24 hours in Atlantic City

Best poker moment of the night: Taking down a $400 pot with a draw.

Most intimidating poker room: Taj Mahal

Least intimidating poker room (see $400 pot bluff above): Caesars

Best new song that I first heard on this trip: 'Georgia' by Ludacris.

I discovered my biggest weakness in poker: I'm a bad winner. I don't tilt. When I lose, even a big hand, it doesn't affect my play. But when I win big, like the big hand noted above, I'm a wreck. I had to stand up from my table, walk up to a friend and have him give me a pep talk to try to stop my heart from pounding so hard. It's also the reason I don't do well in tournaments. I always start really strong and but the wins mess up my head and make me play very dumb. If it was realistic, my ideal play would be to win a big hand, go take a walk, make a phone call, have a cup of coffee, even throw some chips around the roulette table, then come back and play some more poker. And yes, I do realize that's not at all realistic.

Two comeuppance stories:

When I was a kid, my parents would drag me to their friends' house and leave me to hang out with their children. One time, they left me alone with a mean older kid who tricked me (I was like 6, ok) into touching the radiator and burning my hand. Years later he became the first person I ever knew to drop out of high school and the boogie man in my parent's tales of what would happen to me if I didn't do well in school. Turns out, they weren't entirely wrong. I saw him at Ceasars and he looked homeless or on crack or, actually, worse. Stay in school, kids, stay in school. And don't go around burning little girls' hands, the universe will get even with you.

On a slightly less serious note, back during the summer when Dawnie and I were doing bi-weekly runs to the Tropicana for our poker fix, we found ourselves sitting at the same 2/4 limit table as this trashy couple on more than a few occasions. Dawn hated the wife, something to do with her staying in and winning on the river with a queen. I don't remember the details but I'm sure Dawn does. I was annoyed with the husband because he would give me bizarro poker advice about slow-playing, based on his extensive online poker playing experience in the free-play rooms. Anyway, the last time I saw this couple, I was sitting at a 2/4 Limit table at the Trop with the wife, and her husband came over to tell her about a big hand he won at a NL table. He then addressed the table about how someday we too would be good enough to play NL and how different it was than Limit, which he now referred to as 'for beginners'. Needless to say, when I saw him at Ceasar's, he was back at the Limit table.

Update: I randomly came across this post which describes almost exactly how I bluffed the big hand mentioned above (but with more callers pre-flop who folded to a small flop bet).