Wow, what a nightmare of a trip.
Got within 95 miles of Reno (at night of course) when the waterpump on the car went south. Permanently. Unfortunately, those things just don't heal themselves. Luckily we were only 2 miles past a town with a hotel. Managed to limp across the median and back to the town at idle without seizing the engine up. Got a room and called Emmasdad to let him know I wasn't gonna be there to take his dough afterall. I guess he lost his brakes on the way and was held up because of that so I wasn't the only one with bad car kharma that night.
Anyhow, got up the next morning and discovered that we were in what both the locals AND non locals refer to as the armpit of Nevada. A little slice of hell known as Lovelock. Called the local towing company to find out what they would rape us for to get the car 94 miles to Reno. ChaChing! OUCH!!!! Instead, we left the car with the local mechanic to fix on monday. Then got the brother of a friend in Carson City to come pick us up and take us to Reno since we had reservations at Circus Circus and didn't want to give those up for 3 day stay in Armpit, NV. Long story short, waterpump got fixed for $230, we rented a car for $115(+gas) to go back and get it and saved a couple of bucks. We also managed to salvage a decent part of the vacation in Reno at the cost of a few days that we would have had at my parents house in Oregon.
I played poker 3 times while I was there. 1st time was a weird kind of NL tourney where they stop it after like an hour or hour and a quarter and pay the top 3 chipstacks the prize money. there were about 35-40 entrants I think and I went out in 11th. Bye Bye $18.
Next session was later that same day when I went to the Eldorado and played Limit 3/6 Kill for about 9 hours and lost $25 in the process. Normally I would NOT have stuck around for so long but the folks at my end of the table were EXTREMELY fun to play with and I really enjoyed my time there. Bye Bye $25. Oh well, it was worth it.
The next day I played No Limit at Circus Circus. $500 max buyin but nobody at the table had more than $250 so I bought in for $300 to have everyone covered. Blinds were 1/2.
2nd hand I get AQo and raise to $15 ($5 was minimum bet) get 2 callers and the flop comes Qxx so I BTP and they all fold. Thank god they did too because just then a huge earthquake and made my hands start shaking somethin' terrible!
Few hands later I get QQ in UTG+1. UTG goes allin for about $55 or so. I decide to push because I didnt want anybody else calling. Going all in was handy also because then I didnt have to deal with that damned earthquake happening again in the middle of this hand. Luckily, the 2 players that had halfway decent hands were good enough players to be able to lay down AKs and AJo both of whom of course stated they had planned on calling the first dudes allin until I had beat them to it. Apparently he was going allin a lot with a short stack and rebuying short again when he lost. A king hit on the turn so I am very happy the dude with AKs folded. Anyway, UTG flips over A4o and I start sweating the cards to come. Thankfully he didn't catch the case ace although he did hit a 4 on the flop and I of course worried about the other two 4's the rest of the way. 2 hands played, 2 hands won. Yay.
About 7 or 8 hands later, we are down to 5 or 6 handed and I get A9o OTB. 1 limper and I raise to $15, an older asian fellow (why do they always make me think they are crazy maniacs?) calls my raise. Flop comes down Ace high and he checks to me so I BTP. He calls me again and I start to shit. The turn card is the
and he checks to me again which of course has me thinking I'm probably outkicked or worse so I take a free card and check behind him. Then the river is the
giving me 2 pair. he checks to me once again. Then I notice something that I should have noticed earlier, there are now 4 diamonds on the board and I have the ACE OF FREAKING DIAMONDS!!!! So I start checking and double checking and even triple checked to make sure there was no possibility of a straight flush or boat. He has about $200 in front of him so I decide that since he had checked to me every time that the best he probably had would be 2 pair but more likely a weak Ace and probably wasn't going to call ANY bet that I might make. So I figured that the only way he's calling me is if he hit a flush as well so I announced my bet was $200, that would put him allin if he wanted to call and give me a very nice win if he did. But I doubted he would call it. Wouldn't ya just know it, that damned earthquake struck again and this time was so bad I was almost unable to control the shaking enough to get my 4 $50 stacks out there in a neat and orderly fashion. Damned adrenalin. He thinks, and thinks, and thinks, and then thinks some more before finally tossing his cards in the muck. I only won about a $95 pot that hand but holy cow were my hands shaking! I stated laughing about it and told them I had a palsy. I'm pretty sure I may need some more live play experience.
A few hands later, I was by myself at one end of the table and the 4 or 5 other guys at the table were all at the opposite end. They were talking and it became quite clear that they were all locals who played with each other on a regular basis and that I was definitley the new guy. Not to mention they kept looking at my now very nice stack in front of me and knowing that I was probably new to this and making plans on how they were going to take it from me. So, although I didn't really doubt that I could probably hold my own aginst them, I decided to just say "Well, I really hate to hit and run like this fellas...." as I got up to go get a chip rack. They didn't try to talk me out of it which I kinda felt good about later on after I had replayed the short session back I my head.
We left for Oregon the next day and since we had spent more days than originally planned in Reno, I didnt get to play any poker at the Indian Casinos in Oregon. Oh well.