One of the advantages to being a pilot and owning an airplane is the fact that we can take off (pun intended) any time we like and get to three-quarters of the country in less time than it takes flying commercially. No arriving two hours ahead-of-time, no shoe removal or cavity searches, no lost baggage, no restrictions on what we can carry, no paying for stale in-flight meals (in fact, we enjoy first-class on-board catering), no schedules to comply with or cancelations to deal with, no crowds, no lines and no TSA hassles. In short – as an old commercial on television used to proclaim – it’s the only way to travel. So at the end of March, my sweetie wanted to head down to Alabama – where she grew up – to see the azaleas blooming and visit family. In more ways than I can say, she’s a keeper.
She said, “See if you can find a poker tournament somewhere along the way so you can win us some money.”
So we cruised at 17,000 feet at more than 200 miles an hour down to Biloxi, Miss., for the opening weekend of the Spring Break Poker Classic at the Beau Rivage hotel and casino.
With a high-rise hotel complex adjacent to the casino floor, getting to the action from your room is an elevator ride and a short walk. The rooms are well appointed, roomy and ours had a view over the hotel boat docks and out into the Gulf of Mexico. The Beau Rivage is right on the coastline and is truly a Las Vegas-class resort on the Gulf Coast. The hotel is about 10 miles from the Biloxi-Gulfport airport. There is a lot to do besides gaming; short drives or taxi-rides get you to some of the best seafood restaurants and there are other casinos offering the standard games and poker close by.
The first tournament of the series was a $500 buy-in, No-Limit Hold-‘Em tournament that drew just over 200 players, and I believe I saw Hoyt Corkins there as one of the players at the tables. Hoyt lives only three hours away in Alabama and has said – in a recent Card Player interview – that he comes down to Biloxi often, when he’s not going deep in other tournaments around the country. I would recommend attending any tournament down there, especially if you live in a part of the country which at that time of year is still in the deep-freeze. While we were there the temperatures were in the low 70s.
I sat down at the first tournament and for a while things went favorably. I bought a few pots with some semi-aggressive betting and stole a few blinds here and there. I made the first break with more than the $10,000 in chips we began with, so I felt good about how I was playing and the reads I was getting off the competition. Have you noticed occasionally a certain card value or hand will become obvious in the frequency of its appearance? That happened to me with Pocket Queens; I must have had that hand three times before the first break. Every time I raised with them preflop I won the blinds and other bets, nothing huge but I added to my stack.
A round or two after the first break found me with Pocket Queens again, so I raised preflop and got one caller from across the table. He was short-stacked with less than $5,000 in chips, so I put him on a wide range of face-card combinations or mid- to high pairs. Calling my preflop bet left him with maybe $2,500. The flop came down J-8-4 rainbow and I decided that the chances of him having A-A or K-K were low as he did not reraise me preflop; I thought I could beat everything else he might hold.
This was right and proper thinking, except for one hand. Guess what he held? I wanted to pressure him to surrender all the chips he had put in the pot, so I went all-in; he beat me into the pot and turned over his J-J. That cut me down by about half. I believe I read him correctly for what he didn’t have, but I spaced what he might have. Perhaps three or four hands later I get Pocket Queens once again, and I raised preflop about one-third of my remaining stack. I had one caller who vastly out-numbered my stack; the flop came 9-5-3 with two hearts. Seeing no danger in that flop – except for the possible flush I felt was 3:1 against him to fill – I went all-in.
He hemmed and hawed for perhaps 30 seconds and then called. He tabled 6-4 offsuit. I wouldn’t see a flop with that hand, let alone call preflop raises and an all-in; but he did and on the river came a deuce. Unbelieving, all I could do was rap the table, tell him “Nice catch” (Which really was saying, “How the heck could you call me with that, you Donkey?”) and walk away shaking my head. That was tourney No. 1; one mis-read and one competitor getting lucky and I was out. That’s how it is sometimes.
The next days’ tournament was a $300 No-limit Hold-‘Em event and all I can say about that one is I was so card-dead, King Tut has more life in him today than my cards did. I felt like a zombie out of Night of the Living Dead save the fact I couldn’t chase anyone down to eat their heart.
If my first card wasn’t a two I’d get a three or four coupled with something totally random, disconnected and useless. The only thing I could say walking out of the tournament room was “Boy, wasn’t that fun?”
To make up for tournament travails, I did win just under $500 cash U.S. playing Pot Limit Omaha and the side action to the tournament was tremendous. There was often a wait list for everything, even down to the $4-8 Limit Hold-‘Em game. All told, the Beau Rivage is a great place to stay and their tournaments – held several times throughout the year – are a great place to play and then relax in the lap of Southern hospitality. I heartily recommend attending the next one you can get to.
