Live Action Games

Recently, I have been spending more time playing in live-action games than tournaments. Here are a few anecdotes about my last two weeks of playing in those games.

Let's start at Bellagio. I saw David Sklansky sitting in an $80-$160 hold'em game, so I figured that it was a good game, not because he was in it, but because I know he believes in picking good games. I was wrong. It was the toughest $80-$160 hold'em game I have ever seen at Bellagio.

In one hand, Lee Salem was in the big blind, and Lenny Martin, who was in the small blind, was telling a joke. As Salem started to laugh at the punch line of the joke, Sklansky raised from late position. The blinds folded, and Sklansky showed the table the Q´ 8´ and stated, "Sometimes you can raise with mediocre starting hands like this when the big blind is laughing at a punch line." The next day when I asked Sklansky if I could write about this, he said that I should write about my calling two raises with a gutshot and one overcard. Are you happy now, David?

The following day, I was in a $75-$150 Omaha high-low game, and Tom Jacobs was winning every hand. When my low didn't get there, I showed my hand before I tossed it in the muck. He said, "Ace, deuce, three, four. That's what all of the ex-Omaha players used to play."

I then played $4-$8 Omaha high-low one evening at The Orleans. I turned down the $6-$12 hold'em game because I wanted to work on my Omaha high-low game. The girl next to me said that I played too fast, and that I should have taken the $6-$12 hold'em seat because I had no shot at winning in her game. She was right, I lost $100 – and the bad-beat jackpot was hit five minutes later in the game that I had turned down. Oh well!

I was then off to L.A. to play in The Bicycle Casino's Winnin' o' the Green tournament. When I walked into The Bicycle Casino, the first thing I noticed was how good the remodeling looks. Then, I sat down in a $20-$40 stud eight-or-better game. I have never played that game before, and I was definitely the joke of the table. I forgot to ante every hand, and my good friend Kenny Goldstein said that I was winning because I didn't know what I was doing. I think I forgot that it was a high-low game.

I hope that you had as much fun as I did playing poker in the past few weeks.