Golden at Goldie's Casino

A couple nights ago, Raina was working, and I was bored. I decided to go to a local casino, Goldie's Casino in Shoreline (this being Washington, apparently casinos are allowed if the city permits it... this one was about 25 blocks from my house).

And it went... well.



In total I won about $2,600. Now, this might seem like an abnormality, and it is. Here's what happened.

I'm playing 3-6 limit holdem and I'm doing meh about 90 minutes in--down $50, but determined to turn things around. I get dealt a Queen and Ace of Hearts. A decent hand. I call to the flop and the 10 of hearts hits. There's one bet, a couple calls, including mine, I'm thinking to myself "It'll be cool if the Jack of Hearts hits on the turn."

It doesn't.

Instead, it's the King of Hearts. At this moment there's one other guy left in the hand, he's acting after me, so I check, he bets, I call. I've got a lot of outs right now--a straight, a flush, oh yeah, and a royal flush. The Jack just needs to hit on the river and I am completely golden.

Then it hits. Boom, Jack of Hearts. It came down almost in slow motion. I look at the board, then I look up at the Jackpot bonus board and see if you hit a Hearts Royal, you get $2600. I almost immediately check and the guy bets into me. If I bet, I know I have the best hand (duh), but I don't know if he'll call. If he doesn't call, I might not get my jackpot. I simply call his bet.

He turns over his hand--I don't even remember what it was--and I just say "Royal," and turn over my cards.

The whole table kind of explodes. All sorts of things happen at once--about 6 people at the table tell me how I just won nearly 3 grand, the dealer is congratulating me, and the pit boss comes over to me.

"Can you please show me your ID and your Social Security card," the pit boss demands. Since I hadn't expected to win more than $600 (the requirement for needing the card) I didn't bring said card. She gruffly says my ID will do, then double and triple checks to make sure it's me. She has me look up at the security camera so they can run through their computers and make sure I'm not some known cheat and then looks at the deck used to make sure all the cards are there.

When all of this has commenced, we're actually a couple hands down the road. Finally, the pit boss pulls me over to her desk and says "Washington Law only allows us to give you $2500 in cash, is it all right if we give you the rest in this $100 check?"

"Ummm... yeah."

With that confirmation she hands me the check and whips out a wad of twenties. Twenty, 40, 60, 80, 100, 20, 40, 60, 80, 200. She counts out $500 and then pulls out the hundreds. six-hundred, 700, 800, 900, 1,000. I'm feeling like a game show winner as she reaches $2,500. I take the money, fold it and put it in my pocket. I tip out about $120 to the dealer and $100 to the guy I was heads up against. I also bought the table a round of drinks.

To top things off, this casino also had a high hand of the past 2 hours jackpot, which I easily took as well. Another $200.

I mentioned earlier how this casino was only 25 blocks away. It should have been easily walkable, but I actually drove there. My logic was "If I win, I don't wanna be walking down Aurora (somewhat sketchy area) with $150 in my pocket!" Never was I so glad to have thought so cockily. Even the 100 foot sprint to my car felt hectic. I launched myself in, slammed the locks on, and only then did I start freaking out.