Another Helluva an Idea

I’ll tell you what, I am so enamored with my win a thousand dollars tourney idea, we’re talking absolutely enamored, ok, but like I said, I am so enamored with this idea that I am thinking of extending it, or maybe not extending it really, but refashioning and repurposing it into other fantastic promotions.

What are you talking about, Prior?

Well, I was just fantasizing about myself winning the grand, and what I would do with it. I hadn’t even really thought about what I wanted to do with it, because I was just surveying that amount of money’s potential, and of course, that brought me to the idea of big ticket items, the biggest, that I can think of aside from a house, would, of course, be an automobile. Which kind of derailed my train of thought, see. Because then I started saying to myself, yeah I could buy an automobile (hereafter referred to as a “car”) after I won, OR… OR…. Are you ready for this? I COULD go and buy a car BEFORE a tourney and then have the collective buy-ins equal the amount of the cost of the car.

Maybe you are not following, I admit, it’s all confusing, the mathematical meanderings of my titanic brain, but the bottom line is this: it wouldn’t be that difficult for me to have a tourney in which ten of us bought in for under $100 and one of us drove home in a 1999 Chevy Malibu they won. Could even be a turbo. Fancy that, you play what, ten, fifteen hands, and then BINGO NEW CAR. Alright, maybe not new, but working. Presumably.

I dunno, I just throw these things out there because they excite the hell out of me. Do they excite you too? I am sure they do.

Win $1,000 at the Sherwood Casino!!

Now, as you may have heard, there’s going to be a new president in charge come January. My wife doesn’t really like the new president. In her mind he is an out-of-control, male chauvinist, racist, authoritarian bully. And you know what, she’s probably right. From what I’ve seen, yeah, the guy has some issues, but, one thing people seem to forget about the new president, he built casinos! So next time somebody says that bigoted Donald Trump never did anything positive for people, you tell them he provided a place for thousands, maybe even millions, to play poker and what in the hell is wrong with that.

I should warn you though, be careful WHO you say this too. I brought it up in conversation with my aforementioned wife the other night have been sleeping in Poker Basement ever since. While this hasn’t been ideal, it has given me some sense of where I’d like to make improvements. For one, I’ve noticed that most other casinos have shopping whereas Poker Basement only has all of the excess junk I’ve accrued over the last twenty odd years. Well, you want a shopping experience, you got one! From now on, anything you see in the basement is “for sale.” That’s right. If you see something you like or want, just make me an offer and it could be yours.

What about entertainment, you ask. Other casinos have concerts and boxing matches. Don’t worry, I’ve got it covered. The area over by the washing machine will now function as a boxing ring for the neighborhood children. Better still, the house will now provide odds and cover all bets on these bouts, which should prove to be extremely exciting since some of these kids have “behavioral issues.”

Oh, Prior, please stop with these lame-o ideas and let’s talk poker. Ok, so yeah, my wife and daughter are going to Washington to protest this lunatic becoming president, which means some kind of poker tournament is coming your way on the day of the Million Woman March. I am calling this the…

Ain’t Life GRAND Tourney

This tourney is many things, among them being:

1. Deep. 12,000 chips to start with and a 25/50 first level. (followed by 50/50, 50/100, 75/150, 100/200, 150/300, 200/400, 300/600, 500/1000, etc)
2. Challenging. It’ll start at 4pm with each level lasting one hour!
3. Rewarding. To whoever wins that is, because in honor of America’s continuing concentration of wealth into the pockets of the already insanely rich, only the tournament winner gets a prize, a prize that is calculated to put them up ONE THOUSAND DOLLARS for the day! Nobody else gets anything. No chops allowed. Chops are for commies like Andy R__!
4. Upstairs. Not in the basement.

