Poker Wannabe: 11/30/2004

My Thanksgiving plans this year were to fly out to St. Paul, MN and visit my sister, her long-time boyfriend and his family. What sealed the deal was the presence of the Canterbury Park casino in nearby Shakopee.

Getting There

Now, I live in Austin and there are no direct flights between Austin and the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport. I could take a flight from Austin to Dallas and then Dallas to St. Paul, or, for half that price, I could simply drive the three hours to Dallas and fly out of there. So, that's what I did.

The flight was at 2:50pm on Wednesday and so I did a little basic calculating and figured that I could leave at 11am--three hours of driving and then 50 mins to get into the airport and to the plane. What I didn't think about at the time was that apparently the Wednesday before Thanksgiving is a big travel day. I mean REALLY big.

Coming out of Austin was slow. Going through Waco was slow. Coming into the Ft. Worth area was really slow. The last five miles or so getting into the airport was practically gridlock. It was 2:35pm before the wheels of my car touched airport land, with my gas tank on E. But that was only the beginning.

The Dallas-Ft. Worth airport has the distinction of being the absolute most inconvenient airport in the all the history of mankind--and we're talking both past and future history, here. They've managed to completely optimize their level of inconvenience. Adding a shark-infested moat around the entire airport would actually improve things.

I go to the North satellite parking. Full.

"Try the South satellite parking," the North attendant tells me.

Eight or so miles down the road I finally get to the South parking.

Full.

"Try the terminal parking. Just follow the signs," the South attendant tells me.

I follow the signs. The airport has the uniquely inconvient feature of having two roads travel the length of the airport: the main center road which actually has access to the airport and the terminal parking, and the side road that runs on each side of the main road which is basically a bypass. The bypass was what I was traveling on to go between the North and South satellite parking and so now I was simply looking for a way to get from the bypass onto the main road so I could, you know, actually get to the terminal parking and get into the airport for the flight that was scheduled to leave in five minutes.

Except that you can't actually go from one road to the other. This is because the main road is a toll road that they charge everyone at least $2 to travel on. So you either get on at one end or the other, you can't cross over at any other point during the eight or so mile stretch of road. The signs pointed me onto the bypass road, and so there I was traveling at times literally five feet from the road I wanted to be on, and I had no way of getting over. There I just passed terminal B, where my gate is...and there I just passed terminal B parking...and there I have to travel another four miles just for a chance to turn around and travel back to get to where I want to be. And looky there, I'm still nearly out of gas, having pushed it farther than I ever had before.

At the end of the side road it just shot me right back onto the highway going the wrong direction with no chance to get onto the main airport road at all. It was 2:53pm. What time was my flight scheduled for? Oh yeah, 2:50. Doh!

Well, since I'm only catching the flight now if it had been delayed, I might as well get gas. I fill up. Tick tock, tick tock.

Finally back at the airport I see that my carrier leaves out of BOTH terminals A and B. Which one is my flight at? 50/50. I park at terminal A and walk in. 3:06pm. I expect to be told to just go home. What were the chances of getting on a later flight? Probably nil considering it was my fault I missed the damn thing and on the day before Thanksgiving all flights would be full anyways. Sigh. What would I tell my sister?

But my flight had been delayed! Hallelujah! 3:26pm scheduled departure! The counter person wasn't so optimistic, however.

"I'm not sure if you'll be able to make it. You have to get through security and make it over to terminal B. And the flight might already be in final. Let me check. Yeah, they're in final" What? That doesn't sound good! It sounds so...final.

"I can run fast. I'll make it." The gate was only a mile or so away. I only had a big bag to carry, plus stairs to go up and down.

"I'll call over to the gate to tell them you're coming. Good luck." She sounded quite doubtful, however.

At 3:24pm I came panting and wheezing into a deserted gate B10. We're talking tumbleweeds, here. My heart dropped. I didn't make it. But wait, the door is open and someone is behind the counter!

"Did I make it?" I got out between breaths while shoving my crumpled boarding pass into his hands.

"Yup!" He replied, handing it back to me after getting the pertinent information. A momentary look of concern for my rasping and panting. "Don't have a heart attack."

And onto the plane I went, more on top of the world at that moment than I would be in fifteen minutes.

There

Playing poker at Canterbury would be almost as big an adventure as getting to the airport had been. I was able to steal away Saturday evening with the promise that I would bring the car back in time for my sister's boyfriend to take it to a friend's house for football the next day.

Canterbury was about a 30-40 minute drive from St. Paul, west on 494. Apparently it was primarily a racetrack until just recently when they converted some of the interior space into a cardroom, with table games in a smaller, attached room. Thankfully the poker room was non-smoking, however the bar right next to the room was smoking and there were no barriers to keep the smoke from wafting over. It was still 80% better than a completely smoking room, however. Simply not having people right next to you with a lit cigarette who are blowing smoke right into your face is a huge improvement.

I got there at about 6:45pm and the lines were already enormous. I guess when you're the only card room for two big cities, that will happen. They spread 2/4, 3/6, 4/8, 6/12, 8/16, 15/30 and 30/60. There was one table of the big game, three of the 15 game and two of 8/16. The rest all had 5+ tables going. I asked to be put on every list from 2/4 up to 15/30, hoping to minimize my wait.

An hour later I was called for 4/8. I played three hands there, winning one, before I was called for 15/30. I would play 15/30 for about six hours and then 8/16 for over five, and as per the recent trend, I would do very well at every limit except the highest one.

