Mike Johnson History Buff

Now that I have completed the training process for my new job, I decided to take a couple days off to relax. How does a guy like me relax? By gambling of course. Since I live in central Pennsylvania my only real option is to drive 3 hours to “America’s Playground” which is more commonly known as Atlantic City or “The poor man’s Vegas”. It’s easy to make fun of AC (and most everything else in New Jersey), but I have to admit that they have really made some improvements over the past two years to not only the casinos but also to the area around the casinos.

I feel that one of the big differences between AC and Vegas is that the town of Vegas was built around the casinos so that there is a symbiotic relationship there. Atlantic City doesn’t have the same kind of relationship because the casinos were built around the town that already existed. The casinos really did suck the life out of AC and only recently has an effort been made to revitalize the rest of the city. There’s still a lot of work to be done, but I’m proud to say that I now feel comfortable walking two full blocks away from the boardwalk instead of just one block like before.

After checking into one of the sleaziest/shadiest/creepiest/ghettoest hotels in the area, my friends and I headed over to the Trump Taj Mahal. At one time The Taj Mahal was the center of the poker universe on the east coast. You probably remember the Taj as the place where Mike McDermott took on Johnny Chan in the movie Rounders. It is also home to the US Poker open that is aired on ESPN. Now there is more competition from the Indian Casinos like Foxwoods and Turning Stone as well as local competition from The Borgata and Tropicana. Even with all that competition, the Taj is still the only place where you can recreate that scene from Rounders where Mike and Worm ride down the escalator, past the almost ornate faux crystal chandelier, faked gold tiled walls, and into the poker room. Well technically only Mike goes to the poker room since Worm decides to go see a “relaxation specialists”.

Since none of us had “Certain needs” that need to be taken care of, we all headed to the poker room and registered for some hold’em games. I played 1-2 No limit while my friends played 3/6 limit. After 4 hours of play I was down $20 while my one friend was down $100 and the other was down $200. It’s hard to loose $200 and bust out playing 3/6 hold’em but that’s exactly what my friend had done. To change our luck we decided to switch from hold’em to some of the other games being dealt. I hit up some 7-Card Stud while my friends sat down at the Omaha Hi-Lo table.

I had never played Stud in a casino before so I was a little bit apprehensive about the experience. Luckily a run of good cards, good play, and friendly opponents allowed me to have fun while I made a profit of over $150 in a couple hours time. Unlike every other poker game I’ve ever played at in a casino this was the first time that I felt like a young buck at the table. I’m only 26 but most tables feature at least 3 or 4 people in their 20s. Every player at the 7 card stud table, except for me, could all tell me exactly where they were when they found out Kennedy was shot, and kept referring to online gambling as “poker on the computer”.

While I did like the people I played with I could tell that they weren’t big fans of me for a couple reasons. Before I list the reasons let me explain that just because they didn’t like me all that much, it didn’t mean they disliked me. I just got the feeling that they had some preconceptions about me based on a couple factors.

•I’m young
•I played as aggressively with draws as I did with made hands. (This was very different from the way they played draws.)
•I asked a lot of questions about how the game was played even though I was raking in the biggest pots.
•I got some good cards
•I’m one of those “All In” guys.

One of the guys at the table actually asked me “Are you one of those all in guys?” and pretended to push an invincible pile of chips into the center of the table. I knew that it wasn’t a completely innocent question and more than likely he really wanted to know “Are you one of those rash arrogant young internet players who thinks poker is all about big bluffs and trash talk like you see on TV?” Sadly I can understand why these stud players might feel this way. After all they have been playing in these card rooms for a long time and now suddenly everything has changed. The players are younger and louder, the strategy being played is different, and the most popular game is now hold’em and not stud.

After I basically busted two players and another announced that he had to work in the morning we decided to break up the table. I decided to join my friends at the Omaha Hi-Lo table for another first time experience for me. I have played a lot of Stud online but not a lot of Omaha so I wasn’t as confident in playing a live game of Omaha as I had been with Stud. Comfort soon returned to me after I watch the confused look on half the players faces when after the first hand was finished the dealer had to explain who had the lowest hand and why. Out of the 20 hands I played at Omaha every single hand looked promising to me. Even the hand of 8 K 8 8 looked good until I remembered you could only play 2 cards. I played well in the game but was never able to scoop a pot. I did leave the table with a $20 profit which helped pay for the cost of the crappy crappy crappy hotel room that I went to just in time to catch GSN’s High Stakes Poker.

I think watching Hansen and Negranue battle it out before I went to bed might have had some influence on my style of play the next morning. Usually I’m pretty tight and try to only play top 10 hands and steal only when on the button or one off. A half hour into the 11:15 am Tropicana daily NL tournament I found my self calling a raise from middle position with 10 3 off just so that I could bluff on the flop. My opponent was easy to read and my play worked. Similar plays seemed to work all morning as I built my chip stack from 5000 up to 7500 without ever getting a pocket pair or two paint cards. That all came to a crashing halt when I ran into a player who had quads. And it wasn’t just that he had quads, it was that he played them in the oddest way possible. I’m not going into all the details that surround the hand (mostly because the hand shows why I’m no Negranue or Hansen) but I will say that with 4 people left to act, I would never over bet the pot when holding quads.

To end this blog entry I’ve decided to leave you with some sage advice. Play the 13, 14, 16, 17 & 14,15, 17,18 corners at the roulette table right by the Trop poker room that is beside the big wheel thing. You might also want to toss a single chip onto 36 & 19. It worked for me.

Good Luck
Mike