I didn’t play much poker in the last week. Only one session on Party Poker for a few hours and a $1.50 loss.

Yesterday I headed over to the Soaring Eagle Casino in Mt. Pleasant for some live action. I walked into the poker room at about 11:15 and was seated at a $3/6 table in less than 15. I sat in the same seat for ten and a half hours and saw the table makeup change quite a bit. At first the table was extremely loose passive. When someone raised preflop everyone else kind of game them the look. After a few hours the table tightened up quite a bit as players came and went. As the night went on the table got a little looser, but overall it wasn’t a good table to be play at.

I ended up losing $124 on the night. There were some bets I should have saved, but I’ll account that to not playing in a live game in months. I’ll definitely never be a live tournament player. I must have tells up the ass that any real players would catch onto in a heartbeat. I just don’t understand how I can be down to the final table in an online tournament with thousands on the line and my heart doesn’t skip a beat. In a live cash game when I check-raise with the nuts get the shakes. What is wrong with me?

I really couldn’t help losing on the night. When you’re playing tight at the low limits you need the bit hands to hold up in order for it to be a winning night. AA was 1-1, KK was 0-3, QQ was 0-2, JJ was 2-6 (both flopped sets with no callers past the turn), AK was 1-4, AQ was 0-5, and AJ was 1-6. Looking at those numbers it’s amazing I didn’t lose $300. I only hit one flush draw the entire night and one straight draw, which happened to be a gut shot to crack AA who flopped a set. I got lucky on one other hand where I called with middle pair and turned trips. But I was down to the felt on that hand and the board didn’t seem to dangerous.

I was able to get away from several of my big hands without losing much after the flop brought an ace to my big pairs. I also took some horrible beats though. KK lost to K8 on an 8-high flop when he caught his 2 outer on the turn. I caught myself calling a couple of times from the small blind with just an ace or unsuited connectors, which again I attribute to not playing live in a long time. Folding hand after hand tends to get boring. Online poker spoils us!

The most interesting event of the day happened at the table behind me. One of the players cut his hand and got blood everywhere. The casino turned it into a big production. First they counted out all of the chips and had the players wash their hands. They moved them all to another table with new chips. That was the easy part. Cleaning up the table and removing everything took nearly two hours. You would have thought there was toxic waste on the felt. They must have brought 5 different black suits down to the poker room for observation. I figured it was only a matter of time before the governor stopped by to make sure everything was following procedure.

This morning I played a $24+2 MTT on Full Tilt and made the money. I didn’t get much of anything for cards and just barely made the money at 18th place which was the first place to pay out. I think I’ll be playing a lot more MTTs on Full Tilt. The play was looser than I’ve experienced in tournaments on Party Poker.