Monthly Archives: October 2016

Pot Odds

The worst part about being unemployed is sitting around alone all day. Even though I didn’t spend a ton of time socializing at my old job, I did take it for granted that I was able to interact with other humans all day. Yesterday was day five of being unemployed, or maybe I should say under employed, as my next door neighbor, John, paid me $60 to help him build a stone wall in Jamaica Plain. It was hard work, but it got me out of the house and doing something. Afterwards I was a total mess of dirt and cement mix when I went to get the kids at the bus stop. Since I am new to this, and they don’t take the bus everyday, I’m still not clear on exactly what time the bus shows up. It dawned on me after a few minutes that I was really early, and because the bus stop just so happens to be at a liquor store, I figured what the hell, why not spend roughly 20% of my income for the week on an 18 pack of Miller High Life.

When I got back outside of the store with my Miller High Lifes, I noticed a camera man setting up, and a television news reporter milling around. It must be the most annoying thing in the world for television news people to have to repeatedly be asked what is going on, but I was curious, so I bugged her about it. She told me something about, I dunno, a trench had overflowed nearby, and some dudes were trapped in a tunnel. I forget the details exactly. While she was telling me this I was more focused on the way she talked to me like she was somebody I ran into everyday. I thanked her for telling me and then sauntered back to my corner of the street, thinking well, if she isn’t the nicest on the scene television reporter ever.

I don’t normally hangout on street corners for over a half an hour. Not really something I am used to, but I noticed as I was out there that my mind started to wander, drift off into nowhere. Probably this was also on account of forgetting my phone, but whatever. The idea sprung into my head that I should ask out the news reporter. Obviously she’d say no, most likely this would occur simultaneously with the arrival of my kids’ bus showing up, but for just the sake of something happening, it’d make things a little more entertaining.

I started to consider my odds. Things I had going against me included but were probably not limited to:

1. She was probably over twenty years younger than me.
2. I was covered in dust and dirt at the time.
3. I am currently unemployed.
4. When my kids hopped off the bus she might surmise that I was married, or there’d be the potential for baby mama drama.
5. I am married.
6. I am not saying she’s judgmental, I really have no idea, but she might be part of a subset of people who if they don’t look down upon you for milling around on a corner in the middle of the day with a case of beer, they instead possibly feel sorry for you. And nobody wants to date somebody because they feel sorry for them.
7. She probably has a boyfriend, and he’s probably an anchor.

Uggh, imagine having a romantic rival who was referred to as “an anchor.”

On the plus side, I figured, well, you never know, maybe she’s crazy. But, before I could make my move, the bus showed up, and I contented myself with the knowledge that there’d be plenty of gambling going on later in the evening at the Crescent Lounge!

I snagged a ride with Candace to the lounge. Not having to drive was a big bonus, because it allowed me to drink, and of course, insobriety is my biggest and most effective weapon at the poker table. I wasn’t alone in this endeavor. Many of the other players were chugging down beers like there was no tomorrow. At one point I was so drunk I asked Jeremy for one of his potato chips. Potato chips? He said to me like I had two heads. Yeah, I said pointing to the bag. “Oh no, these aren’t potato chips, they’re just some nails I like to snack on while playing cards.” I don’t think Jeremy would be intimidated by some guy in a Brooks Brothers suit who calls himself an anchor, and neither should I, next time I run into an attractive television reporter.

It was a pretty fun night. There was supposed to be a tourney with ten minute levels. The first hand of the tournament lasted seven minutes. Then there were calls to extend levels, et cetera. I think tourneys require an amount of anti-social feeling among a group. If everybody is super focused on themselves, that makes for a good tourney. If people are social and want to shoot the shit, that makes for a lousy tourney but a great cash game. And vice versa. Show me an intense and focused group of people in a cash game, and I’ll ask that you show me to the door. The tourney last a while, to be honest, I have no clue how long. I just remembered constantly having about 14 big blinds and getting ace king suited a whole bunch of times. One time I got Ace Queen and jammed and got beat by Ace 3, but must have made some chips with the Ace Kings, because I was still alive at that point. Eventually the tourney came to a three way chop, which netted me a cool $100 (minus my two twenty dollar buy ins). A cash game followed that lasted until almost three am. I was pretty beat the next day.