Buy in is based on how many people play, so it’s

buy in / players / payout
$166.80 / 7 / $1000.8
$143.00 / 8 / $1001
$125.00 / 9 / $1000
$111.12 / 10 / $1000.08
$90.91 / 12 / $1000.01
$83.35 / 13 / $1000.2
$77.00 / 14 / $1001
$71.50 / 15 / $1001

Now, I know there were some “problems” with the last tourney, but this one I think is a lot more clear cut. First off, there is only ONE tourney scheduled, so there won’t be people waiting around forever for the first tournament to end. Secondly, since there will be no rebuys, we won’t run into the risk of running out of chips. There, all problems solved.

The game will start at 3 or 4 and there’ll be a standard issue cash game running on the side starting around 6pm. I can pretty much guarantee this will be the best poker event ever to occur at Sherwood Casino. Even if you just want to play the cashgame, the spectacle of people duking it out for a thousand dollars at the next table should be highly entertaining.

The End is Nigh

Last Friday night was the penultimate game at the Crescent Lounge. As I might have mentioned earlier, the Lounge is set for a meeting with the wrecking ball because landlord Andy T__ views the game as “a vile den of filthy rascals and ignominious vermin more concerned with where to score a pound of ‘brick weed’ than their odds to an inside straight.”

As a poker player, I am going to miss the Lounge for the good times and all the easy money to be made off Jeremy R__ there. Dwelling on my own misfortune seems self centered however when considering the effects the Lounge’s closing will have on the surrounding community. Consider that, after the final chips have been cashed in, the deluge of all of Andy R__’s nostalgic kitsch will be sent out for trash day, an event that will surely set the town of Waltham back decades. I don’t envy the plight of a parent passing by having to explain to a three year old why the giant porcelain Minnie Mouse holding a full house has “such big boobies.”

But, that’s life after all, you can’t expect all of your hands to win, expecially when you jam preflop with 66 (off suit) and get called by 99 (also offsuit). That was me, down a cool $45.50 about three hands into the game. Rather than buy back in like I usually do, I tried to run my remaining $4.50 back up, and I ALMOST did. I was back up to about $42 when I flopped a straight. The turn put a flush and a full house on the board, and an all in re-raise from Rockland Mass’ premiere disc golfer. Adios, hand. Adios, miraculous comeback. Hola, terrible sadness and pain. Another losing session ($30) for me. That’s three in a row, accounting for a whopping total of $225 (I think).

The game was filled with an insane amount of smack talk, much of it directed towards yours truly. It’d probably be a good idea for Andy to have conselors on hand if he ever resurrects this game elsewhere. There are rumors it’ll happen in Arlington, but who knows.

Horrific Losing Streak

I neglected to post about the poker game I went to at Roger’s two Fridays ago, or was it a Thursday, I forget. Roger’s game has been pretty good lately. Lots of players, people waiting on the rail. You know when his game is going well when you don’t get texts from him. When he’s got a ton of people there, there’s no need for him to fire out a “CRAZY STOOPID ACTION!!!!” On the other hand, when he’s been having trouble getting players, that’s when you get the texts. So, yeah, lately, no texts. Something’s up, and it’s not me. The last time I was there, which like I said was something like ten days ago, the table was full, people were pretty deep. I took some hits early and was down like $280, but then rallied and was four or five bucks from being even for the night, and then this hand happened…

So there’s this kid called Ziggy. He’s youngish, I’d guess mid-twenties, although I am a horrible judge of such things. He’s got a lot of chips, definitely up, and he’s in a pretty good mood. As oftentimes happens with poker players when they are up, Ziggy’s range opens up too and so does his mouth. He’s been in a lot of the hands, loads of commentary, it’s pretty much Ziggy’s game.

Somebody opens, maybe it’s me. I was late, maybe in the cutoff. It’s around 1am. There’s maybe eight of us left. I have King 5, diamonds I think. I know, I know. Ziggy and another guy are in the hand when the flop comes down KKJ. Check check, and I bet like 20 into 32. The player who is not Ziggy folds. Maybe there wasn’t even another player in the hand, I forget. Ziggy snap calls. Of course I don’t think he has a king because he was happy and goofing around. Does that make sense? No.

