My take on the Auburn casino experience:
I also wished there was more time to sit & chat w/ jkramer5, but we only got there a few minutes before the tourney started. John -- I'll see you on 9/4 at Hagars!
John got a nickname while we were there: Little John. John is a big fella, & some guy sitting to his left decided to call him that & it stuck. I thought it was kinda cool, but don't know what John thought of it. Since we walked in together & I am getting into archery, I declared myself Robert Hood. Since I only stole from the rich a couple of times that night, I'm not sure that will stay my nickname or not...
Anyway, before going into to how things went for me, here are my thoughts on the casino itself. The employees are friendly & pay close attention to what's going on. I like that, but maybe that's normal. It was my first cardroom experience. I didn't mind the tourney format because I just like poker in general. What I did not like is the cheep-o chips they have. They actually had those diamond plastic chips for the tourney in green, red & pink. Unmarked. This seems unwise to me. I'd never do this myself, but if someone knows they use this, they need only bring a few extra of their own. Easy to get a hold of.
The tournament:
There were a couple of tables w/ I think 9 people each at the start. There were (as John said) a LOT of rebuys. I thought I played pretty well. I got below 200 once & went ahead & did a rebuy for an additional 400, then I did the optional last option to rebuy for an additional 1500 (everyone did that). I never did hit the felt before rebuys were no longer an option. I survived until they were just going down to one table. I'd love to have done better, but I don't think I did badly.
I had some good wins & some bad beats, but no big mistakes that I know of. I went all in when I thought I had the best hand, but someone had one slightly better. Ah, well.
By the way, I don't have the detailed memory some of you have for individual hands. I only recall a couple of specific hands. The very first hand John mentioned where a bunch of people went all in was interesting. One person had KK & the other QQ.
The cash game:
The cash game started w/in a few minutes of the table freeing up. It was a $100 buy in no limit game. I've played nothing but no limit for so long I was actually looking forward to a limit game, but I was right there & decided to go ahead & play. My other option was driving to Grass Valley to play their 3/6 limit game. I'd rather keep playing than drive around.
The chips for the cash game were not much better than the tournament. They were generic chips marked only w/ the denomination. I didn't recognize them (I'd seen the plastic tourney chips on the web but not these). I got a stack of $5 chips & a stack of $1 chips. Blinds were $2 & $3, w/ a $3 drop.
I played ok there, too, but got a little low & went all-in w/ AdKd. Flop came AKx. I'm thinking cool. But, in the end, someone else had a flush & that was the end of my stack. I thought about heading to Grass Valley at this point, but I was getting a slight headache (I have blood sugar issues & hadn't eaten for a while) so I decided to call it a night, go home & eat.
One thing humorous. A lady walked in for the cash game (wasn't in the tourney). I was more focussed on the game & only half paid attention to her, so my interpretation of all this may be a little off but here's what I saw. She was acting like she was new at this & people, including the dealer, were carefully explaining how all this worked. She was eating it up. A couple of hands after she sat down, I looked over & saw her doing the chip-riffle thing like the pros on TV. We didn't make eye contact, but I saw her look down & realize what she was doing, stop, & look around. I don't know if anyone else saw this. Three hands later she had the biggest chip stack. She's also the one who got the flush that ended my evening in this casino.
A final note for others who haven't been in a casino: I'm not the timid type so going into a casino wasn't making me nervous, but I was feeling a little like a fish out of water at first. Didn't take long to realize I wasn't (a fish out of water that is). It's just a bunch of people playing cards just like a BYOC event. Only difference is in the cash game the dealer takes a few chips out of the pot to pay the bills. My advice -- if you're in the mood for cards & there's no BYOC game going on, just walk into a nearby cardroom & sit down. Enjoy...