Chris Halverson’s Blog

The stars were alinged on Friday night for me to hit the casino. First off, my son was going to play paitball and my dad had volunteered to pick him up. In addition to that, my wife had a lot of homework to finish up. Where does that leave me? Well, there’s the traditional Friday crazyness at Party, but there’s also the casino. The only thing I wasn’t looking forward to was the wait for a seat. I gritted my teeth and made my way down there after dropping my son off at paintball. Minneapolis rush hour isn’t anything like LA, but it still took me 45 minutes to get there. I sauntered in at 6:30 and hoped that by getting there early I would be able to get seated more quickly. Even if I had to wait a while it wouldn’t be such a big deal since it was early. Needless to say that I got a seat in 15 minutes. The other deciding factor in this was that I decided to play 3/6 instead of 2/4. The line for 3/6 is much shorter. The lines were pretty small all night at every level, most likely due to the nice weather we’ve been having. A lot of people in MN have cabins and go there on the weekends, I’m going to have to remember that and maybe make more regular trips down there during the summer.

I get called and buy in for a rack of whites (well, at Canterbury they are blue), wait 2 hands until my BB and then am dealt the Hilton sisters. Wow! I raise it and they hold up. I’m up a on my first hand. Nice! Of course, that was it for about 30 minutes when I look up and see a couple of kids from my son’s high school wrestling team walking by. They saw me and came over to say hi and to sweat me for a bit while they were waiting for a table. Of course, by this time I’m down to $50 or so and they’re enjoying that About two hands after they show up I’m dealt the queens again in EP and start raising. Five callers follow me in. Flop is nothing scary for me (unless somebody made a set) and lead off betting. Everybody follows me to the river where I bet and MP raises. One LP calls and I make it three to go. Everybody folds! The pot was huge and nobody called it down. I pulled down $70 or so and my son’s friends loved it. The people who were out of the hand couldn’t believe that the LP raiser didn’t at least call my raise with that much in the pot. I couldn’t either. It does show that strong betting can win.

My son’s friends got called and about a half hour later one of them came back to my table. I hear a “Mr. Halverson, look!” I look and he’s got a stack of $20’s. He turned a $20 buyin at 2/4, got run over by the cards and turned it into over $100. Nice.

I was a little nervous at first sitting at 3/6, just from the difference in total money in play. It’s not that much different dollar wise, but it is 50% more percent wise. Once I got over the fact that capping a round will cost me almost $25 I was OK. They’re just chips after all. From what I had heard, the play wasn’t much different than 2/4, but it was “better” enough that total suck outs weren’t as common. I found this to be more or less true. Yes, we still had the total newbies who would try to raise themselves when they led off betting and didn’t quite understand the blind structure. Of course, they would make huge runs up, but in the end they ended up busting out. There was also a fair share of calling stations who would, of course, hit on the river, but in general it was pretty passive.

I think I played OK, not that great, but OK. I wasn’t as aggressive as I’d hoped I’d be. I totally misplayed a set of Aces too. I won the hand, but played scared. I had A9s and limped in EP. Flop was AA5 (or some low card). I checked, wanting to see if anybody had another A. One bet and I just called. I basically was nervous of a higher kicker. In the end, I would check/call the whole way and ended up winning a smallish pot, and the other guy didn’t even have an A. I was upset with how I played that hand, it was totally weak. Yeah, I won, which is what it’s all about, but I played it terribly.

I had a bit of a roller coaster night. I got down to less than $40, but ended up +$43, or a touch over 7BB (net, after tokes, drinks were paid for in cash). I played for four hours for a 1.75BB/hr return. I’m happy with that and definitely will be staying at 3/6 from now on. It wasn’t more difficult, and raises did mean something, at least much of the time. Once I got over having to make a bigger stack of chips to call or bet, it was no big deal. It’ll be even more interesting when I get up to 4/8 at Canterbury because they use the whites there too, so the pots look huge since there are tons of chips there. The additional side effect of shorter lines at 3/6 (and even shorter at 4/8) is definitely the deciding factor. The play wasn’t a whole lot better, no real FPS or anything, so I am definitely comfortable at 3/6. A couple of the people at the table play both 3/6 and 4/8 depending on what they can get into and they said there really isn’t much difference between the two. Hmm… I definitely plan on going to the casino more often this summer, especially if I can get down there early enough and not have to wait forever. You guys in LA who can walk in and get a seat have no idea what it’s like to have to wait for 2 hours for a table. Well, if I played 30/60 I guess I could get a seat whenever, but I’ve got a ways to go before that

This entry was posted on Saturday, May 1st, 2004 at 10:41 am and is filed under . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.