I am not sure when I will get back to the felt. Poker basement is becoming my “office space” where I go to read books and drink Miller High Lifes. That has to change soon, but I’ll probably need to be employed before I can host again. So if you know anybody hiring a luckbox, let me know.

The Big Columbus Day weekend tourney

Yesterday was the fifth or sixth, maybe even seventh, I forget, annual Columbus Day Poker Tournament here at Sherwood Casino. Congratulations to our main event winner, BJ. Here’s who got into the money…

1st BJ
2nd Chris V
3rd Andy R.
4th John B.

The massive takedown at the final (of two, but still)
The massive takedown at the final (of two, but still)

The final hand went something like this. BJ had Jack Nine and a huge chip lead, Chris V. had King Jack. The flop came down 9 high, and Chris tried to bluff BJ off of it, but BJ was having no part of that and he ended up fading the king to win it. It was an impressive victory for BJ considering that he had to rebuy about a hand or two into the tourney. Against Joe B., BJ had a flush and lost out to a full house. Who knew at the time that he would rebuy and end up taking down something like $760, which was the total winner’s prize.

One problem with tourneys you always get some down on his luck bozo who thinks he can buy in with $80 in nickels.
One problem with tourneys– you always get some down on his luck bozo who thinks he can buy in with $80 in nickels.

I don’t run tourneys too often, and after yesterday I remembered why. It’s pretty high stress with people coming and going. The first tourney went on way too long and was much bigger than I anticipated.  Between grabbing chips for people, rebuys, and actually playing, I had a hard time keeping track of things. At some point the blinds didn’t double when they were supposed to, and then the tourney bogged down into a long slow game that went two hours too long. The next time I do this, I am going to do one tourney, super deep, with no rebuys. Something like 7000 chips to start with 25/25 starting blinds and 30 minute levels with blind like 25/25, 25/50, 50/100, 75/150, 100/200 etc.  Basically a deep stack five or six hour extravaganza. It’s going to be AWESOME!

A little something special to console oneself with after donking out going all in with middle pair because YOU weren't going to be bluffed again, not THIS time!!
A little something special to console yourself with after donking out going all in with middle pair because YOU weren’t going to be bluffed again, not THIS time!!

We played cash after the tourney and that lasted until 2am, which made for a nice ten hour session of poker for me, and a nice three session, twenty hours of poker week, in which I made a nothing to sneeze at $44. It gives me faith knowing that if this jobless thing continues for a little too long, there will always be my sharklike poker skills to get my family through the bleak Boston winter.

Photos courtesy of Andy Rodgerschamos ezra firstgame prior

I lost money in Joe’s basement

Played poker at Joe’s last night. I didn’t know how to get there, which was a problem, because riding over my buddy Doctor Mike was on the phone with me, and Waze wouldn’t override him, you know what I mean. The Waze lady has no issues speaking over your music, even at the best parts of the songs, but when you are on the phone she will not interrupt. Is this– what? Gallant of her? I don’t know. What I do know is that I don’t really know how to get to Arlington. Well, I don’t know how to get to where I am going in Arlington without help, and I needed help.

So, old Doc Mike was telling me this story about some patient he was working with. The guy had some issues with his leg. I forget the Latin terminology, suffice to say, for a poker blog that nobody reads we can go with “dude’s leg was fucked.” Guy comes into the practice every so often, however often sick people come and go to a doctor, and then there is a period of time where Doctor Mike doesn’t see his patient, the guy is missing his appointments, and this is worrisome because of the condition of his fucked up leg. As fate would have it, Doctor Mike runs into the guy’s wife. What happened to him? He’s in prison. Raped a thirteen year old.

So now Doctor Mike is torn. That bastard, you know. At the same time, after going over it in his head for a while, he realizes he has some kind of ethical responsibility to his patient, despite how vile the guy is. So he calls up the prison, mentions the guy’s medical condition, and they put him in a little prisoner van and bring him to the hospital. His leg is now so fucked up that they have to cut it off, and…

Hey, Doctor Mike, I say, this is all great stuff, a real humdinger of a tale, but I need to talk to the Waze lady so she can direct me to this .50/1 poker game in Arlington, talk to you later, bye.

Uggh, technology.

