Return to Los Angeles

I was not unhappy when my law practice required that I travel to Los Angeles (L.A.) to interview a witness and obtain a deposition. The last time I visited the L.A. area (two years ago), I came in second in a big hold'em tournament at Hollywood Park Casino, and, at a bridge tournament in Anaheim, I shook hands with Bill Gates (who plays my bridge bidding convention, "Cappelletti Over No-Trump").

Each night on this trip, I played in one of the events at the Hustler Casino's Sweet September tournament. Larry Flynt has made the Hustler Casino in Gardena a first-class casino for both high-stakes and low-stakes players. Late one night at a $6-$12 hold'em table next to where I was playing, a $51,000 bad-beat jackpot was hit in grand style (a royal flush beat four jacks). I have never seen such happy faces!

I stayed at the Crystal Park Casino Hotel, which is centrally located and offers a good poker room rate. Since I was free three mornings and afternoons, I decided to check out the L.A. poker scene. I visited and played poker at most of the other big casinos in the L.A. area. For those of you who might visit L.A. in the near future, my impressions of each casino's size (based mostly on apparent number of tables in play) were as follows:

Commerce Casino and The Bicycle Casino are both gigantic, with more poker tables and Asian games than I could count. Hawaiian Gardens Casino, which had easily quadrupled its size since I was last there, was also very impressive.

Hollywood Park Casino in Inglewood (home of Mike Caro University), just a short drive from the Los Angeles International Airport (LAX), also is very large. And the Normandie Casino in Gardena is about a mile down Vermont Avenue from the Hustler.

With all of its large and small casinos and cardrooms, L.A. can probably claim to be the "poker capital of the world," based on the number of poker tables in play per day.

Perhaps the most interesting hand I played during my three-day visit occurred in a limit hold'em tournament. Everyone had started the tournament with $800 in chips, and per my usual limit hold'em strategy, I played very tight in the early rounds. After playing for almost two hours (the limits and blinds increased every half-hour), I had played only about half a dozen hands, won most of them, and had built my stack up to about $1,400.

My tight play had not gone unnoticed. In one of the earlier hands I had won with A-K, my worthy opponent had slammed his losing A-Q onto the table, exclaiming, "I shoulda known that rock would have A-K!" That comment helped set the stage for my subsequent play with the Q J in second position.

For two rounds, I had not played a hand and had passed on my blinds. Although I normally do not play medium hands when "sitting on my chips," I thought this might be a good time to speculate with a good drawing hand. I limped in, and if one of the several looser players at the table raised, I planned to reraise and then bet the flop. Based on my very tight image, a mere mortal might put me on aces or A-K suited. But, no one raised. One of the loose players called and the big blind also called.

My Q J looked great when the K 9 7 flopped! "Eureka," I thought to myself as I bet $100 after the big blind's check. The loose player behind me raised, and the big blind folded. What would you do with my hand, the second-nut flush, and straight-flush draw?

I decided that he was much more likely to have a worse hand than mine, and not the nut ace-high flush. I thought I could extract the most from him by calling now and check-raising on the turn (with double-size bets). So, I just called.

The operation was a success. The turn card was a brick. I checked, he bet, I raised according to plan, and he called. The river card was a 9, pairing the board. What would you do with my hand now?

Greed is a terrible thing. Again, I thought he was fishing in with some muzzy hand, and I didn't want to let him off the hook. So, I bet the $200, and he quickly raised. I said to myself, "Uh-oh," but I had to call. He had K-9 offsuit, which gave him a full house.

I was down to about $200 in chips, and didn't survive the next set of blinds. In retrospect, perhaps I shouldn't have bet on the river. That would have left me with $400 in chips, and a greater chance of survival. Or, maybe I should not have speculated in the first place. From a macrostrategy perspective, there are good arguments for both speculating and continuing to sit on my chips. I think it is very close.

The next time you visit L.A., you should have no trouble finding a nice place to play poker.