Orleans Open

In the next few days, I'm probably going to post some things that aren't really pleasant. I know, you are all thinking how rare that is ;)

So before I get to the bad stuff, I'd like to remember some of the good, as well.

I truly try to be as balanced as possible, and there is a lot of good to highlight in the poker world.

Orleans is doing a pretty frigging good job this year. I messed up on the first O8 event count. I don't know exactly how I screwed up so badly, but at least I have somewhat of an excuse. Brian kept fudging up the count on the Tournament Clock and had to correct it over and over again. So somehow the figure of 500-something got stuck in my mind, and although it was later corrected, I couldn't get rid of it. In fact, I kept counting up the prize pool in my head and it was way off. I couldn't figure out why I was so off, and I was getting angry at myself. I'm a moron, what can I say?

Anyway, regardless of being 100 players off, they are still doing a great job. And if anyone hates to admit that, she is me. I loathe the Orleans in so many ways that I don't even want to discuss it.

The satellites range from an awesome deal to a terrible one. The O8 and Stud sats take out a lot of juice for the buy-in, and give almost no play. It's better just to buy in directly if you can, or play a NLHE sat. If you can't, go downstairs and play some cash games until you can pony up $200.

Which leads me to one of the rare mistakes that I felt Orleans made. This year they kept ALL of the cash games downstairs and all of the sats & tourneys upstairs. While this may sound like a good idea on the surface (the seniors were complaining about the long walk from the garage to the tournament room), the problem is that it practically forces people to leave the Orleans after they bust out of a tourney or sat.

Instead of sitting down in a cash game, they make the long walk back downstairs and end up just leaving. They probably see the action in the poker room on the way out to the garage, but they just give up and decide to go elsewhere for better action. Perhaps if Orleans would have kept the low limit games downstairs, and put the oddball games and middle limit games upstairs they would have more cash game traffic. Whenever I bust out of an event, the first thing I look for is a mixed game, Razz game, Stud game or some other oddball game (Chinese, PLO, etc). I will sit down if they have something rare during a festival (that happens a lot). But if I have to walk three miles downstairs to the poker room through the hall of shame, I'm probably just going to pack it in for the day and escape to my room.

Besides this, though, and the other two problems I wrote about last week (lack of tournament rules available for players, changed structure on 2nd chance event), Orleans is doing a good job.

At buy-in, players receive a $5.00 comp. If they last until dinner, they receive a buffet comp. Not a partial comp, not a buy-one get one free comp, but a full comp to any meal, including the more expensive ones like seafood night. So the comp is potentially worth $20. Their buffet is no Rio, that is for sure, but it is something that they don't have to do, and did anyway. They also have fresh fruit available all day in the tournament area that is free. Once again, not sponsorship for pros, but something that they didn't have to provide, yet did.

The rooms are $50 Su-Th, $90 Fri, Sat. And they are decent. Bring your own coffee, because they are so cheap that they charge for the horrible, in-room coffee that they provide.

I was so tired yesterday that I couldn't even play in the Stud event. Yeah, I actually skipped what I went to the Orleans for in the first place! But I'm not disappointed. The trip was actually a huge victory for my morale. And Glenn's, too.

Glenn cashed in the first NLHE event he played in. It was $225 with a rebuy. He never had to rebuy. He busted out about 2:30am, just inside of the money. Yeah, the structure is THAT slow. The top 27 got paid, and he was 26th, I believe. He was very pleased with his performance, not being a tourney player and just getting back into the saddle after not really playing NLHE tournaments for a couple of years.

I played in the first O8 event. I busted out right before dinner. I never got much going on. I did well the first hour, sharing the orphan pots with another experienced player, but then tougher players got sat at our table and I wasn't able to steal nearly as much.

Finally, a WSOP bracelet holder got moved to our table and took up the aggression factor a notch. I was praying to find a hand when he was messing around with a big stack, but it never really came. Eventually I had 78TTds in the BB. He raised, I smooth called. This is not a good hand, but I was going to try to flop something and see what happened. I flopped a couple of draws. I checked, and he looked at his hole cards again. That is how I knew he didn't have a king (top card on board). So when he made a continuation bet, I called. I figured he had a draw, probably open ended or wrap, and was the favorite, but I had no chips and wanted to see if I could double up. The turn was an eight, not so great, counterfeiting my crappy low draw (not that I ever thought 78 was good for low), and pairing something I didn't need paired, but oh, well, by that time I was pretty committed. I think I had 375 left and the big bet was 200.

The river was a four, giving him two pair with his 48, and some kind of mediocre low.

But I was correct in my read, so that felt okay. No tears from me, I take my victories when I can, they don't come along often enough for me to ignore them.

Next: my second O8 event and Glenn's second NLHE event.

Felicia :)