I feel like a rabbit's foot

I guess if I can't be lucky for myself, I'm OK being a lucky charm for others. At least I'm doing a little bit of good in the world.

I am back in Vegas and pumped up and ready to play. Monday was definitely a buzz kill as I last 1 hour and 10 minutes in the $2,000 buyin tournament. I was trying to remember the last time I blew 2k that quickly. I could insert a lot of jokes here, but Mary Jane doesn't find them as funny as I do.

Back to the rabbit's foot opener, if you are running bad or in need of a shot of luck, come find me at the tables. On Monday, there were 3 flopped straights and 2 flopped flushes in hands that I open-raised. The odds of each of those events occuring was somewhere between 1 in 77 to 1 in 136 depending on which one we are talking about. I found it kind of difficult to really compete with those kinds of occurences.

After my 1:10 fun at the WSOP, I hustled over to catch the Bellagio 1k event at 2:00. I was in that kind of poker mood that is not good for my opponent (I really need to learn how to bottle that). Apparently, the table decided that I raise and reraise a lot. I wasn't the most popular guy at the table - a fact that later became a running joke. I had a huge stack for most of the day, but busted out when consecutive good hands just wouldn't stay ahead.

One of the most interesting hands was when I looked down at KK after just raising 3 of the previous 5 hands. As I had hoped, I got a BIG reraise behind me for most of a guy's chips. Knowing my image, I just called because the other guy would be first to act and he really had no choice but to ship them in. As expected, he announced all-in on a T63 flop. I called really quickly. The guy says "dang it (or something like that), you raise way too much and NOW you got a hand.". He showed Q6. I'll give you two guesses what the river card was.

Ahhhh, no problem, I'm still alive although back down to slightly below average. It wasn't but just a few hands later that I picked up 78o next to the button and raised it to 2,200 (I had about 14k more). A very aggressive guy in the BB just calls my raise which struck me as being odd. The flop comes 832 rainbow. He checks, I bet 3,100 and the guy quickly shoves "all in". I am basically left with a 10k chip call to have a 30k chip stack. I thought that if the guy had a big hand and wanted a call that we he would "hollywood" it up a little. I decided my pair of 8's was ahead, so I called. My opponent turned over KJ and my stack was soon to be back up to super size - didn't even really sweat the last two cards still to come. Then BOOM!, K on the river. Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.. Good luck - good game. Yada, yada, yada....

Anyway, I'm going to go for a jog and blow off some steam. I'll be the guy running around the Las Vegas strip dragging the big rabbit's foot behind me....