I bugged out of work Tuesday around my normal time, perhaps a shade early, and drove down 95 to Foxwoods… Got there without incident around 7pm, and met up with who was playing at the 20/40 tables. He had been there all day, and the day before, so he was really in a groove… Playing there on weekdays is a completely different feel, not that the 4/8 players are any better, but it is just far less crowded.. The tables were all full, but the waiting lists were near-empty. BTW, for those that have heard me bitch about it before, Foxwoods has FINALLY replaced the waiting lists whiteboards with a computerized system… It looks like ass, but is much, much better, and you can readably see ALL of the lists from pretty much anywhere in the poker room thanks to the big projection screens…

After a bit of a warm-up period (I haven’t played in quite awhile) I probably played the best, tightest poker of my life.. I barely opened my mouth at the table, and didn’t play many hands, which left most everyone at the table intimidated. The only times I really spoke up was when I was wishing this one guy a happy birthday or when I was needling someone… I have decided that one of my strengths playing poker is detecting when someone is on/near tilt and shoving them way past the breaking point both with my play and with my big mouth.. I hadn’t said anything for an hour or two last night, and and been folding hands for about as long. I won three hands in a row, one against birthday boy and the two others against his friends… After the third one (against mr. birthday), I could tell he was getting pissed, so I turned to him and said “You have any more friends?”. Holy shit did he lose his mind… :) He paid out me and the rest of the table for the following 45 minutes… I ended the night around midnight, up like 10 big bets (which is pretty good for 5 hours or so of play). I grabbed rory’s room key and headed back to the hotel room exhausted… Rory came back from the poker room at like 6:30am… I had his key, so he had to wake me up when he got back to the room, but I didn’t mind.. We chatted it up for like an hour and went to bed at 7:30a, setting the alarm for 10:30a… We woke up around then, made it back to the poker room around noon, but neither of us were really into it.. I knew I had to leave early so I could continue on to NJ, so I was only planning on playing until 3pm or so… I played until 2pm and had a few good hands killed on the river, and when I left the casino at 2pm, I had killed my profits and was even with when I walked in the night before… That’s the problem with sitting down for such a short period of time, one or two bad hands and you aren’t going to have the time to recover… I didn’t lose money though, so whatever… I am contemplating heading down to AC sometime next week, so I will just make it back then.

I left the casino at 2pm, but didn’t make it back to NJ until like 7pm, which is ridiculous.. There was traffic at every turn, the most notable stretch was from the end of the Tappan Zee to 287, and also the mystery bottleneck between denville and Rt. 15 on 80… That section is like perpetually backed up for no discernable reason. It’s nice being home with the Fam and not having to feel like I have to turn around right away and drive back. I spent quite a bit of time wrapping and crap tonight, I can’t wait to give some more gifts… and I exchanged gifts on Friday, since she flew out on Monday… She got me a few more South Park talking dolls to accompany Timmy… I now have talking Jimmy and Butters/Prof. Chaos, which are awesome.. When I opened Jimmy and pressed his “talk button”, Corinna thought it was broken, but it was just Jimmy stuttering… :)