Mondocity

The past 48 hours have been wild. Beginning with Sunday night at Harrahs, playing in one of the deepest 2/5 games I've seen in recent memory; at least seven spots around the table had 3k+ stacks. Without even playing all that aggressively, I still manage to entangle myself in two of my biggest pots of the year.

In the first hand someone straddles for 10, three limps to me, I make it 75 on the button with 43hh and somehow get called in five spots. The flop comes 9d 4s 2d, which checks around. Turn 3c. A fairly solid Asian regular leads for 200 out of the blinds; another Asian man, who's stuck and tilting, flats the 200. At this point I have roughly 3k in my stack, the regular covers, and the flatter has only about 575 back. I raise to 800, for value. The reg calls. The flatter folds, which is terrible with any two cards. I river gin: 4c. Reg checks; I throw out 1200 and he instacalls. He didn't show but either had A5 or an overpair.

The second hand took place about an orbit later. Another straddle and three limps. I raise to 75 with black TT, the same regular calls on the button (after the first pot he never folded to another one of my raises) and some guy in his 50s, who had been sitting deep in 2/5 all weekend, calls out of the straddle. Flop T85 rainbow. Check. I bet 110. Call. Call. Turn 4, which puts out a flush draw. Check. I bet 300; reg calls; straddle raises to 750. Behind that, the straddler has 2k, so even if he ginned a 76, it's not a bad spot for me, since I can cheaply boat up and stack him some of the time. I call; reg folds. The river is an offsuit 2, virtually a total brick. The straddle thinks for a second and ships it in for 2k. Everyone, including about 15 railbirds, snap their heads my direction and my insides perform strange lurching maneuver #3.

By the way, why the hell does Harrahs feel the need to advertise their largest game (which isn't even all that big) front and center at the edge of the poker room, feet from one of the main pedestrian walkways in the place? Has no one ever complained about the smokers on the rail, the low constant roar of the passing degenerate mob, and slew of slot machines, above which vaguely satanic Happy Days clips loop in sequence to the series theme song, as inescapable and persistent as a bad acid trip. Would you be surprised if I told you it was difficult to concentrate? Not to mention, no cash player in their right mind wants total strangers to see them sitting with several thousand dollars, except on the days we feel particularly narcissistic at the prospect of some pretty young thing passing by and oohaahing momentarily, which is just as good as staring into a mirror, when you get down to it. Once or twice a week the floor opts to relegate the main 2/5 game to the back room under the jackpot ticker. This is where the game belongs.

Back to the hand in question. Finally I arrive at the first spot, since returning to Harrah's 2/5, in which I honestly have no idea what to do. Of course top set is a very strong hand, especially with the board not being too terribly wet at any point. But after playing with this villain a few times over the weekend, I had seen him splash around but never put 200+ big blinds into a pot without being nutted. I didn't see him as the type to barrel off huge on the river on any draw he might have turned, and I wasn't sure if he would even jam a lower set, but rather bet maybe 3/4 his stack. All considered, I think a fold is correct. I called. He flips over 76o and I don't feel much of anything as I muck. Perhaps the first pot I won desensitized me to losing this one. Regardless, I have been working on tilt more than anything in the past few months and it's done more for my game than any single other thing, but I'll share my thoughts about that another time.

I stay in the game about an hour longer and lose a few more small pots, booking a significant loss for the session. It's the first road bump I've hit in awhile playing cash games. I leave and pick up my roommate, Mike, from work. We take in a few bars then finally pass out around six.

At ten AM a mutual friend of ours, who I'm subletting from for the time being, shows up to grab some belongings. We talk for 30min or so at which point he leaves and we find it pointless to try to get back to sleep. Both of us hungover, but neither the still-buzzed nor in-pain variety, we decide to make a push for Mandina's for some good authentic New Orleans lunch. It's noon by the time we arrive, and they are still running a special on 1/4 loaf (oyster) po-boys and a cup of (turtle) soup. We also split a plate of crab fingers in wine sauce, which is extremely heavy due to all the bread crumbs. By the end of the meal I'm sopping up the sauce with gratis garlic bread to extinguish any trace of residual inebriation. I'm stuffed. Somehow after two beers, Mike looks at me and asks, "Whats next? Crawfish and a beer at the Bulldog?" I ask him about six times if he's serious, to which he replies "yes" every time. Not being one to break up a party, I drive us to Magazine. On the way, windows down, we belt out Biz Markie lyrics passing by OPP, which keeps up throughout the day because it feels so damn good to start up 'YOU - GOT WHAT I NEE EED. BUT YOU SAY HE'S JUST A FRIEND. BUT YOU SAY HE'S JUST A FRIEND.' The Big Fisherman is out of crawfish so we buy four crabs. Either the bartender at the Bulldog was having a bad day or just didn't like us bringing food over, but we sat on the patio so we didn't have to look at her anyway. We absolutely defile our crabs over a couple Stella drafts and fall into a conversation about primal nature. I still have wet crab bits lodged under my fingernails when Mike says, "What's next?"

We cut across town and stop in at a Walgreens to get Mike some sunglasses before heading to the Fly. Mike checks out behind two nuns in full regalia buying tampons and snacks. He's more buzzed than I am goes into hysterics, which makes me lose it too. We hop down the street to a daiquiri shop, where Mike orders us a blend of their three strongest flavors with an extra shot of everclear. Mine is offensively alcoholic. Somewhere between there and the Fly, the words 'Mondecadence' 'Mondocity' and 'Monsplendifference' come into being. We throw frisbee-golf frisbees out on the grass until a news team from WWL approaches us and invites us to join them on their blanket. They are all roughly our age and explain that they work the graveyard shift at the station; between them they are a producer, weatherman, and photographer. Mike talks weatherguy's ear off about the Chaos Theory, which is eventually taken to be an insult to his expertise. We are about to leave when a tugboat pulls up no more than 20 meters offshore and starts making doughnuts in the water and blowing every horn in its arsenal. I'd never seen anything like it. The whole congregation on shore starts waving, dancing, laughing. Some kids slacklining near the water start yelling that the tugboat was about to open fire on everyone; I have no idea what they were on. Even so, the tugboat lingers there long enough to be considered uncomfortable. When it leaves, we leave.

The next stop was Kyoto for a single piece of Yellowtail and Mackerel, which turned into Yellowtail, Mackerel, Squid, Uni, Octopus, some idiotic Roe concoction, and two of the biggest bottles of Kirin Ichiban I'd ever seen. After awhile the staff is ready to get rid of us, and I know it even if Mike is completely oblivious. By the time we exit there is no doubt he has fully transformed into Mad Mike, an alter ego I haven't seen since college. I elect to steer us to Monkey Hill, a nearby bar I had never been to. Terrible call on my part. Overpriced drinks, upper class feel, and an self important young professional clientele, all of which clashed with what I had in mind. I buy a couple rounds of JWalker Blacks, neat. Mike runs off the only two girls in the place, and we soon stumble out. 9pm, time to pack it in. My car breaks down twice on the way home, but we make it. I'm in bed six hours ahead of schedule, and poker is the last thing on my mind, which comes as a rare blessing these days. Thank god for Mondocity.