"Atlantic City - Always turned on"

That's the new sign that greets you as you pass the black horse pike driving down the AC expressway. It used to be "America's favorite playground", but apparently that must not be true anymore. I wonder where America's new favorite playground is? Probably some redneck dog track in Alabama.

Well the city of (always turned on) blinding lights kicked my tail this week. I arrived at the borg Monday around 6PM and hit the tables right away. I played my usual 6/12 game and got instantly beat down like a 110 lb geek fighting butterbean.

The table was incredibly loose passive - ideal SSH conditions. Also ideal conditions for having 3 sets busted to runners in the space of about 1 hour. My personal favorite was having a set of 10's busted by a rivered shotgun str8 by not one, but TWO players. Yes, two fish had the pleasure of chopping that hand against me. I actually stood up and leaned over the table when they flipped their cards up just to make sure my eyes weren't deceiving me. A few hands later I turned a set of jacks to lose to a r-r flush. I think the one eyed jack on the board winked at me before the dealer turned over the river card. After a few hours and few hundred dollars burned by I decided to call it quits and try to preserve my sanity.

The dealer (named Neil) who was there while most of my damage was inflicted said he was off to the Trop later to play in a dealers tourney...and was kind enough to recommend playing in it later for some "fun" poker. I took him up on it and cab'ed it over to the Trop in time for the tourney.

There were about 35 in the tourney, which was a $65+10 NL event. It used to be for local dealers only, but they recently opened it up to the public. I'd guess that better than half of the players were dealers, which was cool...they were a friendly bunch of people with some good stories to tell. Even better, they were all pretty poor players and I snuck into 5th place for a small payout. For as small as the field was it took a very long time, so I didn't make it back to my hotel until early in the morning.

Day 2 started off just like Monday night...suckout after suckout at borg 6/12. A few hours passed and I was just not having any fun, so I decided to try and salvage my trip and head over to the Taj and play some low limit holdem with the drunks. I got my drink on and then sat at a 2/4 table and told myself I was going to try and run the table over. I took quite a few debatable raising liberties and even managed to lay on a few nice bad beats of my own. I learned pretty quickly that it isn't very easy to 'run over' a 2/4 table full of drunks late night at the Taj..but I sure as hell tried.

Amazingly every time I play a semi-maniacal wreckless game I always seem come out ahead. Tuesday night was no exception and over 4-5 hours I more than doubled up...too bad it was only 2/4! I also accomplished my mission of having some fun playing cards, and headed back to my hotel room feeling slightly redemed.

Unfortunaly the next morning greeted me with an unexplanable headache that didn't respond to aspirin. Rather than try and play in that condition I hit a breakfast buffet and lounged on the beach for an hour before driving home.

All told my 2 night trip cost me over $250 in losses. I suppose I shouldn't complain given how hot I was running over the last few trips...but man did those 6/12 sessions suck!!!