Tons of Live Poker

I went to Minneapolis for training last week and figured I would try one of their card rooms while I was there. Until I met Kajagugu, I never knew you could play cards outside of Nevada or Atlantic City. Now, I at least look and see if I can play cards when I travel.

While in Minneapolis, my coworker and I visited the Mall of America and rode the roller coasters after training one evening. This was tons of fun. The coasters aren’t as big as a regular amusement park, but the Farily Odd Coaster was more fun than most big coasters I have ridden.



The night before returning home, I drove over to Canterbury Park and tried my hand at 2/4 limit. In MN, they have NL tournaments and SNGs, but there is only limit cash games. This was new for me and I made a few mistakes throughout the night. Fortunately for me, I was able to still eek out a whopping $12 profit after 5 hours of play. I don’t think I played very well since I didn’t know when to chase and when to fold. I should have made more, but I will take the win and try to remember some lessons. An interesting thing about playing in MN is the 18 year olds at the table. After sitting next to a young kid for a while and noticing players at other tables, I finally asked about the minimum age to play. I guess since it is limit and alcohol isn’t free, they allow teenagers to play. Kids drive over from other states to play cash and tournaments. If you were an online pro and still wanted to get in some live experience this would be a good place to live.

Training ended Thursday afternoon and we headed to the airport. While waiting in line at security, we found out that due to air traffic control problems and storms in Atlanta, our flight was already delayed 1.5 hours. We were fortunate enough to get on the “earlier” flight that didn’t actually leave until 10 minutes after our original flight. I can only imagine how late we would have gotten in if we had to stick to the later flight. I know some of you travel all the time and are crying the blues for me and I appreciate that.

What is the best thing you can do after getting in to bed in the wee hours of the morning and going to work? Go play in a home game of course. We met over at Kaj’s on Friday night. We had much of the usual crew including Surflexus, his wife and Weak Player. Weak slashed and burned his was to victory and Mrs. Surf has cashed for the 2nd time in a row. I was able to make most of my buy-in back at the cash game and stayed out way too late. Thanks to our host for putting up with us for so long. The hosting curse continues for our man Kaj as he was first out in the tournament and got felted in the cash.

Stacie was out of town for the weekend, so I was able to play late in to the night again on Saturday at my neighbor’s. There was only 5 of us and we started a small heads up tournament. I managed to beat 3 of the 4 of my opponents. We only played one game each and then started up a cash game. I had some great cards and good calls to net me a nice return for my evening’s play. It felt good to have a week that added a little cash to the live bankroll especially after playing 3 nights and about 12 or more hours.