This weekend I headed up to Lake Tahoe for some Texas Hold’em Poker play at Harveys. This was a short weekend and I would only have Saturday night to put some time in. So around 10pm I started. With $100 in chips, I was seated at a 3-6 Texas Hold’em Limit table.

Limit Texas Hold’em is different from no limit because you need more skill to really win. With this game of Limit Texas Hold’em the blinds were $3 and $1. There are two rounds of $3 betting and raising. First round is after the deal and all players have there two hole cards. Then there is a round a betting after the flop. In these two rounds a player can only bet or raise by $3. The next two rounds of betting players bet or raise by $6.

The evening was going ok. The thing you will notice with a table playing with small amounts of money like $3 and $6 bets is that a lot of people will play all the way to the river. A lot of players will also play marginal hands and sometimes make a win only with the river. This night there was a lot of straight and flush action. I clean up a round with a nice straight having 10d and Qd as my hole cards.

As the hours passed I watched the players. On the other side of the table there were some pretty good sharks. I mostly stayed out of there reach having read there personalities. When the tables numbers came down from ten to seven players there were a few open seats. Open for only a few moments the seats were filled with fresh blood.

Three friends twenty somethings were talking and laughing as the started play. The guy next to me was playing dumb or maybe a little smashed. The other two guys decided to play wearing gold trim “bling bling” glasses. I thought they looked like chumps and thought maybe they are good or just playing like there are good. Turns out they were chumps.

In the next hour I watched as the sharks slowly milked them dry. The dumb guy next to me couldn’t drop his pocket aces and it was clear the shark across was holding an ace high for the flush. After the turn the dumb guy even said there was a flush out there and I put him on having the small end of the flush. One of his ‘bling bling’ glass buddies even play stupid and folded showing his cards early after the turn. When the dumb guy saw that he had lost he said f***! The dealer warned him about his language. He knew the shark had the flush but couldn’t put down his pocket pair of aces and showed me the aces. I replied with something like, yeah it’s hard to fold those. Even though folding after the turn and even after the river could have saved him $40 to $60 in raises and re-raises.

The next hand the dumb guy lost to a straight from a different shark and he said F*** again. This was his second warning by the dealer and notified a boss of the action. The dumb then joked for a round or two and thanked the dealer for changing his ways. Soon we changed dealers. The chumps were losing there money a little at a time here and there hand after hand. Then on a big hand the dumb guy said the word again and the dealer had to kick them off the table. I could see in the eyes if the sharks across the table from me that they wanted these chumps to stay and finish draining their money. They saved some of there money having been kicked off the table.

Later that night when I was heading to my room I saw the guys playing Black Jack.