Ah, yes, the recent trend. Live, online play, it doesn't matter; whichever is the highest limit I'm playing is the limit at which I just get brutalized. Now, it would make sense that I would do less well at higher limits because typically the players would be better, however it is just the style in which I'm doing badly.

For example, recently I was playing (whoring) at TruePoker, which, for what it's worth, is a fun site with interesting graphics but slower than average action. They are a smaller site and so they don't have a lot of tables at any limit (although they pretty much have at least one table of every limit). Therefore I had open one table of 2/4, two tables of 3/6 and a table of 4/8. I was winning at all the tables, except 4/8. And I wasn't just doing poorly at 4/8, I was getting demolished. AA heads up against 33, the guy would call (with all overcards on the board) to the river and spike a 3. KK heads up against KQs, the guy would check-call the rainbow, undercard flop, check-raise the turn when he picked up a flush draw and spike the runner-runner flush on the river. I'd flop a set of 4s and a guy, with a K74 board would call, call with TT to spike a T on the river. Stuff like that. Over and over and over again. Every hand would see me putting lots of money into the pot as the overwhelming favorite just to lose. I lost $300 in about an hour at that table.

And this has been happening at every online site I've played at. If 3/6 is the biggest game I have going, then 3/6 is the limit I do horribly at. If 5/10 is the biggest limit, then 5/10 is what I'm doing horribly at (while I'm simultaneously doing great at 3/6). Since this is just a recent phenomenon, I'm not willing just yet to say that there's something wrong with my play when I play multiple limits at once. I figure I've just been unlucky enough to have all my brutal beats happen at the higher limits. And, really, that's what it has come down to.

So Canterbury was no different. I won 3BBs (Big Bets) during my stint at 4/8 and then went over to 15/30 where I promptly lost 31BBs, to bring my total current downswing at 15/30 to about 135BBs (> $4000!!). It's just phenomenal to watch just how often someone can hit their two, three, four, five or six-outers heads up against you. I mean if someone has even six outs after the turn, they'll still only hit one of them less than 14% of the time. But they keep hitting, time and time again.

For example, I have AJ in the BB (big blind, in this context). A woman from LP open raises with what turns out to be KQ. I three bet and she calls. The flop comes J84, rainbow. We cap it on the flop, and the turn of course is a Q. I end up folding before the showdown, but she shows me her KQ. That's not a horrible hand, stuff like that happens pretty regularly. The problem is that, currently, stuff like that is happening every single time I'm in the pot. No matter what the turn is, it seems, is what the other player needed to win. If the turn is a 7, the 7 helped him. If the turn is a T, it helped him. If it's an A, well, of course it helped him. And at 15/30 it hurts more becuase there are generally fewer players in each pot, and there are a lot of heads up battles. Therefore, I'm getting a smaller return on every one of the bets I put in, so if I'm also winning significantly fewer pots than I "should," then my bankroll can really nosedive.

The hand I won at 4/8, I had 88 against AJ. The flop was QQ4, turn 3, river 2 and I won a modest pot. At 15/30, an A or a J would have come, no doubt about it. To borrow a phrase that's used a lot online, the whole poker experience for me at 15/30 has been "unreal."

The game at the Canterbury was actually a great game. There was lots of action typically, and some players I would love to be permanent fixtures at every game I played. I just couldn't make a hand stronger than middle pair and so when the table finally tightened up at around 2am, I ran for 8/16 as fast as I could go, down about $900 at that point.

8/16 almost cured me, too. It started off bad, as my AA lost to 83s when he made a super-duper straight flush, with the 4567 of his suit on the board (I got out on the turn, but another guy stayed in and payed him off). But then I made a couple of hands and surprisingly actually won with them. I played JT and the flop came the beautiful AKQ. Stuff like that. I had a two-hour stretch where I got five pocket pairs and flopped five sets. I only won three of them, but each pot was substantial and so those hands were a big net gain for me. Funnily (yes, that is a word), one of the sets I lost was when, shorthanded, I had AdAc in the SB heads up against the BB who had 8d4s. The flop came a rainbow A83 with one spade and no diamonds, making me merely a 98.3% favorite. He of course caught running spades to take down the pot with his four-high flush.

But in the end, I finished up 36BBs in about five and a half hours of play at 8/16 to finish my nearly 12 hour run at 7:30am up 8BBs, but down $350. Sigh.

It was fun, though! A whole heck of a lot of fun. Canterbury is a great place to play cards. There are lots of games going, even at 7:30am on a Sunday morning. There's no smoking allowed. And there's plenty of action; the 8/16 game was super wild and crazy all night long. The atmosphere was nice, the people were nice, heck even the chips were nice--not the time-worn clay of Vegas, but sparkly new chips that seemed to be a clay composite, but much heavier on the composite part than the clay part. They were slick, but didn't look as though they'd collect dirt and grime as easily as the Vegas chips.

The food was great, too. They serve you right at the table, and the food is very reasonably priced, with most items between $3 and $5. And they were good, quality meals, not roadside diner quality food. The only drawback to the entire experience was the service was quite spotty. You often had to ask the dealer to call for service (often a few times) before a server would come by the table, and one of the food items I got took nearly an hour to arrive. Otherwise, Canterbury is a great place, and I highly recommend it to anyone. Just show up early unless you don't mind waiting a long, long time. All in all, I may end up having to visit sis a little more often.

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Poker Wannabe

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11/30/2004 - Minnesota

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