow you to add to your stack during a hand.) We play with orange $5 chips, teal $25 chips and the standard white $1 chips.

Blinds are $2 / $4 and the time fee is $7 / half hour. It's $1 more than Trumps or Harrahs in Indiana, but with the big blind being $1 less, you probably actually save a little money. Plus as a feel good benefit, the whole hourly rake goes to charity (this time it was the local Lions club,) instead of finding it's way to Harrah's or The Donald's pockets.

An hour and $14 in timed rake fees, I was doing awesome, up like $325, My pocket 9's hit a set and went all in vs QQ on a 9 high flop. Later I stole some pots representing big hands when people played to passive, things were moving along fine, then it happened.

A monster hand gets beat.

I get QQ, there's a $15 raise, and on my action I make it $45 to go.

1 caller, flop is like 9 high, we get all the money in the middle and he turns over KK.

Rough beat (only mentally, since I was losing the whole hand), however he only had like $187 so while he dented my stack, he didn't bust me since I had him covered.

I've had 7 winning sessions in a row, making $14 my worst night and $340ish the best. Mathmatics says that runs of bad luck happen just like runs of good luck. I battled back and ended the night $63 down. Not too bad considering I lost $80 playing tournaments with horrible struction out of boredom. And got beat with the best hand both times. And I paid $28 in time fees.

So I really only lost $35 on the poker tables, which is really 1 small sized hand on the No Limit table. At the worst it's cheap enterainment for a Sunday night

And that $28 is probably going to help people thanks to the Addison Lions Club.

All and all, it was an enjoyable losing session. Which is the best kind. I've got 2 tournments to prepare for this week. Both for a seat in the WSOP. One monday and one sunday.

So now I'm going to rest, replay some hands in my mind. A little Aqua Teen Hunger Force and Jazz music (Rounders soundtrack is excellent for chillout) on the ipod and some sleep is what I need.

Peace out everyone.


--Chris Falco


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