Artichoke Joe's 3/6

Wednesday night I went to AJs with Thuan and had a really good night at the tables, netting $134 over 3 hours of 3/6. It was quite a feeling to go to the cashier with 2 1/2 racks of chips.

AJs is a lot better than Bay 101 because the lowest limit they spread is 3/6 and the $4 they take out of the pot includes a $1 drop for the jackpot, so in a sense you are getting some of that back. That, along with no 2/4 tables (resulting in worse play at 3/6) and a warmer ambiance makes it more enjoyable.

To be completely honest, I played like a chunk of granite but had one of those nights where the few flops I did see hit me hard and I was rarely outdrawn. I flopped the nut flush twice, flopped the nut full-house once, hit two pair two-three times, and nobody was able to catch up even though I was slowplaying like mad (well, the times I had the nuts at least). Basically a night where a monkey could have made lots of money. I know that I actually could have pulled out more profit with a few well-timed bluffs (I attempted zero bluffs the whole night) and a few cases of slowplaying too much.

Oh well, I'm still happy with a solid win, and I'm that much happier to go back there once a month. My live limit game is still quite rough. I'm honestly still a bit overwhelmed with everything going on and give out a lot of information. I never realized it, but playing so much online causes you to ignore live tells since you are not used to having that extra information. Eventually I'll want to move up to a higher limit, but before that happens I need more table time.

The funniest thing is when I was unlocking my bike last night in the dark, I looked up and recognized a guy that had been sitting across the felt from me for most of the night sitting in an office maybe five doors down from mine. Crazy. He had looked a little familiar but I would never have guessed he worked in the same building as me. If I didn't have the fishbowl effect of looking from outside in after dark, I probably would have never realized it. I'm going to see if I can track him down and introduce myself -- maybe he is interested in the Wednesday night games.

In other news, it looks like I've finally convinced Wade and Thuan to try a few new sites (they use Party and UB respectively). I'm really pushing PokerStars on them -- you can definitely feel the online poker world shifting over to Stars with the way they treat their customers. In fact, both Stars and UB keep a large player base without offering large bonuses -- a true testament to the quality of the software, customer service, and rake structure. I believe Stars will pass Party very soon.