On a recent trip to New York I decided to take a visit to Atlantic City. It’s less than two and a half hours from New York by Greyhound, even if it’s not the nicest way to travel. I stayed at the Hilton Resort this time, which was cool, but they only had a small poker room and the cash games on offer are a little limited. So I spent most of my time playing at Caesars Palace and the Taj Mahal.

While playing poker at the Taj I was seated next to a Russian guy who couldn’t speak a word of English and didn’t really have a sound grasp of the game either. I only found out later that he was Russian because another Russian joined the table. This guy was involved in practically every hand, and I had him to my right. Happy days! I managed to hit a nice winning streak, including quad jacks, and turned what started off as a losing session into a winning one, with plenty of chips coming from the Russian next to me.

My next venue was the Borgata – which is a superb casino with an excellent card room. It reminds me a little of the Venetian in Las Vegas, my favourite poker room in Sin City. Anyway, I gotta tell you about this hand I was involved in at the Borgata, but don’t worry it’s not a bad beat story! We’re playing $1/$2 NL hold’em and I have JQ off suit. There are 5 players in the hand. The flop comes 289 rainbow and everyone checks. The turn brings the 10, giving me the nuts. Someone makes a medium bet, one player calls, and two fold. I raise it up, then the other guy re-raises, the other caller re-raises, and I also move all in. There is probably about $1200 in the pot that I can win. I suspected that one of the players may have the same hand as me, as he was playing super tight, but would you believe that all three of us had the same hand of JQ! It was a 3 way chop!