California poker

So I got back to California towards the end of November and felt a bit flat. First of all in England playing poker was quite social - often with one or both of my brothers at the local pub or club. The pub or club was a 10-15 minute walk or drive away. I would often drink some beer or eat some take-away with our poker playing mates. After the pub game we would sometimes go to the local cardroom until 1 or 2 in the morning playing cheap tournaments or just hanging out. Or we would just chat about how we played.

Here is California I do not have a local poker buddy who is committed to the game like I am. It is quite a solitary life, playing poker out here. If I want to play a live game I have to travel 40 minutes down to Oceanside to my small local casino (cheaper tournaments, good food, nice people and dealers) or brave the LA traffic and drive 1 hour north to high-crime areas to play in the Commerce, Bike, Hoolywood Park, Hustler or Hawaiin Gardens card rooms. Alternatively I can drive east inland about 45-55 minutes to an Indian casino to play in their poker room. The traffic in LA is a nightmare - more like a parking lot. And that is when they are not doing roadworks and closing the freeway, redirecting you into gang-infested south-central LA side streets on a detour at 3am in the morning. And travelling alone I cannot use the carpool lanes so I cannot even share this nightmare. There are occassional newspaper reports of people winning large amounts of cash in the casinos in LA and then being followed home and robbed at gunpoint. At rush housr the 1 hour jounrey to LA becomes a 2-3 hour ride home. Likewise the Oceanside travel goes from 45 mins to 1.5 hours and the Indian casino journey similar.

My final gripe is when you do get to a casino for a big event, sometimes the event was sold out the day before and you join a long line of 500-600 people to buy in as an alterate where you sit down as people get knocked out. Last time at Commerce I sat down starting with 10 big blinds about 5 hours after the tourney started. What a nightmare!!!!

It is almost more tempting for drive to las Vegas (4-5 hours) and stay in a cheap casino to play out there and avoid the hell that is LA traffic.

The final option is playing online. Of course - this is my preference. I realised in England I did not play online so much because it was just as convenient to go to the local pub or cardroom to play. Over here the plain fact is if you live in Orange County (possibly the best place to live in California) then it is not convenient to go to the poker room.

I can play online from the comfort of my house. No travelling involved. Arguably its a little harder to make money than playing live. I still like to play live occasionally. Hence after my flat period I have resumed my once per week travel to Oceans 11 in Oceanside. And I will still play a couple of tournies at Commerce or the Bike when I see something I fancy. But for the most part, my focus will be online poker. Just because I live in California.....

Now the positive stuff - the pros. Arguably unless you live in Las Vegas I have more card rooms available within an hour of me than anywhere in the USA. And the daily tournaments are much bigger than in the UK (100 or so at Oceans, 200+ at the Bike). Also the "special" or large tournaments are far mroe regular with The Bike, Commerve, Oceans 11 and other casinos regularly running tournament series with buyins from 100-500 and big cash prizes. So compared to a lot of people in the USA I am in a great location for poker.

I just hate driving in LA..................