Since I was running late, I arrived at the game beerless. I got laid off/let go/fired from my job last week. At first it didn’t really affect me too much, but lately it’s like this slowly creeping depression cloud is trying to make its way over me. I feel like I am doing a decent job of keeping it at bay, but in order to better do so, I felt like I needed a beer. I hate mooching beers, but since I was so desperate for one, I was willing to make a deal. I surveyed the table, tried to figure out how many beers people had behind, what it would take for them to hand over a few without looking at me like I was a goddamned freeloader. It’s a dicey game of chance, mooching beers.

After making my initial hesitant queriess regarding the beer situation I was informed that in the post-futuristic world of Arlington, Massachusetts, you can tap a few buttons on your phone and within minutes some Russian guy will show up at your door with a twelve pack of Sierra Nevadas. And let me tell you, the Sierra was of a vintage that I had only once had before, at a place I couldn’t exactly pinpoint, but in the vaguest way, reminded me of sipping a Sierra Nevada at a wedding, a catered hall, a napkin around the beer, a dollar bill tip deftly handed to the caterer behind the table, the tepid mingling of family and friends soon to be a raucous Bacchanalian celebration of tribal unification, people dancing to that Brick House song.

Or, maybe not, I dunno.

I can’t say I played poker too well. I was having fun with different kind of levels. Pulling stunts like telling Andy R when we were heads up after I’d made a significan bet and he was tanking “I will bet you $20 that whatever decision you make here will be wrong.”

I’d like to be able to tell you what happened with that hand, but the result was too confusing for even me to understand. Something about, here, I’m not taking your bet but you can have $20 since you are unemployed now. The game lasted a long time. I got out of there down $70 (beer included in that!) at about 2:45am. I checked the Waze to see how long it would take to get home. I wanted it to say 15 minutes on account of there being no cars on the road, but no, it predicted 28 minutes, which turned out to be only one minute off.

Another evening of Columbia Road Hijinx

I wanted to get back in the stand up comedy groove, and had been on stage the last two Sundays, but on Sunday morning I really didn’t have any confidence in anything I felt like saying on stage. As the day wore on, my lack of comedy confidence gave way to a feeling of “well, maybe I should play some cards instead.”

Before leaving for the evening, I always run the dogs out in the yard. The dogs, with their sense of smell and hearing, always know when there is an animal sneaking around back there, and start to go ape before the door is even opened. Last night was like that. Usually it’s a cat, up on the little hill of my neighbor’s yard, but this time it turned out to be a cat in the shadows around the corner of my house. I could barely make out the thing, because the lighting cuts off at that angle. What surprised me was the cat wasn’t backing away or running off. It made some kind of hissing type sound and approached the dogs. So, I yelled at it hoping to scare the thing off and get the dogs to shut up. Then the cat came even closer, we’re talking like less than three feet from the dogs, and as it moved from the shadows and into the light I noticed hey that’s no cat, it’s A GODDAMN SKUNK!

Miraculously, none of us got sprayed. I don’t know if the skunk was out of juice or what. It seemed like it wanted to throw down. Who knows what was up with that guy.

About an hour later I was sitting at Roger’s poker game with Ace King offsuit in the small blind. There were a ton of limpers, maybe six or something, one of those kind of hands. I wanted to isolate somebody by raising big and hoping to get them to go away with a quick and easy cbet on the flop. Sounds like a plan. Raise to $22, one caller, and then Claudio, who is the loosest and craziest player in the game, makes it $78 total. He was in fairly late position and just limped in there with a bunch of other people, so I didn’t think he could have a great hand. I figured I was in a shove or fold situation because he had about $105 behind. I also thought, the other caller would surely fold if I went in. I knew Claudio would call me, and I also thought there were a lot of pairs he could have. I decided I was a slight dog against what I perceived to be his range, but with the $66 (minus the rake) already in the pot, I had odds to get it all in. Or maybe I didn’t. I’m no expert. And yeah, I also considered folding to be honest. Anyhow, we get it in preflop, a king comes on the turn and, man, I was so sure I was good. Turns out I had a 5% chance of winning that hand pre, as Claudio had aces. Ouch. It wasn’t a cat. Nice hand.

I came back, was up $160 for a while, but ended the evening at +$38, which makes for a nice little streak of six winning sessions. We all know how these things end though. I am playing Wednesday at Joe B’s place in Arlington. Never been to Joe’s house. It should be fun. And then, it’s my tourney on the 8th. My poker event of the year!