First time at a Live Casino NL Game (long)

[briachek]

Okay everyone, here's my story if anyone is interested in reading about it.

I've always been a limit HE player for small stakes in the casino (2/4, 3/6 and the occasional 5/10 until i realized my BR can't take it), but I decided that I was gonna sit down at the $1/$2 blind $300 max buy in NL table at the Taj Majal in AC. Why would a limit player do this? Well, i've been playing with my friends in small stakes NL games for about a year and I was ALWAYS a winner. Seriously, i was down maybe 3 times for the 100 times that I played with them and none for more than $40. Often, i was up $40, and very often up even more. Now, I will be the first to admit that most of my competition had no idea of how to really play while I was really trying to learn. Reading forums constantly (eventually only BTP), I realized while playing PLO that I can get used to making the big bets needed to be successful. My bankroll had grown to a point where I could sit down.

So anyway, I decided to sit down at the game with $200 which would be enough to manuver in the game but a little lower than a full buy in in case I find that I am over my head. Well, the first 10 round around the table were boring as I got NOTHING to play, but this gave me the tightest of images that I felt it really helped later. After being down $50 in blinds and a couple limps and one draw chase, i found myself with 77 in the BB as the UTG+1 made it $12 to go (the standard raise) and he got 4 (!) callers before it got to me. Well, I called and the flop came a beautiful A75 2 clubs. I decided to bet out (a bet that really was too small) and got 3 (!) callers. Now the pot was huge. The turn came and offsuit Q. I go all in for the $120 i had left and the preflop raiser took no time to call. I think i'm dead as he probably outplayed me with AA or maybe even QQ. River is an offsuit 10, I flip my cards over and he mucks. I can only guess he had AQ since they don't make people show on all ins. Well, now with almost $400 in front of me, I relax and start to really play. These people only saw my one hand and it was big and I made it expensive so no one was willing to play back at me. I didn't really exploit it but won some small pots because of it.

Eventually, I make the most of my cards and as well as getting in some good situations (like my AA vs JJ all in preflop for about $150) with some REALLY BAD players. My stack continues to grow until its over $700 and I have everyone covered by at least $200, and most by at least $400. I take a break, come back for my BB and find AA and there are 6 limpers to me. Well, I won't go into details since I will post the hand in a separate thread for analysis. Just lets say I got greedy and really misplayed it for a $400 pot against a terrible player who caught a gutshot with A3s on the river. Everyone had sympathy for me and I couldn't think straight. So, I ended up folding all my hands til my next BB and decided to leave since I wasn't playing right and didn't want to tilt off my money. I left up $324 which could have been up almost $700 but this was still my biggest win EVER!

Well, I will try the tables again. I'm not sure how well I actually played because they were terrible and scared of me. NO ONE ever raise me (except for the AA vs JJ hand preflop) because I only showed down good hands and ALWAYS made people pay to play. So I was never really put to the test because no one EVER raised me. So I will have to see in the future. Thanks to everyone that have helped me with their posts. I will be posting hands that I played for advice.

[Rhound50]

Brian, nice work. Passive tables like this are wonderfull especially if you have a tight table image. You can draw cheaply when you want without to much fear of being reraised you can push people around and get heads up when you want. You can also raise people and quicky find out where you are at. Good job even though I dont like it when you steal my blinds you bastard

[Rhound50]

Wow i didnt know B as Tard was a bad word.