North Beach, SanFran
So I took my first trip out to Cali to visit kat in San Jose. As wtih all Katstavo extravaganzas, we hit a good number of stops for a relatively short time. After hanging out and helping Kat move into a new place we headed down to North Beach in downtown San Fransisco to eat dinner and hang out with Malcolm and Julianna, who happened to be SanFran for the weekend at the same time as us. We ate at the Stinking Rose, which is apparently known for their generous use of garlic. The food was incredibly tasty and they did not disappoint with their promise on the garlic. After dinner we headed to a bar called the Bamboo Hut (very similar to headhunters in Austin), where Kat and I had been before dinner having some happy hour drinks.

Screaming Bachelorettes with Penis Hats
The next day we made the two hour drive out to Napa Valley to check out some wineries. First stop was Freemark Abbey, which has some damn tasty wines. I’d recommend anything they’ve got. We ended up buying a few of their Voingier white and a dessert wine that tasted like pineapple upside-down cake. Delicious. Next stop was Charlies Krug. Their stuff was alright, but still not on the level of Freemark Abbey. Last stop of the day was Francis Ford Coppola. Ann had warned me that Coppola was a mediocre wine and that the winery was a tourist trap and damn could she not have been any more right. Ann had related a terrible story about a packed winery full of screaming bachelorettes with penis hats, fighting her way to the wine tasting, only to be disappointed by the wines. I unfortunately, did not heed her advice and while there were no penis hats, the place was packed with a bunch of obnoxious people and the wine was mediocre. Arg.

Poker?
No trip would be complete without poker and with a casino less than 10 minutes from my hotel, it’s no surprise that Kat and I payed a visit to Bay 101. Bay 101 has a fairly large poker room, probably the biggest poker room I’ve ever been to. After waiting on the list for an hour or so, we finally got seated at different 3-6 tables. My table had it’s share of maniacs, mostly Asian guys who raised, reraised, and capped pots often. They were seated between seats 1-4. Seat 5 was a whitey mcgee, who was hitting like crazy when I first sat down and then ended up dumping his money back to everyone else with a lot of second best hands. Seat 8 was a mexican guy who was the spitting image of my uncle Albert, only a foot shorter, complete with his shirt buttoned to his navel showing off his chest hair and the top of his beer belly while he cursed every hand in spanish with his buddy sitting behind him. “Joooo wants to raise me? Dees guy keeps eh rasiing me!” Seat 9 was a guy who had just terrible luck. Every time he had a good hand (which wasn’t often) he ran into bigger hands, generally by me. In the two hours that I played poker that night, I had pocket aces 4 times. And I had a number of other pocket pairs that held up as well. It was insane. After a couple hours Kat and I were both up over $100 and decided it was time to cash outta there and get some rest.

The next day I was heading out, so we didn’t have a whole lot to do and headed back to the poker room for some final action before I flew back to Austin. This time we went straight to the 6-12 table because there was no wait and we were both curious to see how we’d hold up. Interesting thing about 6-12 at Bay 101, it runs exactly like the 3-6 game. I mean, all the betting/raising/etc. I’m not sure if this is common or not, but it seemed to me that it had something to do with the fact that Bay 101 uses $2 chips for 6-12, so it really is like 3-6. I continually screwed up when calling raises “I’m going to raise to $18. I mean, $36.” Once again we had a couple maniacs at the table. My side of the table was all players that played well. They didn’t stay with junk and most of the itme when they were taking control of the pot, you were probably behind. I had one really notable hand. There were a couple maniacs across the table that were betting and hitting with anything. One of them in particular had somewhere around $700 sitting in front of him and I was determined to get it from him. I personally enjoy turning the tables on people and killing them with their own hands. Now I understand that it’s generally a stupid idea to play junk and it can get really costly, but something struck me when I picked up 6-4 offsuit and I was determined to ride it out. When the preflop betting got capped with 5 players, I was really starting to think I had made a bad decision. When the flop came out 10-6-4, I knew this was going to be the hand. Flop betting got capped with four players. The turn was a 3, betting narrows it down to me and the maniac. The river hits another 6, maniac bets, I raise and he gets really pissed off, asking people at his table what I could possibly have to back up my betting history. He angrily flips over pocket kings and dares me to show my hand. I non-chanantly call out “G-Ride, the 64 impala” as I flip my cards over where he can see them. Maniac was livid. He proceeded to dump the rest of his money trying to win with another junk hand. And it wasn’t just me he was out to get, it was anyone who played good cards. In the end, he did dump all of his money to someone on my side of the table and rebought. It’s nice to see maniacs get taken.