Diary If a Vegas Grinder - Day Nine: In Recovery
It was good to get a couple of winning sessions under my belt after the past few days. Only $45 and $80, but that will do. Back into profit, albeit at a pathetic +$68 for the trip.
I didn't feel that I had played that much today, perhaps because I split the day into two sessions, coming back to the apartment in between. But it still added up to seven hours.
Clearly my mental stamina is improving and long sessions aren't as exhausting for me now as they were when I first arrived.
I had a late breakfast with Greg Hawes, who was preparing for day two of the $1500 WSOP event 45. Eventually he busted in 81st, for a nice $5,000 payout. Of course, poker tournaments are the only tournaments where you are sick as a dog to be walking away with $5k prize money.
I played ultra conservative today, but early on I managed to extract a full double up from just an unimproved QQ.
Later in the day I had the opportunity to play AA in almost precisely the same way, but I was slightly fuller stacked and I didn't fancy ending the day losing to a bad beat. So I shoved the turn (a pot sized bet) rather than putting in 70% of my stack on the turn and the rest on the river.
I also extracted maximum value with TT, getting called by a worse hand despite a king coming on the turn. Not a large pot, but these are the hands that separate winners from losers. Everyone knows how to play a flopped set (this of course is not true, but you get my drift).
The rest of the day was mundane. As I said, tight play, winning smaller pots, building up my stack very slowly.
I had idly thought of heading to Boulder Station tonight – it's only a quarter of a mile away. But it seems to have got lateish wiithout me noticing.
The hopelessness of the Chevrolet Spark never ceases to amaze. I had to fill up the car (total capacity the grand total of nine gallons) and, apart from the fact that I still can't cope mentally with a fill-up costing $25, it struck me that I had only driven 13 round trips (say, 195 miles) and the insane TomTom advised 15 mile journey on various interstates at 75mph rather than a six mile journey at 35mph. That was still just 210 miles for eight gallons of fuel – an absolutely abysmal consumption rate for a 1.3L car that drives with all the energy of a 1.0L car.
Still, I guess that's automatics for you.
This afternoon I took a short-cut via Twain, a "rat run" that has a 25mh speed limit for several miles of empty road. It also has two speed cop cars waiting for the unwary to fall foul of this restriction. Being a Londoner, where a speed of 25mph is a vague aspiration rather than a realistic ambition, I had no difficulty in keeping to the imposed limit. But it did make for rather a boring journey.
Because when I leave the apartment block I have to turn right onto Boulder Highway, the route to Harrah's is different from the route back – the latter being rather more interesting and varied.
I didn't feel that I had played that much today, perhaps because I split the day into two sessions, coming back to the apartment in between. But it still added up to seven hours.
Clearly my mental stamina is improving and long sessions aren't as exhausting for me now as they were when I first arrived.
I had a late breakfast with Greg Hawes, who was preparing for day two of the $1500 WSOP event 45. Eventually he busted in 81st, for a nice $5,000 payout. Of course, poker tournaments are the only tournaments where you are sick as a dog to be walking away with $5k prize money.
I played ultra conservative today, but early on I managed to extract a full double up from just an unimproved QQ.
Later in the day I had the opportunity to play AA in almost precisely the same way, but I was slightly fuller stacked and I didn't fancy ending the day losing to a bad beat. So I shoved the turn (a pot sized bet) rather than putting in 70% of my stack on the turn and the rest on the river.
I also extracted maximum value with TT, getting called by a worse hand despite a king coming on the turn. Not a large pot, but these are the hands that separate winners from losers. Everyone knows how to play a flopped set (this of course is not true, but you get my drift).
The rest of the day was mundane. As I said, tight play, winning smaller pots, building up my stack very slowly.
I had idly thought of heading to Boulder Station tonight – it's only a quarter of a mile away. But it seems to have got lateish wiithout me noticing.
The hopelessness of the Chevrolet Spark never ceases to amaze. I had to fill up the car (total capacity the grand total of nine gallons) and, apart from the fact that I still can't cope mentally with a fill-up costing $25, it struck me that I had only driven 13 round trips (say, 195 miles) and the insane TomTom advised 15 mile journey on various interstates at 75mph rather than a six mile journey at 35mph. That was still just 210 miles for eight gallons of fuel – an absolutely abysmal consumption rate for a 1.3L car that drives with all the energy of a 1.0L car.
Still, I guess that's automatics for you.
This afternoon I took a short-cut via Twain, a "rat run" that has a 25mh speed limit for several miles of empty road. It also has two speed cop cars waiting for the unwary to fall foul of this restriction. Being a Londoner, where a speed of 25mph is a vague aspiration rather than a realistic ambition, I had no difficulty in keeping to the imposed limit. But it did make for rather a boring journey.
Because when I leave the apartment block I have to turn right onto Boulder Highway, the route to Harrah's is different from the route back – the latter being rather more interesting and varied.