Channeling My Inner Donkey

I’ve seen donkey play. And I’ve heard people that I thought excellent players exclaim that they’ve played like one. But never, until Sunday, did I find my inner donkey. In some ways, I feel this was an important rite of passage for me.

It was unfortunate timing for me as I bumped into a guy that sometimes backs me in events. After selling 50% of my action, I was really looking forward to playing the 2nd chance tournament at the Gold Strike’s WPO. The field was going to be about 200 strong and the structure offered a lot of play. I had played fairly well the day before in a low buy-in event at Sam’s; finishing out of the money, but making the last two tables of the 100 player field. In fact all three of uspoker boyz made the last two tables at Sams, with Debonair making it to the final for a ten way chop.

I had been thinking a lot lately about adding some more moves to my play; this was probably my kiss of death. In a case where fancy play syndrome met up with the four legged pack animal, I played the worstpoker of my life. If you’ve been there, you know it’s like an out of body experience, where you wonder who keeps moving your chips into the pot on obvious bluffs and mis-timed stop and gos. Maybe I should have been more upset with my play – but I have to say the whole experience was enlightening and almost liberating.

I played better in the sats, but unfortunately, here, the donkeys prevailed. I swear the winner of my NLHE sat got it all-in three times with nothing but a gut shot wheel, andrivered it all three times.Early in my Omaha hi/lo sat I lost heads up witha second nut hi and low toa nut-nut. I recovered, but not quicklyenough to make a decent run – anda wild man at the table was amassing enough stack to thwart any likely chops.

In all honesty, Iprobably wasn’t mentally prepared to take on Tunica. I haven’t had my head in the sat/tournament side of poker for awhile – mostly playing cash games online lately. And with mytwo of my pokerboyz (Debonair and wildbill)in town,I was mostly focussing on hanging with my buds and sharingridiculous gambling tales – which I will save fornexttime.

I must say that I did eventually pull even in drunken pai gow. And wildbill and I had a nice run in baccarat; our gamechoice motivatedby the factthe dealeris one of our favs inTunica (andI suspectwildbill has more than a passing fancy for this fiesty gal that can go toe-to-toe with our naughty repartee).

Tunica has always been a regroupingexperience for my game. There is something about inserting myself into that environment every January that sets my game facefor theupcoming year of play.And I feel pretty pumped up, even accounting for my lackluster performance. I’m just hoping thatmy donkey’s emergence was just a cautionary signpost for 2007 and not a harbinger of play to come.

I hated to leaveTunica, especially with a number of bloggers showing over the next couple of weeks. So I guess I’ll just have to stay tuned to Maudie, Gracie, and the G-Vegas gang for their exploits.