-120 @ The Commerce Casino

At Tri and Victoria's baby shower at her brother Chris' place, Chris and I started talking about poker and how it would be nice to meet up at Commerce. Last Thursday he sent an email saying he would be there on Friday and I (after initially declining but then thinking about it all day) called him back and told him I would be there. Chris plays $6-$12 or $9-$18, but was kind enough to come by the unwashed masses tables and say hello. I had been playing for about an hour at that point without much luck. The main problem was combating boredom and I wasn't always successful.

• My first hand I was the big blind with red QQ. The flop of 10,6 of spades and 2 of diamonds wasn't very good for me, and the 2 of spades on the turn was even worse. I checked but it was two bets to me by the time it came back around so I folded, only to get annoyed with a Q showed up on the river. Of course the flush took the pot. Earlier in the week I mentioned to Guy that I don't get miracle cards because I don't set myself up for needing the miracle cards, but when I do see the miracle card happen it can shake a fellow.
• My other pocket pairs were 3s, 9s, and 7s, but only the 7s started to lead to something interesting. The flop gave me the gut shot draw possibility, but the turn missed me and put 3 diamonds on the board. The betting was too rich and I bailed out.
• 2,3,6 as a flop isn't very interesting unless you are playing 4,6 suited as I was. The turn was a 5 and I raised it only to have it re-raised. There were just two of us at this time and it was clear he also had a 4, but my hope was that he didn't have a 7 as well. He didn't and we split the pot.
• J,2 suited. After reading about my adventures last week, Chris suggested that I need to be playing tighter and he mentioned the J,2 suited as an example. I think that he missed that I had posted so was already in the hand. I agreed that it wasn't a good hand and I do, in fact, need to be playing tighter. But when the same hand came to me on the button, I thought "why the hell not?" and decided to play. The A and Q of my suit showed up on the flop, and I made the flush on the turn to take a nice pot. Later on in the evening I folded it my J,2 unsuited in middle position only to watch a J on the flop, a 2 on the turn, and a J on the river. This might be one of those hands that I'll decide (for no rational reason whatsoever) to always play.

That's about it all the interesting hands for the night; I again had trouble getting a hit from the board. Even though it was a significant loss for me, it wasn't very demoralizing and I left thinking about when I was going to play again. I'm also considered bringing my iPod along next time. Not only would it help me from getting bored waiting for the next hand, but it would also keep me from hearing the constant snorting from the guy on my left, and the constant humming from the guy on my right.