TRIP REPORT @ TRI-STATE RACETRACK AND CASINO (CROSS LANES, WV)

I made it to the casino about 5:30pm or so and was pleasantly surprised the place was all non-smoking. The poker room was huge. Only half was used this night. I was going to play $1-2 NL until the 7pm tournament started. I went ahead and registered for the tournament and bought $150 in chips for cash games.

Fairly uneventful first session of cash games (-$1.00) for alittle over an hour of play. No real exciting hands or players. Boring...

The tournament started at 7pm and was $65 buy-in + optional $10 add-on for dealers fee. I took the option and started with a $4k stack. The blinds were 20 minutes and it was about the equivalent to a turbo online tournament and the play equaled a $4.40 180-man on Stars. Terrible players!!! 124 players started and paid 12 places. I had a good first hour getting my stack to 7850 at break #1 with 87 people left. Hour #2 sucked for me as I never could get past the 12k chip mark, but I stayed out of big pots and made it to break #2 with 47 left. Hour #3 was my hour as I stacked up to almost 60k in a series of about 10-12 hands. I won 6 pots in a row with KK, QQ, flopped straight, flush, big bluff and set of J's. I was sitting with a top 5 stack and the field narrowed to 20 people at the end of hour #3. Only 8 more to go before the money and I am sitting about 5/20. I raise fold a couple of times early which hurt because the blinds were pretty high relative to the stacks. I look down a KK and raise UTG 3x the BB. I get min. raised by a guy in mid-late position I decide to just call and shove any no ace flop. Flop comes 734 rainbow and I shove my KK. The guy instacalls with Ac8c and has me covered. The turn is a club and the river is a club to give him runner-runner flush to bust me. No reason at all for him to call there except he was an idiot. Good game me in 17^th place only getting a $5 restaurant voucher which I gave away later.

I walked around for a bit to get over my bad beat in the tournament and then headed back to the cash games. Once again, I played $1-2 NL and bought in for $149.00. I sat at a full table with 9 players and the largest stack had about $500-600 in front of him. I never dipped below $100 the whole time and finally won a decent pot to get to $300+. There was only myself and 2 others whom I could tell were pretty good players. The others were terrible or wasted. I won another big pot when I had 1010 and the flop 1088 and a guy bet into me on every street and called my big river raise w/ AK. Finally, the lay down of the year for me…I had about $450+ stack at the time and I get 33 in the SB. Early position player raises to $12 and get 3 callers to me in the SB. I elect to squeeze here and make it $36 to play. Two others call me and we’re 3 handed to the flop. The flop is great coming 392 rainbow. I obviously check here to hopefully check raise someone. The next guy makes it $75 and other guy instantly shoves in $200-250. It was a Phil Hellmuth type shove where he knocked chips over and so on. I am sitting here with middle set and two guys putting money in the pot like crazy. I sit there annoyingly for about 3-5 minutes thinking through hand and somehow I decide to fold my set of 3’s. The first guy calls and they both showed there cards and it was AA and 99 with the set of 9’s winning the big pot. I think if this had happen a 100 times that I am folding hardly ever, but something told me I was beat and laid the hand down. After that lay down, I felt like Phil Ivey or Durrrr and was so confident in my game. I ended up quitting about 1:30am and cashed out $563 for $410 profit – tournament buy-in.

Overall, the poker room is nice, the action was good and I would and will go back soon.

-Sean