Big Elks Club Hand

Warning this hand is about a super bad beat I witnessed.  If you hate reading about bad beats please leave now.  Very early in the Elks Club Tournament, during the first level under the gun rasies 3x.  Late position player re-raises 3x more.   Player in the middle goes into the tank for 5 minutes and finally folds but keeps his cards in front of himself.  The under the gun player shoves.  Keep in mind we started with 10K chips so we are all 200BB deep.  Late position player snap calls for all of his chips.  What I later learned is the under the gun player has history with many players at the table.  He is a super lose lagtard.  Turns out he had the good this hand, pocket Aces.  Late position player shows pocket Kings.  The player in the middle turns over his mucked A-K suited.  He was considering calling being under the gun was such a lagtard.  To make a long story short the late position player needs the case King on the river to stay alive.  Of course the one outer comes on the river to leave pocket Aces cripled.  Live Poker is so rigged.  Thanks for reading and good luck at the table.  Tony

Elks Club Tournament Report

Only have time for a short post today.  75 players showed up with the top 6 getting paid in another soft Tenafly Elks Club Tournament.  We started with 10K chips and 20 minute blinds.  Structure was fine for a low limit MTT.  I felt I played fine with the garbage I was dealt all night.  My cousin and I both got down to the final 2 tables.  I waited patiently to make a move which I did from the button with A-3 off. (At this point 14 players left.)  The big blind snap called me with A-K and IGH frustrated like a normal night of MTT Poker.  Tomorrow I will write about some interesting and crazy hands from the night.  Thanks for reading and good luck at the tables.  Tony

MTT Winner

Feels so good to win an MTT, even if it's a micro!!

Elks Club Poker

Tonight I am going to play in my first live MTT in months.  Oh how I miss the feel of chips and cards while playing a live No Limit Tournament.  The field is usually really soft in this MTT with a small group of really aggressive  great players mixed in.  My plan is to avoid the great players early to build up chips against the bad ones.  Will use these chips to battle the great players later on at the final table.  If only it was so easy to have a plan in advance that will work in the tournament.  My real goal is to just play some solid Poker and hope things go my way to build up a stack.  I will post about my results tomorrow.  Thanks for reading and good luck at the tables.  Tony

Borgata Trip Report

Had a very relaxing, profitable trip to the Borgata yesterday.  We got there too early and there weren't any limit games opened up yet.  Finally they opened up a $2-4 game but the average age of the players was 70 so I passed on that game of Bingo, LOL.  I waited another half an hour for a $3-6 game to open up.  The game was great with a 50% mix of decent players and 50% totally clueless terrible players.  I won a bunch of pots that just had to be bet at and I wouldn't have called.  I love passive players that want to check it down after the flop.  Only bad thing about this table was big pairs were poison.  I lost with Aces and Kings.  Also I saw Aces cracked repeatedly.  I saw them win one time by a clueless player that totally miss played them.  When someone raises in front of you, almost always 3 bet your Aces.  Clueless player flats and it encouraged small and big blind to see a flop.  I hate that play and don't know why people do it.   Somehow the flush and straight draws all missed and they won the pot.  In another crazy hand out table almost hit the bad beat jackpot.  A player with 8-9 of clubs saw a flop of 6-7-10 of clubs.  Other player had 4-3 of clubs and all we needed was turn of river five of clubs!  Jackpot was up to 282K and we all would have gotten a piece of it.   So close and yet so far.  I will write about more good hands lately.  Tony

Borgata Poker

Looks like I am heading to the Borgata this weekend for some live Poker.  Look for a trip report on Sunday or Monday.  Good luck at the tables.  Tony

Online Tournament

Yesterday I played my first MTT in 3 months.  It was a good experience, especially being I cashed for 2x the buy in.  I finished in 17th out of 230 runners.  I had forgotten how much time and frustration goes into playing in these.  A few times I was all in close to the money with the best hand and it actually held up.  I could have easily bubbled this, so one wrong move is all it takes to get knocked out without winning anything.  I may start easing myself back into playing them.  Thanks for reading and good luck at the tables.  Tony

Online Play

The Limit games, if you can find them, online are really good these days.  I've been playing the micro-stakes at Carbon Poker, full ring and short-handed and the action has been fast and furious.  Sure the variety of games doesn't match FullTilt or Poker Stars but beggars can't be choosers.  Especially for us who live in the U.S.A.  We take the games we can get these days.  As for Cake Poker I've completely given up on them.  I spend a year building up a decent roll there and I initiated a withdrawal in January and still don't have my money!  I've emailed them repeatedly with not luck yet.  I have to hope they don't pull a FullTilt/Absolute/UltimateBet on me and just disappear with my money.  Oh well these are troubled times us U.S.A. Online Poker players live in.   Good luck at the tables.  Tony

Ebook Sneak Peek

I'm making great progress on my Ebook, "Trouble in Atlantic City". Got a rough draft of 52K words. Am winding the story down to it's conclusion. Than the hard part starts proofing and re-writing. Don't know how long it will take from this point but hope to have it on Amazon and Barnes and Noble within 3 months. For now enjoy this chapter. Tony


Welcome to Atlantic City, faded seaside resort city and east coast Vegas, want to be. Playground to every jet setter, high roller, high stakes Poker playing smuck, sleazebag and little old grey haired lady trying to get a piece of the gamblers dream to make that one big score. This is my territory; my name is Frank Vagola, Atlantic City P.I. I’m an ex-cop from the New York suburbs of Ridgefield Park New Jersey. After putting in my 20 years of service to qualify for a full pension I retired from the police force. Things were getting too corrupt for my liking anyway. Also New Jersey Policies were starting to get to me. Over time we public servants have lost respect from the public we are paid to serve. Being there have been many scandals involving crooked cops I see why this is. These days I spend my time in private practice as a private investigator, have an office above my garage in a small house I rent in Absecon New Jersey. It’s not glamorous but it pays the bills and keeps me out/in trouble on a daily basis. Mostly spend my times following cheating spouses around to motels alone the major highways of New Jersey. Speaking of which I have lived in my whole life and intend on dying here too.