So this past Friday as usual I left the office and headed to Borgata to grind out my hourly. I've been taking shots at $5/5 PLO lately and did the same. I've run super hot recently but Friday I took the other side of it finally and lost a bunch. Nevertheless, I stuck around and ended up getting a little back.
In the midst of a topsy turvy session, the floor came over to lock up a seat for a player and put down a piece of paper that said "TF" and a couple minutes later, Ted Forrest walked over to the table, scoped out the relevant stacks and players, watched a hand or two play out, and then picked up the paper and didn't sit. I bemoaned my bad luck in an ongoing text thread with some PCFers, saying how cool it would have been to play with Ted Forrest.
Truth be told, I have no idea why he even thought about playing in the game. He's been more or less living at the Borgata for more than a few months now. His default game has been the $80/160 yellow chip game which is most often OOE (two rounds of Omaha, one round of Stud 8) and sometimes a mix centering on draw games (Badugi, Badacey, 2-7 Triple Draw, but also with Omaha and Stud 8). He also plays the middle-high games ($100/200; $200/400). But I've literally never seen him play any big bet game. There are $10/25 and $25/50 NL and PLO games running most weekends and he's never sat in them that I've seen. So I was bummed he didn't sit, but hardly surprised because even though $5/5 can play huge with the right people (and the right people were in the game), it was a big bet game.
Anyway, the PLO game broke and, not wanting to go to bed quite yet, I jumped over to the $10/20 Omaha 8 game. For years this was my regular game so it's not hard for me to fall back into limit mode, so I did and played for a couple hours until the morning shift started to come in. It was probably about 7am when out of nowhere Ted sat in my $10/20 game. At first I thought, "This is insane. WTF is he doing in a game this size?" Then I realized that he was probably there early before the $80/160 game started and was just killing time.
But he was playing super solid. You'd think someone playing barely more than 10% of their regular stake might donk it up a bit, but Ted was playing real poker. He was also really talkative. He joined into the table discussion about Donald Trump (he was anti-Trump fwiw), weight loss bets (natch), the benefits and detriments of rake vs. time games (he said he'd actually rather pay rake in the $80/160 mix because the draw games take far too long to deal). He noted that for every 30 pounds a man loses, his penis gains 1" exposure. All in all a very interesting morning and afternoon and since Ted has long been one of if not my single favorite true grinding pro, I was really psyched to have the experience.
BEAT: Ted may have been prompted by my physique to note that men can grow more dick by losing weight.
BRAG: I squeezed Ted out of a 3-way pot with a raise on the river and he said (I think sincerely), "Good raise - you stole my half."
VARIANCE: Ted Forrest is one of the best players of all time and was playing $10/20 Omaha at 7am on a Saturday morning in Atlantic City, so the shine comes off the apple of playing professionally pretty quick.
In the midst of a topsy turvy session, the floor came over to lock up a seat for a player and put down a piece of paper that said "TF" and a couple minutes later, Ted Forrest walked over to the table, scoped out the relevant stacks and players, watched a hand or two play out, and then picked up the paper and didn't sit. I bemoaned my bad luck in an ongoing text thread with some PCFers, saying how cool it would have been to play with Ted Forrest.
Truth be told, I have no idea why he even thought about playing in the game. He's been more or less living at the Borgata for more than a few months now. His default game has been the $80/160 yellow chip game which is most often OOE (two rounds of Omaha, one round of Stud 8) and sometimes a mix centering on draw games (Badugi, Badacey, 2-7 Triple Draw, but also with Omaha and Stud 8). He also plays the middle-high games ($100/200; $200/400). But I've literally never seen him play any big bet game. There are $10/25 and $25/50 NL and PLO games running most weekends and he's never sat in them that I've seen. So I was bummed he didn't sit, but hardly surprised because even though $5/5 can play huge with the right people (and the right people were in the game), it was a big bet game.
Anyway, the PLO game broke and, not wanting to go to bed quite yet, I jumped over to the $10/20 Omaha 8 game. For years this was my regular game so it's not hard for me to fall back into limit mode, so I did and played for a couple hours until the morning shift started to come in. It was probably about 7am when out of nowhere Ted sat in my $10/20 game. At first I thought, "This is insane. WTF is he doing in a game this size?" Then I realized that he was probably there early before the $80/160 game started and was just killing time.
But he was playing super solid. You'd think someone playing barely more than 10% of their regular stake might donk it up a bit, but Ted was playing real poker. He was also really talkative. He joined into the table discussion about Donald Trump (he was anti-Trump fwiw), weight loss bets (natch), the benefits and detriments of rake vs. time games (he said he'd actually rather pay rake in the $80/160 mix because the draw games take far too long to deal). He noted that for every 30 pounds a man loses, his penis gains 1" exposure. All in all a very interesting morning and afternoon and since Ted has long been one of if not my single favorite true grinding pro, I was really psyched to have the experience.
BEAT: Ted may have been prompted by my physique to note that men can grow more dick by losing weight.
BRAG: I squeezed Ted out of a 3-way pot with a raise on the river and he said (I think sincerely), "Good raise - you stole my half."
VARIANCE: Ted Forrest is one of the best players of all time and was playing $10/20 Omaha at 7am on a Saturday morning in Atlantic City, so the shine comes off the apple of playing professionally pretty quick.
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