It’s my (Fernie's) turn to write something for the blog. Its Sunday, Feb 3, Super Bowl day, we are still in Quartzsite AZ, in the middle of the desert. Today as planned, we have to get Maggie ready to leave tomorrow for Phoenix, which is only 125 miles away. I have washed and waxed Maggie over the past week and now I have to check all oil levels in two generators, two engines – in the Honda CRV, otherwise known as Maggie Jr and in Maggie Sr., check ten tires, six batteries and return the solar panel to its original position for travelling purposes.
After all that I drove to Al’s Pizza and picked up a vegetarian pizza and got ready for the Super Bowl. I was thinking of my grandson, Jack, because I had sent an email a few days ago and asked him “Who is going to beat the New England Patriots?” They are sitting at 18-0 so far and the Super Bowl, would make it 19. Jack, sent me an email telling me that the Chicago Bears or Oakland Raiders would beat them; well Jack you chose the wrong team. The New York Giants played a very good defensive game and finally a team was able to disrupt Tom Brady, QB for New England, from having a lots of time to find secondary receivers.
On Monday morning, after a few other maintenance procedures, we hooked up Maggie Jr and said goodbye to our friends. The interstate to Phoenix is in very good shape but very busy with large trucks, and with the speed limit being 75MPH, it is very comforting to be in the slow lane, travelling at my speed, 55MPH-60MPH.
Gerri, my dear spouse, is not only the financial guru of this family, but an expert navigator. There is a small drawer in front of the passenger seat where Gerri has strapped down our laptop computer, hooked up to a GPS and the Street & Trips mapping program, and we are able to go anywhere in Canada and USA, without having to ask for directions or find local maps. “I am going to get you to switch to over to highway 17, when we get into Phoenix,” she says. This is the truck route and is not that busy and it will hook up with this same interstate, just a few miles before our exit to the Wild Horse Pass Casino.
Exit 162 and a large statue of a Wild Horse on his hind legs confirms this is the exit to the Wild Horse Casino. We were here last year, and we really enjoy Phoenix, a city that you get to love very quickly. It has the Superstitious Mountains, the Sonoran desert, and probably the finest highways within any city. When we arrived at the Wild Horse Casino, I noticed a large internet dish on another RV, so we decided to park close to it, just in case it was unsecured and we could get a pirated wireless connection otherwise know as wifi.
After we confirmed with security that we could park overnight, we put out the slides and the jacks and gave Caesar a walk. We decided since it was still early, we would go check the RV fueling station just across the freeway, as we need to fuel before we move Maggie over to Mesa. Gerri, also wanted to check out Fry’s Electronics and Best Buy as she’s looking for another laptop – smaller and faster.
At Fry’s, Gerri noticed that one laptop met all her needs and was available for $1299 but when we got to Best Buy, the young woman, who served us said, “oh, by the way, it is on sale for $1099”. It was $1699 in Vancouver. Gerri’s eyes lit up and she said “do you have one in the same colour - red?” After receiving confirmation that it was available, we are now the proud owners of not one but two laptop computers and guess who owns the old laptop…moi. Hello internet poker.
When we pulled in at the Best Buy store, I noticed that Barnes & Noble, one of my favourite bookstores was near by. After we purchased the laptop, Gerri stayed in the car and read up on the new computer and I proceeded into the bookstore walked right up to the poker section. There right in front of me was the book I was searching for, Caro’s Most Profitable Hold’em Advice. Mike Caro is known in the poker world, as the “Mad Genius of Poker”. If you’re new to poker and haven’t yet discovered how much world-class players and consistent winners rely on Caro’s research, let me convince you in just two words: ASK ANYONE.
On our way back to Maggie, it was decided that I would go play poker at the casino but before I must set up the satellite dish, so Gerri could watch Oprah and some dancing competition. The solar panel showed 13.4 on the batteries; that is just great and with the sun still out, we were bringing in another 7.8 amps, which would be sufficient power to watch television and work on the computer. Now it is my time to play my favourite game, Texas Hold’em. Hold’em is a fast paced, and easy to learn poker game. The game can be played with more players, which means bigger pots, making it very exciting, and quite profitable for those players who make the effort to learn to play correctly.
The basic concepts of Hold’em are easy to lean and understand. Each player is dealt two personal cards and then five community cards are dealt face up in the middle of the table. Since there are five community cards you do not have to keep track of all the dead cards that were folded by your opponents as you do in stud. Hold’em is a positional game; a dealer button rotates to the left after each hand. The player to the left of the dealer button acts first. You will always act in the same order for the entire hand. If you have the dealer button you will act last during each betting round. The later you act, the more information you will have to decide whether you should enter the pot or fold your hand.
