First Trip to the Canterbury. Cha-Ching :-)
So after a full month of living in Minneapolis, B and I finally got down to the Canterbury Racetrack and Card Room to play some poker. Although I was totally joking in my previous post about needing to win more than Mrs. Cheap Thrills in order to defend my masculinity, I am happy to report that I did come out on top in our little competition. I played $2/$4 and won $194, which is the most big bets I've ever won in a single session of live poker. B, on the other hand, lost money. Mwah ah ah ah ;-)

We got there at like 9:45am. This was partly because I'd heard from other Minnesota poker bloggers that the waits at the Canterbury can be really bad, and partly because we were meeting my friend from work, K, and he also insisted we get there by 10 at the latest.

10am seemed just a touch early there was no wait for $2/$4, and the one $3/$6 game was short-handed, but by noon waits were an hour+, so I can see how you'd want to be better safe than sorry.

I had planned to play $3/$6, but K was not comfortable playing above $2/$4, so I said what they hay and sat down at $2/$4 with him. B sat down at the short-handed $3/$6 table and very soon had her pocket aces rivered by T9o, costing her half her buy-in. I wont say that this put her on tilt (cause shed smack me), but it certainly did put a damper on her day.

I stayed about even at the $2/$4 table with K, while K slowly lost. He seems to be a very smart guy, but is a textbook example of how being good at no-limit tourneys can ruin you for limit cash games. He kept trying to raise people out with marginal handson the turn or river, and kept getting called (because people don't fold at low limits). Then he would raise with a really solid hand pre-flop, and get drawn out on (because people don't fold at low limits). Which led him to conclude that it's all luck at the low limits, whereas I feel that really it's just very different from both no-limit and tourney play. (It certainly requires more post-flop play than the average fast-structured NL tourney.)

Oh, and then I took a bundle off K with pocket Queens that flopped a set. Kinda felt bad about that.

Anyhoo, K busted out and left, but I stayed at the $2/$4 table. I liked the table -- it was mostly older guys there just passing the time. Visions of my future aside, I liked that they liked to play every hand and didnt like people who raised. Calling stations are my favorite type of player. Duh. Also, all the players were polite and one guy was pretty funny, so it was pleasant enough. (I think one big leak in my live game is that if there's one or more assholes at the table itcan really distract me.)

I must now document one of the funny guy's best lines. He was sitting between two fellow older guys and they were all joking about "being too old to take beats like this" and such. At one point, one of the play-any-two older guys got rivered and started whining about it, and the funny older guy said simply:

Don't you know that life is painful? And poker is like life.

That's gold.

I proceeded to go on quite a run, which in a self-fulfilling prophecy led me to play well and with more confidence than if I had started out badly. Since I haven't ridden the online horse much since the move, it felt great to get a victory under my belt.

Oh, and I bet the ponies a bit too. I hit my exacta in the first race. The exacta box bet cost a total of $4, netting me $18 in profit. That was enough betting money to carry me though the day, ponies-wise. I know enough about horse racing to know that I'm not very good at it, and therefore I only bet small amount. Still, it was very enjoyable to handicap the races in between folds. I finished up $8 on the ponies.

All in all it was a really fun Saturday morning and afternoon. In addition to the win, though, a big part of our enjoyment came from how nice the Canterbury is. That will be the subject of my next post.
posted by James at 9:18 PM