During a tournament series, the Peppermill moves their Poker Room to a ballroom so they can run Tournaments, Sit-N-Gos, and Cash Games in the same room.
I walked into the ballroom on Wednesday night around 6:40. Since my bankroll is doing rather well these days, I've been wanting to play in some bigger games. There was an open seat at the $15/$30 Limit table, so I bought in for $600 and walked over to the table. There was eight stacks of Red Chips and $100 bills, but only three players and no cards being dealt. Some of the missing players were off having dinner, and others were wandering around the ballroom waiting for the other players to come back.
I took an open seat, and waited for about ten minutes before there were enough players to start dealing. We started with just five, and then one of them wandered off. So we played four handed for about 15 minutes before players started slowly returning to the game. Around 30 minutes later, we finally had a full table.
The "Play" at the table was a little more aggressive than a $3/$6 or a $4/$8 game. There was a preflop raise in about half of the hands, as well as a decent amount of 3-Betting. The number of players that saw a Flop was between 2 - 5, rather than the 4 - 8 you would see in a 7-Card Bingo game.
As for the players, some were on the tight side, like me. Others were rather loose, but not quite in the "7-Card Bingo" category. Overall, they were decent players. There was nobody who was just dumping money on the table, and there was nobody who I thought, "Wow, this guy can play."
After two hours, the players wanted to bump up the table to a $20/$40 game. I wasn't thrilled with this, but I didn't object. I was only gonna play one more hour, and I was up $200 at this point, so I figured what was the worst that could happen.
I ended up finishing the session +$319. I was pleased with my play overall. There were definitely some spots were I could have saved a Bet or two. And there was one hand that I should have slowplayed, even though I normally don't slowplay at the 7-Card Bingo tables. I 3-Bet with AA, and the Flop was Ad Qd 3s. I bet and both of the players called. The Turn was [Ad Qd 3s] 3h. I bet, and one player folded while the other one made a reluctant call. He then quickly folded on the River. Checking the Turn would have looked like I just had KK, and maybe they would have bet the River, or at least they both might have called the River bet.
I will definitely be back to the "Big Game", but I would rather play $15/$30 instead of $20/$40 for my first few sessions because of variance. The swings in this game can be rather large. If I call a preflop raise ($30), and then call all three streets ($15, $30, $30), that's $105. For $20/$40, it's $140. It only takes a couple of bad hands to take a chuck out of my chip stack. In this session, I bought in for $600, and my stack fluctuated from a low of around $325 to a high of almost $1100.
One problem that I've had with bigger games, like $2/$5 NL, is that I actually care about the money. I haven't developed that disregard for the money that a player needs to play in bigger games. Hopefully, that will start by playing in the "Big Game".
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