Back in Black

A trip to the poker room tonight proved to be far more fruitful than I expected after about the first 2 hours of play. I lost a few bucks on my first hand, chasing as usual, and from there I really didn't recover for a long, long time. My stack dwindled more and more until finally I was down to about $15 or so. I looked down at pocket jacks and raised, knowing I'd make my stand there. I was patient enough to wait for the high pocket pair so I was going to go hard. An ace hit the flop, which didn't impress me, but thankfully a Jack fell on the turn. Another Ace on the river assured my full house (gotta love runner runner tight!) and I ran over a straight which had out-turned me. I recovered a little bit there, and recovered a lot more -- going back to a smidge more than even -- when my pocket 9s flopped a set and I rivered a full house to ensure that pot. I was set to stop there but I wanted to play for the kill. It didn't come, but the hand after, my last hand before my next big blind, I was dealt King-Queen offsuit and the flop showed two Queens. Someone else had Queen-Eight and my kicker played to take the pot and I cashed out up $64.

Grand total for poker earnings: I'm out of the red, back into the black, sitting up $15. Now that I've crawled out of the hole I'm wondering if I should actually implement my plan of not going back to the casino. I've got a home game coming up this weekend, which is a $20 buy-in, so unless I cash in the tourney I'll be back in the red by $5. I finished 2nd of 17 or 18 last time at that venue, so hopefully I can fare as well again, if not better.

Also, I finally popped my cherry at the craps table. I've played loads and loads at Dave's for play money but never for real dough at a casino. I was waiting for my seat in the poker room, and Shaun was playing, so I figured I'd drop a Borden and see how I fare. It didn't take a great amount of time before I was down to a couple placed bets and a line bet and nothing else, as is the norm for me at Dave's, but after a few of my placed bets came in I started to rebuild a bankroll. A few more and I was even. A few more still and I was up. I bought in for that $100 and cashed out at $150 when I rolled a 7 with the point on to lose my dough on the table (though I did pull one placed bet the roll before). It was fun, but I'm not sure how much I'll do it in the future given the luck factor involved.