So. California Trip

[lwestatbus]

I'm going to be in Southern California for about fifteen days starting later this week. The Bicycle Club is relatively close to where I'll be and I was thinking of playing it. Does anyone have any experience with this place or any other recommendations for the SoCal area?

[golddog]

No experience myself, but from what I remember the Poker Road crew saying, the Bike is in a pretty sketchy part of town. If you're staying nearby, might want to double-check on that.

[HalfSugar]

Pretty sure it is also quite a lot tougher than Vegas casinos from what I read although hopefully the lower limits are not too bad. Let us know.

[lwestatbus]

Card Player publishes country-wide tournament schedules and there are a lot of low buy-in tournys scattered around Southern California so I'll probably give one of those a try.

[groton]

To be fair I can't think of a LA Card room that's not in a so so area.

reason why when I lived in Cali I normally stuck to San Diego. But yeah huge cardrooms with a ton of players. so good luck.

[lwestatbus]

I made it to the Bicycle Club but only played for 40 minutes or so. Our schedule got really screwed up and we ended up heading there from the Getty Museum across town at rush hour in Los Angeles. It took TWO HOURS!!!! What a nightmare. We had other plans that evening so I cut the play short (see below).

The club was very large and noisy. I didn't care for the brush stand setup as it seemed pretty disorganized and contributed to the noise. While I wasn't there very long I just didn't get the sense of community I have at my local club. I never heard a player called by name and there wasn't a whole lot of chat at the table. (I was playing 2/4 limit.) There were a lot of eating options and they had an amazing variety of games being played including pretty high limit and many more varieties of poker than I've seen even in Vegas card rooms.

The area of town was mixed being on the edge of transitioning communities. They had multiple raised guard towers in the parking lot. They weren't manned in the afternoon when we were there.

I ended up $60 on the strength of an amazing flop.

[golddog]

...I ended up $60 on the strength of an amazing flop.

What's the scoop then? +15 BB in limit, must've been quite an action board.

[lwestatbus]

...I ended up $60 on the strength of an amazing flop.

What's the scoop then? +15 BB in limit, must've been quite an action board.

Actually not. The play was pretty low key with pots in the $20-$30 range with many pre-flop limpers but most bailing out by the turn betting round. But this hand was an exception. I had a medium pocket pair and there were six or so limpers when the button raised. I flopped top set which remained the stone cold nuts throughout the hand. Flop checked to the raiser who bet and most called. Turn was no threat to me and betting again checked to the raiser (two players to my left) who bet, got some calls, and I check-raised. The raiser looked disgusted as he obviously had a big pocket pair and took a long time but mucked the hand. I had two callers to my raise and both folded to my river bet. I showed the hand. Pot was $80+.

The light play and relatively low pots was part of my decision to not get into a fight with my wife and go ahead and leave.