I think that is a good name for the Crown Casino. Sat down at the $1/2 electronic Casino Malaysia table tonight, after a long day of scrambling to complete work and make flights to do more work in Melbourne. After work, dinner and a shower I was at the table at about 11pm.

Crown has such a great setup for poker, so much better run than Star City. They weren’t spreading a $1/2 live dealer game, $2/3 was the lowest. But they has 50c/$1 and $1/2 electronic tables with plenty of punters. One the $1/2 tables you can buy in for $50 to $100, and I bought in for $75.

Very first hand I am BB and get A A. Nice one.

I was still trying to figure out the table mechanics, which are slightly different to the Star City ones. The action came around to me and I hadn’t got it quite figured out, it looked like someone had raised and then been re-raised by a late position bet of $26. I hadn’t spotted where the pot size was on the screen, but I didn’t want to dick around, and I could see where the all-in button was. So all in I was.

Fold, fold, call, fold, call. I am not at all unhappy about that. One guy has K Q and the other had J Q. And they both called a $75 all in into a $35 odd pot? Go figure. They both had me covered, though I don’t see how playing hands like that, but never mind.

My aces held up and I started the night with a very, very nice triple up.

The two guys that lost went out, we were down to four. Another guy played a few hands and left. I didn’t want to play just three up, since the two guys left seemed to know each other pretty well. I politely played a round and then picked up.

There were four 50c/$1 tables, each with seats free. Those tables let you buy in from $20 to $50. I picked on with mostly business men type guys who where drinking and laughing and having a good time. I was up about $70 at one point, but got a few bad beats and was down to $12 on my $35 buy in.

A guy at the table wiped me out after an amazing run of hands. He had in consecutive hands the nut straight, another straight, the nut flush, trips, the second nut flush which became the nut flush when the ace came on the river, a full house and then yet another nut straight.

The hand he got me on was the last nut straight to my pocket tens that hit trips on the flop. I pushed on the flop, he called (he had about $300 in his stack), and made the straight on the turn. Since he had also paired the 10, I was dead to the river. Oh well.

I fritted away another $35 buy in, trying to convince myself I should stay at such a loose ‘player friendly’ table. But the fact was I was just too tired after a long day, and my judgment was shot.

After being up to $60 on the second buy in, I lost a few $10-$15 pots chasing draws with the odds. Then with $22 left I checked my option in the BB with Q 10. The flop came J K 7. There were a couple of $5 bets, then the table crazy guy with $300+ pushed all in. One guy with $30 called. I wasn’t getting exactly the right odds, but it was a big pot. I let the time run almost down trying to decide, but in the end called. I thought it was a reasonable gamble. It was quite possible one of the five dollar bettors would also call, giving me great odds on my draw, but even if they didn’t, the price was pretty close to right anyway.

Well, my hand didn’t improve and the all in bettor showed A K to take down the pot.

Then, for some bizarre reason he started to pay out on me. ‘That was a pretty stupid call’ he started off ‘you only had a 7% chance of winning’, and a few other general comments about my, apparently, poor play. The idiot had clearly mistaken my open ended straight draw for a gutshot. What a tool.

I was pretty tempted to buy in again and ‘teach him a lesson’. But fortunately common sense prevailed. I really was too tired to play well, as my loss of two buy ins on such a soft table testified. I just left without bothering to respond.

I had bought a $100 card, and cashed it out for $180. Not a bad night all up.