Poker Turns Ugly

Tuesday morning found me heading out to mail a package full of shoes to Katie in Traverse City.

The post offices in LV are easily the worst operated facilities I have ever had the displeasure to use. EVERY single time I've been there it's been long lines, literally out the door. They manage to achieve this ineptitude by opening only 1 or 2 windows when there are 6 other windows that remain unstaffed. When I arrived, about 930, I counted the folks ahead of me and I was 26th in line. Some 35 minutes later I finally got to the window, mailed the package and bought Christmas stamps.

Then I was off to the Excalibur to try their poker room. Since I was last there in May, the Excalibur converted their poker tables from all electronic to having live dealers. I read on one poker website that the players there were typically beginners, so I was eager to fish in that pond.

Unfortunately, I had nothing but bad fortune this trip. My best hand, an A-high Flush, was beaten on the river by a guy who hit a king to give him a full house, one of only two outs he had to win the hefty pot. When I did get a good hand, A-A, no one would play so I won a tiny pot. What a waste of good cards. When the smoke settled, I was down $170 and took a walk after about two hours of getting bruised hand after hand.

I consoled myself at a blackjack table and squeeked out a $30 win, leaving me still down $140. It was about 1:30 and I decided to go to Bally's and check out the poker scene there. It was busy and there were three names ahead of me on the $1-2 list, so I signed up and waddled over to a bj table to kill time.

It turned out to be a good move. I won 4 of the first 5 hands and was quickly up $50 or so. Eventually I built that up to $270 and decided to walk after recovering all I lost at Excalibur and leaving with a profit of $130.

Texas Tech was playing TCU in hoops, so I walked to the Paris sports book and put $20 on the Red Raiders -2.5. They won 80-70, leaving me with a hard-earned profit of $150 for the day.

When I got home about 4 p.m., Helen was watching TV. I got some spaghetti sauce going on the stove with roma tomatoes, sauteed mushrooms and onions. It was a tasty, filling dinner to top off my comeback. Later we watched reruns of "The Office" (still funny) and wound down with a cheese and crackers snack. Pretty exciting LV lifestyle, huh? But today our adventure continues...