I fire at the turn, which was a brick, another call, this one with some acting. He’s hamming it up now, “what do you have?” Pure theatrics from this guy, but of course, I can’t see it as anything other than a bluff, or not even so much as a bluff, but as make believe, as though when somebody puts on a performance, it can’t possibly mean they’re good, can it. They’re simply pretending.

Here’s the thing though. He had a boat and got like 70 bucks out of me in that hand, maybe 80, but in all honesty, what sunk me was the performance. It was almost intentionally bad, but intentionally bad on purpose. By that I mean, he was over the top, but in a way that was confusing for me to read. He must have repeated that “what do you have?” line like five times, and it echoed in my head for about three days.

So that was that game. I ended up out eighty bucks. I told Rog I would show up around nine tonight, but there were more texts than usual which gave me a feeling that it might be a slow night over there. So I sent out a “I’m coming” text just to make sure the game was on. I was half out the door when he called and told me to meet him some place in Revere.

Revere?! For Christ’s sake that’s way too far. At moments like this you wish you had a backbone. I was crossing the Charles fifteen-twenty minutes later. I was too busy fiddling with Waze to set up some music, so the iPod just played up the first thing in my library, Adrenaline Night Shift. Normally this might be just the thing to fire you up as you sneak out of the house at 9:30pm on a Tuesday night, but the prospect of the relatively long drive had my mood soured. I got to the place and was directed to a dimly lit building. When I say dimly lit, I mean, it was dark. Very dark, as though the building hadn’t had its door opened in over five years. As I approached that door, one of the guys who directed me over there asked me what I was there for. Cards, I replied. This prompted him to direct me into another building.

I go down some steps and who is the first person I see? A cop!

There was a tourney going on that I guess qualified the gathering as some kind of charity affair, which meant it was quasi-legal. I waited for about five minute before a second table opened. The game was pretty good, but I couldn’t get any traction cardswise. There was a kid there with slicked back hair and a voice pulled out of a 1930s gangster movie. He was the life of the table, and like Ziggy above, was loose and gabby about it too. He must have been up two or three hundred. For the most part, the rest of the table was fairly passive and calling stationy, including myself to some extent. I never claimed I was a good player.

The place was kind of depressing. Maybe on another night I would have really dug this scene. It was a kind of basement gymnasium type deal with a small bar in the corner. A bartender/waitress would swing by and you could buy drinks for $2 and $3. The table I played at was pretty beat up and the chips were doled out in odd combos. I bought in for $250 and was given 8 greens, 9 reds, and 4 ones. This was pretty standard across the table. Also, and this will sound super nitpicky, but the $25 chips were clay, while the $1 and $5s were ceramic. Completely different sets. I dunno, for the cost of raking a 1/2 game for an hour, you could buy yourself a nice set of 1000 Pioneers.

And don’t call me a snob until you’ve played in my basement.

Anyhow, I didn’t do so great. I played B- poker for me. The game broke at 12, “by law” I guess, although the cop was long gone. Call me down $115 for the night, which means for both of the games in this post I am down a whopping $195. When you factor in that I spent $20 of my roll on beers Sunday night, you’ll understand what a dire predicament I am in.

Did I mention I got a new job two and a half weeks ago? And oddly enough, ever since landing it, I have not had one single winning session!!!

Hopefully that changes on Friday in what very well may be my last trip to the Crescent Lounge. More on that later.

The 11/11 game in my basement

As I surveyed the list of people reserving seats for last night’s game it dawned on me that this might be the toughest lineup of players I have ever played against. Which, fine, it’s low-stakes, so if you are going to be challenged, at least have it be at a level in which it won’t kill you financially. That was my attitude, although I am aware that there is a feeling among some that the less money involved in a game the easier it is. Maybe so, but people weren’t really throwing money away last night. There weren’t too many spots were I felt myself put to the test, where I had a decent but not a nutty hand and running up against pressure from a better player and having to decide whether they were playing the cards or me. It happened twice actually, and when it did the money involved was $8 and $12, which sure you can sneeze at, but it meant a lot to me to not be shown up as a fool or a fish or whatever. It turns out I folded one when I shouldn’t have and called one when I should have, netting me a cool $4. Laugh all you want. Other than those two hands though, the deck hit me like Trevor Berbick hit Mitch Green in the epic USBA Heavyweight title fight at the Riviera in 1985. I reeled in a flopped flush against a flopped top set, a rivered boat which got a call on the river, a flopped straight flush against a flopped flush (the flopped flush actually had an out to beat me on that one), turned quads when all in, and a few others here or there. In short, the poker gods were really good to me, to the point where, I really didn’t have to do much calculating and thinking.

