This past weekend, Scooter and I headed a bit West of Chicago to play. I’ll admit that my first goal was to earn some Tier Credits, but without giving up the goal of making money, because as you all know, “Winning is the most fun!”

We headed West mid-day Friday with the intention of collecting a couple of new chips on the way there. We arrived to play at about 9pm, immediately getting our spots at a microfiber table. After our first roll, we knew we needed to make some adjustments, but then the table across from us cleared, and it was a felt table. By 9:30, we were settling into our positions there and were doing OK, crews were very friendly, as I already knew they were. One member of our group had to leave after a couple of hours, but then Scooter and I got dialed in. Over the next 3 hours, we were on point, and I hit one four point fire, and Scooter hit 2@4 pt fires, one of which he had set the (gulp) 8 as the fifth point, but couldn’t convert. We finished the night in the black.

We slept in a little then headed to another related venue and were the first on the ½ table opened. I do practice from SR so I took up SR2 and went light until settled in and did OK. Another great crew here, and I took my SL1 position as they opened the full table. We shot until 1:30 or so then grabbed lunch, both down a little. We headed to an unrelated venue and shot a couple of times. Good folks and crew here as well, but since I had a key goal for the weekend, I headed to venue 1 for a bit. There was a left ½ table open and I got my spot. I had some really good rolls going, had the 4th point lit once, but couldn’t convert that one. Then as they opened the other ½, some obnoxious twits walked up and laid down about 10G in 50’s and such in the middle of my point cycle. I turned my bets off, shot, on, shot, something else happened, off, shot, on, 7, left. Upon reflection, a lesson learned is that some may actually do it on purpose, not out of ignorance, as this guy immediately laid the 10 and once I made the 8, laid that. I need to be able to accept that *******s exist, and not to let it get in my way of making money.

Anyway, I then headed to pick Scooter up and head back to Venue 2. He’d done well being on a hot roller but the action had leveled off. We got our spots back and did well on recovering some more. We left for a late dinner, and when we arrived back at the table, noticed that the rails were full all around, and the bank was to the last row of chips. A couple of shooters had had epic rolls. On the surface, we could be ticked that we’d missed the rolls, but in reality, if we’d been there, I don’t believe the rolls would have happened as the situation and positions of folks would have been different. I thought of asking everyone for $100 as a thank-you, but decided against it. 😀

With little prospect of getting our spots back, we headed to Venue 1 and got our spots. We both got into our groove and Scooter soon hit the 5 pt Fire. We finished with a good profit and headed to be.

The next morning, we went to check for coupons and found an empty ½ table open for SR. We both quickly had some decent rolls and really had a blast with the crew and a couple of guys who had walked up (with good etiquette). They opened the full table and I had an OK roll before heading for home.

We both ended up decently in the black and are still having withdrawals from the great weekend we had. In the end, I more than met both goals and am ready for our next session.

Scooter has already reached out to NFF to thank him for recent coaching, but I’ll give kudos again to NFF and BTK for the Advanced class in 2016 and everything I learned there. I use that daily to watch the dice, analyze, and correct. That was critical to the weekend’s success. In addition, most instructors have given recent advice either through my 2 most recent classes and all on this forum. Thanks! (No, I won’t give $100 to you all).

All the best to the GTC family.

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