A Little Pokie in Okie

Choctaw Casino and Resort

Ms. Duck and I joined Lil' Annie Okie, Tin Man, and Philly Phanatic for a road trip to the Choctaw Casino in Durant, Oklahoma for some poker and casino games.


We left Friday morning for the three hour drive and arrived hungry, so we headed to the casino buffett for a bite. With our newly minted players card, lunch was only $5.99 and included quite a few choices. Southern, Italian, Mexican, and Asian were all available. In addition, there was a nice salad bar and dessert bar.

I started with the chicken tortilla soup, which is one of my favorites. The soup was excellent, one of the best bowls I have eaten anywhere with plenty of meat and a decent kick. There were a few beads of sweat on my forehead by the time I finished, which I take as a good sign. For the main course I selected a sauerkraut baked chicken, mashed potatoes with brown gravy, and corn. The chicken was very tasty, but a little dry, and the potatoes were obviously made from scratch and were delicious. 

For dessert I chose a small slice of red velvet cake. Again, the food was excellent and quite a value at less than six bucks.

With full stomachs, Tin Man and I headed upstairs to the poker room only to find a waiting list for the $1-2 NLHE cash game, but a new table was opening as we approached the counter and we were seated immediately. Even better, we were able to sit next to each other, which was nice.

There was a lot of limping early, but the table eventually got a lot more aggressive. I got involved in two or three pots, but whiffed the flop on all of them, and ended up making most of my money on two hands.

In the first hand I made a tough river call when my opponent bet big. All I had was TPTK, which I will usually fold to a sizeable bet in this situation, but this particular villain had been playing aggressively, so I made the call. He mucked his hand and said "nice call."

I raised to $12 from the button on my second big hand. There were four or five limpers in front and I had established a tight aggressive table image, so I thought I might be able to steal with a squeeze play here. I got one caller, which I didn't really like because I was holding A-8, not exactly a stellar hand.

The flop of A-Q-8 hit me hard and things got even better when my opponent tossed $15 in the pot. I raised to $40 and he pushed for $113 more. I didn't like his 3 bet, but I thought that he would raise with either A-Q or Q-Q preflop, so I eliminated those hands from his range. He could have pocket eights and hit his set, but since I had an eight myself, I thought it was unlikely and thought a call was reasonable. He tabled Q-8 for bottom two pair and was drawing to two outs. Amazingly, he didn't hit either one of the other queens and I pulled in a nice pot.

Tin Man and I had been playing for a couple of hours and still needed to check in at a nearby Hampton Inn (rooms were over $300 a night at the Choctaw), so we found the rest of our crew and headed out. Tin Man left $40 to the good and I was up a cool $225.

Our plans were to return to the casino after an hour or two of rest and play in the 7 pm $135 NLHE tourney. Philly Phanatic and I were the only ones in our group that actually played, but I'll save that story for another post.

Till next time, win the flips.