There are no antes. The player to the left of the dealer button puts up a blind bet usually equal to half of the minimum bet for the first round and the player to the left puts in a bet equal to the minimum bet. These are called blinds. The rest of players do not have to put any money in the pot unless they are calling the blind bet. This means that in a ten-handed game you will get to see eight hands for free. If you don’t have a playable starting hand you can toss it in and wait for your new hand.
Limit Texas Hold’em, has fixed limits for each round. Most card rooms offer several Hold’em games at different betting limits, so you can choose a game that is within your bankroll. For example, $3-$6 Hold’em, the first betting rounds are $3 and the last two betting rounds are $6. You are not allowed to bet or raise a different amount than these set limits. When you enter the poker room you must sign in at the desk. You tell the host what game you are interested in playing. I asked the host if $2-$4 was available, “ I don’t have any $2-$4 table at present but I have seats available at the $3-$6 table.” says the host. The host shows me to the table and I have my favourite seat, right across from the dealer, so I can better see the community cards. The casino provides a dealer and he usually takes out approximately 5% off every pot.
Sitting left of the dealer is a fairly tall man, who has thick glasses, says ‘welcome drifter’, I happen to be wearing my South African T shirt, which has the “Drifter” tour emblem which I got when we went to South African a last year. The next player is so obese that he had to sit sideways to the table, because if he sat straight to the table there would not be enough room for the other players. He was also eating off a side table; he had two hamburgers, a large side fries and it looked like a bucket of cola.
Next to him, was a young Latino and he looked a little nervous because of the way he played with his chips. Sitting between me and this Latino to my right, was a half black young man, who kept calling everyone “ hey Bro” . Directly to my left, was an Asian, with a large parka & his hood up on his head. The dealer looked at me and then looked at the Asian, and said “are you cold? drifter next to you, is just wearing a Tshirt”. He just nodded with assent. The player that I feared the most was sitting next to the hooded Asian man, well dressed, moustache trimmed to perfection and lots of chips in front of him. A fairly tall black man, from Pepsicola, Fl, was a long distance truck driver with his load parked in the casino truck lot; he was destined for Los Angeles, and he did not have to deliver his load to the coming Friday. He did advise us that he was going to play poker till Wednesday night. The last player sitting to the right of the dealer was an older gentleman who showed early signs of Parkinson’s disease.
I always like to win the first pot when I play Hold’em, and sure enough, the dealer dealt me the Ace and Queen of hearts, the only card to worry about on the flop is the king. Computer analysis shows that and Ace or Queen will flop only 29% of the time, and a flush will only happen 5.94% of the time. In a ten-handed game the AQ suited card will win 18.66% of the time and according to the top 40 hand, the AQ suited is number 11.
I am sitting in the big blind and have already invested $3.
The Asian man & the truck driver folded but when it came to the man with the thick glasses, he decided to make it interesting by raising it to $6 and the obese man said “well let’s welcome our new “drifter” and jack it up to $12”. The young Latino folded and the young man beside me, who was in the small blind, had to place in the pot $11 and I had to increase my blind by another $9. The Asian man was the only player to fold after the raise and re-raise. Total pot is $51 and we have not even seen any community cards yet
The dealer flopped the first three community cards, 9 hearts, 3 hearts, and the 2 of diamonds. We all checked to the original raiser who called another $3.and everyone called the bid now making $66 in the pot. The dealer flopped the fourth card (called the turn card), 6 of spades and we all checked to the raiser, who really surprised all of us by not bidding but by checking, meaning that we all got to see the last card for free. The fifth card otherwise known as the river card, is the Jack of hearts. At this time you all know that I have the very best hand, which we call the “nuts”. Since I was second to bid I decided if I bet they would all anticipate that I had the flush so I checked and when it got to the original raiser, he decided to call $6 and the obese man decided to raise it up to $12, the young man to my right folded and I raised it up to $18 for a total in the pot of $120. This was the largest pot I have won since the Mill Casino in Coos Bay Or. Where I won $119 with quads of fours.
I gave the dealer a $2 tip and the obese man asked for service at table 10 and ordered four scoops of chocolate ice cream, he said that he wanted comfort food. The original raiser just called to purchase another $100 of chips and said, “Well played drifter”. All during that time the whole table is laughing about the obese man ordering ice cream. You sure meet some strange characters at a poker table.
After a few hours of poker, I left to find Gerri working on her new computer and starting to get ready for her trip to Toronto, She tries to go to our second granddaughter’s birthday every year on Feb 9. This year Myfanwy will be 10 years old. Well Gerri said, “how much did you win tonite,dear”. “ It was a good night dear, I cleared $202, and I’m buying dinner tomorrow”.
Tomorrow we plan to move to Palm Garden in Mesa AZ, approximately 20 miles from the casino, in an old but luxurious RV Park, a gated park with swimming pools, saunas, laundry, and high speed internet services. I think I’m going to be very comfortable.
No comments:
Post a Comment