But, anyhow, if I could just return briefly to that the less money the easier the game idea, while yes I agree with it to an extent, let’s not forget that the more money on the table the worse people play as well. What I mean by that is, if you are playing with more money than you are comfortable with losing, then you won’t play as well as you would when you are playing within your roll. There is a sweet spot of meaningful play in there somewhere, but it’s complicated by the fact that at any given table all of the players will find themselves affected by this by their own personal comfort zones.

Speaking of how tough this table was though, I gave my son $10 worth of chips to play with. He lasted two hands, the second one he got all in with Corey on the turn. The board was 8h Ts 4d 6h. Corey turned over the straight, but Jonah flipped over Kh 4h for a halfway decent, and not dead yet one pair with a flush draw. Corey faded a heart on the turn to felt the nine year old.

The game ended pretty early. We were done before midnight. Corey stayed after where we talked about this crazy coincidence of him possibly going on a date with somebody who took me to her prom in 1990, and while this was going on Bruno showed up. He stayed later than Corey but had to exit after I started going on my why I love Gertrude Stein spiel at 1:30AM.

Take me to the River

I’ve been jonesing for some poker action, but one thing that happens when you are out of work is your sole focus becomes getting a job, not playing cards all night with your friends. Sure, you can try and convince yourself that you’re a winning player, that when you play cards you have an expected hourly rate of return that converts a leisure activity into actual work, but at the end of the day if you pull your unemployed self into a Wendy’s parking lot right after dropping your kids off at school at 8am, excitedly type “Twin Rivers Casino” into Waze, and then fist pump and yell “Yeah Motherfucker!” when the computer lady spits out her first direction, you have got yourself a problem that probably needs clinical attention.

Fortunately for myself, I am not THAT bad. However, I feel like I’ve played enough poker that I now know the scene, the people as well as the cards, enough to envision what such a scenario would be like, right up to the adrenaline rush a theoretical gambling addict would get firing up the old Prius engine as he merges onto I-95, sucks in all of that glorious fall foliage with his eyeballs as, I dunno, let’s say Talking Heads Fear of Music gets fired up on the stereo.

It being a real stunner of a November morning, with an immaculately sunny blue sky and temps in the mid fifties, there may have been a bit of regret somewhere just past Attleboro. I could be in these trees, taking it all in, laying back and just enjoying the natural order of things rather than grinding it out in a Rhode Island casino. I mean, just those three words strung together, “Rhode Island casino,” while they describe a place and not a medical condition, sort of, for a brief moment weigh down your gut in the same way as the phrase “I’m sorry, but it’s inoperable.” Rhode Island, of course, somewhat pales in elegance compared to a place like Vegas. Nobody anywhere else in the country counters a suggested trip to Vegas with the line, “well what about Rhode Island? They have gambling there too now.” You think about that as the trees, the splendid trees, one after another in quick succession fly by on the highway, and just at the moment when you think, man, I am such an idiot, such an addict with no will power at all, there by the side of the road you see a coyote!

And what is that coyote doing? He’s getting ready to cross the highway. Oh yeah, the woods are good, plenty of mice and squirrels to eat, coyotes are the king of the food chain in those along I-95 forests, but the coyote wants something more. Maybe he’s heard late at night, some howling at the moon, a voice on the other side of the three lanes, suggestive and foxy… ok, let’s say it’s a fox, not a coyote, but just the same, the animal, the wild beast above all else wants to gamble. I think it was Nietzsche who first said that, if not him then the Dalai Lama. Either way, you realize, it’s time to cast away the words you describe yourself with, i.e. unemployed, desperate for work, a lackluster father, etc and become what you truly were called to be. A coyote. Or a fox, I mean. Either way, just an animal about to cross a highway.

