Palomar Club

I used to exclude myself from the (long) list of degenerate poker players I know, mainly because there was still one club in San Diego County that I had yet to play in. Honestly, that was a serious badge of honour for me, because I've played a lot of poker over the years, waaaay before even the start of the poker craze on tv. Even by Gambler's Anonymous standards, I've played a lot of poker. Trust me. It's too much to admit.

But still, I could hold my head up high, and truthfully say I'd never been to the Palomar Club. It's just 5 minutes away from the gym in Hillcrest where I work out at 4 times a week. But it's in a dodgy neighbourhood, and it's a tiny room with three tables, so I left the Palomar was for the real degenerates. It was the club of last resort. It was a even a few steps down from the Lucky Lady down the street, which is my club of last resort. But, a few weeks ago, I heard it was getting renovated, from a guy that worked the floor over there. We were playing at the Village Club, sitting around, joking, and having fun in the no-limit game. At first when he said he worked at the Palomar, I gave him some crap about it. But I said no matter how much crap people give him about his club, don't worry, the Village takes the cake. Actually I just started the sentence, and he completed it. He looked around the dump, rolled his eyes, and repeated a few times, "takes the cake".

Anyway, I ended up there tonight, after I sat around the Village Club for 40 minutes waiting for a seat. It's true what they say -- it's crowded right after the first of the month, when everyone receives their check. When I rolled in at 6:30pm, it was already crazy at the Valet, and I talked with the guy parking cars, who just shook his head and talked about these people living month-to-month. Well, check day almost coincided with Friday, so it was something of a witching hour at the Village, and I ended up taking off without playing a hand. The lists on all the games were like 15 people deep when I left.

So I end up looking for the Palomar, just to see what it was really like. I was actually impressed with the renovation. The action was still slow, probably because the word hadn't spread yet, or probably because the place closes at 2am (by ordinance), and the diehards usually want to play all night, so they go to the bigger casinos.

I play in the $1/$2 blind, $100 max buy-in, no-limit game. It's full of these wanna be wise kids wearing hats and sunglasses. It's amazing how they mint these kids at the stereotype factory. Newbies are playing poorly, bad bets and bad calls are made. No one plays impressive poker. Actually, the best guy is an older guy named Irish, who talks in a presumedly Irish, though vaguely suspicious, brogue. He's pretending that he's not looking at his cards, and the kids kind of fall for it. He was winning a lot, and actually had my $500 stake covered. I stayed out of his way, and visa versa. We sat next to each other, and lightly joked, even though we both knew each other's story. I was playing my normal act-loose, trap with the nuts game, and he was gambling a bit more, but often had the best hand. Anyways, I end up +$336, and call it a night. Irish started to lose some of his stack before I left, mixing it up without the best hand. Still, I'm pretty sure he knew what he was doing.