TOM PLAYS SOME CARDS. . . FINALLY

I woke up Saturday morning thinking it wouldn’t be a bad time to drive to Tampa and play in their NL game. That game went live last summer and the fact I haven’t played in it is a testament to how much poker has fallen off my radar. I haven’t played the home tourney since December and the online game has been once every few months.

Around Noon I got in the car and drove out of the entrance of the neighborhood and then turned back. I just didn’t feel right. I’m rusty for sure, but that initial caution after a layoff is usually to my benefit. I’ve played so much poker over the years that the instincts are there and the nuances return as the game progresses. But with gas expensive and the Saturday crowds, I realized that I would be pressing to win back my gas money and I’d be up against guys with big stacks playing back at me at every turn.

According to the guys in the home game, Tampa is still wilder than Vegas. The maximum buy-in is $100 and it seems like nothing to these guys, especially since the casino had been making their dime on Sit N Go tourneys for $125, $250, $550, and $1050.

I can beat the game, but I can’t do it by showing up at 1:30 in the afternoon against the big stacks. I have to go and sit at a new table with equal chip distribution. That would give me hours to play my game rather than trying to catch up.

So I came home and fired up Full Tilt to see if anything was cooking and I found a PL Hold’em game. What luck. That’s what I played at Party Poker and then Poker Room before those places left the U.S. market. I played for a few hours and won enough to double my stake.

I logged on again this morning and it was brutal. Within 25 hands, I was busted out when my KK ran into AA, and AA was beat by KJ. Luckily I got away from AKs v AA. I played for 2 hours and won all the money back when I hit a set against a player who thought his middle pair was gold. It’s that same kind of weak play that had KJ beating me earlier.

Tonight I was playing three tables when Jim McManus sat down on one. Was this the real Jim McManus? I heard he played here, but why would he be playing a small time PL game. The first clue was that celebrity players hail from no country, unlike the rest of us peons. Second, on the table listing menu our table was now red, denoting McManus’ presence.

It’s nothing for Dude to run into guys like Andy Bloch online and he even put Barney Boatman to bed, but I never play with the big dogs and I loved the McManus book. So I tell McManus I liked the book. Crickets. No one else says anything to McManus. I don’t think they know who he is. An observer chimes in with something and McManus ignores him.

Mac lays lows for the first 10-20 hands. He then changes gears and starts raising and betting out when it’s checked to him. After about an hour I call his raise from the small blind with 88. The flop is babies and I check-raise his continuation bet and he lays it down. A braclet it isn’t, but an unexpected joy just the same. The poetic thing to do is to log on to Amazon and buy his book with his money. I’ll probably have to buy it used, so is the extent of my poker prowess these days.