We get there at 9:30ish. Name on a list. There were four tables going. Two 1/2, one 2/5, and one 5/10. I saw Teddy from Roger’s game at the 2/5 table and said hello. Sorry, I meant to say, in this purely imagined scenario I saw Teddy. It took like fifteen or twenty minutes before I was seated. The first hand I got was Kc5c. There was a raise, I folded, and then the guy to my immediate left called. The flop was club club 5. Uggh. A raise, a call. A blank, a small, easy to call raise with a bunch of outs was made followed by another call, and then another club on the river. Big river bet, snap called. Somebody had a pair of 8s. I was already tilted and I hadn’t played a hand.

The kid on my right was young and very talkative. Lots of poker talk. He was ok enough, but definitely not as good as he thought he was. He was with a bunch of guys, his friends were for the most part milling around the room, others were still seated. It turns out that Twin Rivers allows twenty year olds to play. Twin Rivers and Turning Stone he told me. I forget where he said he was from, but I remembered him saying it was three and a half hours from Lincoln, Rhode Island. Basically what I gathered was, that him and his buddies had traveled a good distance to do a marathon session and he was one of the only guys still playing. The others would loiter around, bug him about leaving, and in turn he would bug them about buying back in, which got responses like “I can’t even take $80 out of my bank account, dude.” And here I thought being unemployed was a bad beat.

There was some action at the table. A little bit of zaniness. I didn’t want to come off as a nit, so I entered a few pots pre just for show. I took down a small three way pot with a bluff on the flop in position, which was a nice way to appear as an “action player.” Then came my big hand. AK offsuit in the big blind. A family pot type deal until the action is one me. I think I made it $27, I forget. Two callers. The flop comes down AQ4r. I bet $30 or $40. Who knows. One caller, this south Asian guy who had been making really small c-bets earlier, like $10 into a $60 pot. The turn is another ace, so I check to look vulnerable, because that is my new thing lately, looking vulnerable. He checks too, which I think ultimately induced a call on the river (10) when I bet $65ish. So that was nice.

There was definitely some action. I saw a guy sit down and a hand in call a $100 preflop jam with 66… and win. One guy opened to $31 and was called by the twenty year old kid next to me who had less than $150 behind. The kid took down a massive pot when he flopped another ace to go with his A6. The table was a din of remonstrating afterwards, but the kid insisted he was going on a good read.

I figured that in order for me to get back with enough time to meet the kids at the bus stop I would have to leave a little before 1pm. When I was about to leave the room had really filled up. There were probably three or four times as many tables at this point. I worried before getting there that arriving at 9:30am might end up with me endlessly waiting for a table or two to spit out a player. Seemed like you could get on pretty quickly arriving anytime in the morning. There was a lot of table hopping as well. I am not sure what that was all about. The talk was about how much better the 5 seat is than the 9 seat. I can kind of see that being an advantage with sight lines maybe, but I wouldn’t switch tables for it. Maybe it’s just code for “I am intimidated and don’t want to play at this table anymore.”

Wimps.

I was having a nice morning at the table until just before I was about to go. I was in a multi-way straddled pot with K9 of clubs. My mistake was playing this one. I can make excuses for what happened afterwards until the cows come home, but yes, I should have folded. Suffice to say I bluffed off one guy on the turn and was left with one of the young kids. He had $32 left so of course he called my move on the blanked turn to get the deeper stacked player out. Well, I should say, of course after tanking forever, he chose to call with his thirty-two remaining dollars into a $150 pot. The board was Qc 10c 6s 4d. He turned over 89 offsuit. I can’t fault him, he thought he had 8 outs. Anyhow, a 7 on the river and he nearly triples up. Ouch. Nice hand, good game. I had to get back up to Boston to meet my kids at the bus stop with a decent enough profit, but one I wish was $180 bigger.

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!

Quarter quarter poker