Live poker is rigged.

After dinner, I went to the Colossus Casino with LAPPIN and Dave 'Thefloof' Block and played for two hours. Both of my associates walked out of the place having feasting. (LAPPIN having caught two sets and had quads against the nut full house, thefloof winning me some money so I’m not uber-poor.) I literally won a single hand the entire night when I bet my 72 very aggressively with an obscene amount of dead money in the pot. Fun day, very full by the end, and slightly poorer then I began.
 
 
Day 2
I don’t tilt. I’ve played hundreds of thousand of poker hands, lost hands in every conceivable way, won hands in every conceivable way and have had every donkey on full tilt criticize my play in one way or another.

Today I tilted.

The three of us woke up fairly early and we still had no internet. For some odd reason our router was messing up a bit. So, obviously Lappin and I decided to do the only logical thing - Play some Omaha HU. I started off slow and ended up with a bit of a chip disadvantage. LAPPIN was yapping away his standard sayings:

"God you are so bad!"
"You call yourself a pro... you should be ashamed of yourself!"
"How can you make that play!"

And then of course, there was the derisive laughter after I folded a hand.

Rounder63 is having a ball witnessing this. He has taken up position behind LAPPIN and is watching every hand go by. I fold, he tells me LAPPIN has 8 high. I bet and get called down by a better hand and its the most hilarious thing in the world.

So I tilt.

As this is going on, I’ve somehow managed to regain a massive chip lead, but as my cards turn to crap and LAPPIN flips his aggression switch I swiftly see my lead crumble. I know I’m playing poorly, I know I’m giving up hands too easily, or am overplaying week hands... But I tilt.

LAPPIN retakes the chip lead and I shove weak as a low stack. Too all our surrounding neighbours it would sound like LAPPIN’s favourite team won whatever the hell the cricket championship is called at that moment. Such whooping and hollering goes on. I steam away and give LAPPIN a legit pound as I got outplayed and bludgeoned into a loss.

10 minutes of pouting and then its all forgotten, time to go feast! We hit two classy restaurants in 3 hours with a pub for a few beers in between. Life is good.

 
 
“That’s Calvin Booth” Rounder says to me.

I scoff at the very idea, Booth is way too big time to be at this poker room, tonight on a Monday night, all alone. I double take as he asks the door man about poker being available and realized that it was Calvin Mother-Effing Booth.

If I had been drinking a beverage of any kind it would have been spit everywhere in shock and amazement. There was 0% chance we were leaving there until we played poker with Calvin Booth.

The tournament was starting in a little while so we decide to play some casino games, Calvin Booth is sitting at the blackjack table. We sidle up beside him and watch him make several 5 dollar bets, obviously just killing time. Then Rounder63 shows up.

We are joking around about betting and what not and Rounder hands me a €50 note and says “put it on this hand, I have faith”. Calvin glances over and looks mildly annoyed (like we said something distasteful about his sub par career averages). I stay on 16 and lose Rounder's €50, but at that point it's on. Booth starts betting 100 dollars a hand, having a pissing contest against three pro poker players who just didn’t care. All in all, rounder63 probably cost Booth 500 dollars in that short blackjack session.

The tournament (sit'n'go rather as there were only 6 of us) was a fun affair. I was fading hard at this point, after 40 hours of staying awake, but that is no excuse for the way I donked into LAPPIN. His description of the hand in his blog is actually fairly kind, as I had less fold equity on the river then he gave me credit for. But I had a read and stuck to it, and proceeded to have a very nice nap on a very uncomfortable couch as LAPPIN went on to give away a 4-1 chip lead HU against a rank amateur.

All in all, a fairly entertaining start to what's looking like it's gonna be a fun trip.
 
 
The slumbering beast awakes. Rounder63 comes down stairs and insta-joins a new game we decide to play. Obviously when you add Rounder63 to the mix, our nitty HU Omaha game turns into 25 dollar flips. This is where LAPPIN really showed how much he can out-skill me when there is no skill involved.

I had KQJ10 double suited, I raise from the button, rounder re-pops me pot. At this point he can have any four cards.  So I snap back “I’m all in”. Poor choice... Lappin had yet to act.

Honestly I’m not to worried at this point, as Lappin is hemming and hawing. We play trashy omaha all the time so I can generally put him on his range. He loves calling here with 4 under cards as he justifies this with the line “You both have high cards so my hand is super live.” He eventually makes the call and rounder ships his money in quickly.

We flip up our cards:

Dr Fill KQJ10 (Sick omaha hand)

Rounder AKK10 (Fantastic hand as well)

LAPPIN J974 (Puke worthy hand you wouldn’t play under any legit situation)

We all know the outcome, but at the time I felt fairly positive. Figuring I was behind Rounder, but at least Lappin wouldn’t have my money.

Flop comes J93 and I leap out to a massive favorite, turn comes blank, river comes 7. €50 for Lappin... fun game.

We proceed to flip for 10 hands in a row in which I somehow manage to be down to both LAPPIN and Rounder at the end of it.

Such is life though, and we went out for a delicious meal which would become our staple, only the classiest restaurants for us. Clearly not having played enough poker yet in the day we head over to one of the nicest poker rooms in Dublin named "The Sporting Emporium”.

We were all juiced to play in the tournament they had going on that evening, until we found out no one was playing it. Unfortunately, Rounder and I were in the midst of getting our memberships when we found this out. So we said eff it, we might as well finish the applications and have them for another time, when a familiar looking 7 foot gangly black man walked in the door...