Hey, there's a casino here!

"Greektown... Greekotwn? Greek-block!" - Tim Allen

Yes, Greektown. The one block area of Detroit with its own name. A dozen or so greek restaurants and an indoor pedestrian zone, which with much pomp and circumstance, was converted to the Greektown Casino. I had only ever been there once, despite being 20 minutes away.

I went down there with someone from work and we found a great table:
$1/$2 $50min/$100max $6/dealer rake NLHE.

Good stuff. We sat down to a very tight table. It was funny, but I actually calculated the optimal bets. $6 if you wanted many callers, $7-$9 if you wanted 1 or possible 2 callers, $10-$12 if you wanted no callers. Knowing this information is helpful.

My strategy is to typically pick up a few pots here and there, and aftrer taking down a big pot, use my chips to start stabbing at the tight players. The problem? I never got the big hands. AA was dealt 4 times and KK twice, none to me. As a matter of fact, I did get QQ one towards the end of the night. A player 2 to my right (who I was playing with for 2 hours now), made it $15. The game had loosened up at the very end and I knew he had a hand. I looked at my QQ and made it $30. He put me all in and when I looked at him, I knew he had it. I laid down the QQ and he
flashed me the rockets. TOUGH laydown.

Todd played about 10 hands in 2.5 hours and ended up $40 bucks. He got paid off on aces TWICE!

I hit only two flops hard. K3 from the BB hit 2 pair and very late in the evening I called a $10 bet with 33, but only because 5 others did. I was in the SB and figured anything but a set and I am done. (I was SO card dead, that I had not been able to play a hand in a half hour. Even if I got a marginal hand, one of the two players on my right came in raising, and they usually had decent hands.) So, I played the 33 and the flop was 245. Hey, not bad. But I am out of position and feel I have to check with so may players. It checks around and the turn is a 4. Now I check again, worried about trips re-raising any semi-bluff. I call a $5 bet. The river is the lovely 6 and I bet too much and do not get a caller. After the bet, I realized my body language had changed... I was that "reverse tilt" guy, throwing in his chips. Who was going to call $25 on that board? Gez. Missed out on a value bet there!

Other than that, I made one other mistake. I gave a new player at the table a free card on a turn with TPTK because I thought he had middle pair or less. He made a straight.

I played tighter than I wanted, but without ever being able to build a lead, I found it hard to stab or steal. I remember trying a steal from the button after it was folded around, with J5o. I ran right into AJ and JT. And a Jack flopped. Not good fonz. But I got away fast. I was doing a good job reading hands until the very end.

Good things:
Did not play nervous. Did not do anything majorly stoopud. Made mostly solid decisions.

Bad things:
That $25 bet on the straight. The missed read on the player drawing to a straight.

Overall I paid $30 in table fees and ended up down $24. I played "scratch poker".

BUT, I will go downtown again. Now that I know they are spreading a game I can enjoy.

Also of note was a "rounders" table where they played one rotation of NLHE and one rotation of OMAHA. I would have LOVED to have played that, but it was $20/$40. Way out of my wannabe league.