-30 @ Hollywood Park

When Jennifer called and said that she would be arriving at LAX at 7:00 pm instead of midnight, I started making my plans. I left work at 3:30 and was sitting down at a table by 4:00. In my first hand I was the big blind with pocket tens, and by the time it came around to me it was a total of 3 bets. With action like that I folded. An ace on the flop brought more betting, and 10s on both the turn and the river finished it off. I was so busy obsessing about what I could have had that I didn't notice the size of the pot or who took it.

I sat tight for a while and then played three hands in a row. The first two were disasters, made worse by the fact that I had to show my hands; two missed flushes but I (stupidly) stayed in with a medium pair. Of course I lost both times. But I then flopped a set of 4s, and was able to make $50. That started me back on a positive road, and I quickly followed it up with
two pair (kings and queens) and a flopped set of 8s. Besides the 8, an A also showed up on the flop, and there was one guy betting strong, but not strong enough to make me think he had pocket rockets. I check raised during this and when it came to turn 'em over the old guy sitting next to me (the one who hassled me in barely understandable English about my missed
flushes. I didn't get that, why does he want me to know that I played badly? I would never tell someone that if I had a chance to get his money) said that I better have a good kicker. I said that I didn't have a kicker and showed my 8s. He responded that I didn't need a kicker with that hand.

At this point I had played for an hour and was up about $40. During the next hour I played a couple hands more aggressively than I should have and nothing came of it. That, combined with the slow attrition of the blinds and jackpot (it is $5 per round at the Park; $3 for big blind, $1 for small blind, and the button contributes $1 for the jackpot) left me down $30 for the day. The table was such that I could have made money if I stayed, but I wanted to be on time to pick up Jennifer.

Just like the Commerce Casino last night, this table was filled with people who didn't want to have many chips in front of them. It was also a fairly superstitious lot; a new setup was called for every 20 minutes, and when a seat opened up someone from our table took it. I wouldn't have thought anything about it (there are some positions that I like more than others; I'm not very fond of sitting right across from the dealer but instead like the corners) except that twice the people moving made a comment on the order of "I hope this is luckier than my last position".