Wednesday, January 04, 2006

They all end the same

Poker tournaments, that is. I'll get to that in a sec.

Life must have really slowed down. I'm not posting nearly as much as I was back in Oct-Nov. I've not been traveling as much is one reason. At least I've not been traveling any where that I care to write about or anyone would care to read about. Atlanta and Durham just don't get my fingers excited. In the next three weeks I'm slated to go to Atlanta (again), Redmond, WA, and Las Vegas. The first one is a working customer visit, the second is training for me, and the last is just for fun or at least lots of poker.

Before I get to Vegas I really need to find a better way to end my poker tourneys. It's not that my chips all go to somebody else and I walk away. No, that would be normal. In my case it seem they all end by me calling some small all-in as a big favorite and getting some 2 or 4 out suckout on the river followed almost immediately by a big pre-flop hand that I go all in with as a big favorite to (you're way ahead of me by now) get sucked-out on by a 2 or 4 out suckout on the river.

Tonight's pub poker was no exception. Well, maybe not strictly as described above, but close enough. I played pretty straight up except for throwing down a suited hammer (7h2h) to steal some blinds and one other junk hand to take a small pot. I couldn't get paid on my premium hands. I really should have pushed this table harder, but I didn't. That's my falut.

Four hands from the end I'm sitting on a pretty average stack in the big blind. With 3 limpers, I go raise 3x the big blind with AKo. I get two folds and an all in that was for about half my stack. She shows 10h9h. Naw, I don't get it either. Long story short, she flops nothing and catches a 10 on the river. Crap! Three hands later I'm hurting and I look down at 1010. All in (about 3x BB). I get 2 callers. The flop comes J 8 5. Check, push for another 3 BBs and a fold, so I'm heads up. The other player turns over 66. Cool. "It's a good time to triple up", I think. Hell no. The turn is a 4 and the river a 7 for her straight and my walking papers.

That's poker, or so I'm told.

Otherwise I'm a happy guy. My father-in-law is feeling so much better that he is attending our poker game this weekend. I know that he has missed getting out. My friends who are in their 30's mostly are really looking forward to Mr. C's (in his 70's) return. I think that is a testament to the quality of my friends and Mr. C. I'm still employed, coming up on 12 years at MS. My wife is still beautiful and my dogs are healthy. Even my grandmother's condition is stable.

My wife had a good idea tonight. Let's go kick Iran's ass. That new president of theirs is turning out to be a real loon with ideas of the end of the world. President Bush has done a fine job so far so let's really finish the job of taking out the terrorist by cutting off their benefactors at the knees.

I know there is a lot of disagreement on that score (Bush as President), but the folks you hear crying about everything Bush has done were the same ones crying about everything he did from the time he was born leading all the way up the his first inauguration.

When reading opinion, I have a simple test which you may want to use: Does the writer have good and bad to say about the subject? If so I give it some weight. If it is all praise or all bitch, I throw it out unless I already thought that to begin with, of course. Case in point, if the writer is working over the President, does he mention that the economy is doing great (Clinton would characterize it as the best economy in 550 years!). Or does he write that Bush should be impeached for wiretapping terrorists (which is probably legal)? If you want to change my mind, show some thought by showing some balance.

Here are a few facts that I have recently had friends get wrong:

Costa Rica is not an Island.
Cyprus is an Island.
The first definition of celibate is not married (I got this one wrong). Not having sex was second.
Israel is close to Lebanon

21 comments:

Anonymous said...

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Anonymous said...

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Anonymous said...

Hello, i love your blog it's so interesting! By the way i just wanted to tell you about this new book thats come out by these two Kuwaiti grls..its supposedly really funny. I thought you might be interested. You can buy it off of Amazon (it's called Driving Down the 101) ..seriously its a must! (it'll also give you something to talk about).

Anonymous said...

Quick K, without looking:

do you know what an Isthmus is? What about a Litmus?

-AndresNa

TJ said...

i eat special k bars. they taste soo good.

Anonymous said...

"Blogs are the way the world learns geography."

-- Samara Semanczyk (1984-)

Me said...

Yes, poker is a tough gig.

Especially with hacks out there playing it's like a roll of the dice.

In the long run, the good players beat the lucky ones.

Unknown said...

I don't know what you have going here but I thought I'd let you know that everytime I look through the blogs via the next blog icon I see yours repeated all the time. Go figure!

Aaron said...

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Anonymous said...

okay, so since you understand poker and you mentioned the economy is good under our current president, let me give you this analogy...

you chip stack is 1,000,000 and you have 10/10 in the hole. not a bad hand to start with (what clinton left him), but at the same time not perfect (the tech bubble had just gone bust). So with your 10/10 you end up losing 750,000 chips. Later in the game, you find AA and bust KK for a gain of 600,000 chips. Right after you win you proclaim to the table that your stack is going through the roof...but do you realize that you still aren't even back to what you originally started with??

That is what our current president is taking credit for, we started with 1,000,000 chips and now we only have 850,000 chips...but apparently if you believe in God then losing all those chips (jobs) is a good thing...

KajaPoker said...

Israel is also close to Syria, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Egypt. And is about the size of New Jersey. What a fun place to live!

Raven said...

Andrew: Heres a quote for you.

"You are only convinced of your own ideas to the degree that you consume your own propaganda."

-Ravaeyn

Take it for what it's worth.

Anonymous said...

Hello!!!
I`s the casuality that i read your blog, but it`s a sorprise for me...
I `m from Cuba and I have a similar blog than you...
Bye

Videos by Professor Howdy said...

.
There is a time for everything,
a season for every activity
under heaven. A time to be
born and a time to die. A
time to plant and a time to
harvest. A time to kill and
a time to heal. A time to
tear down and a time to
rebuild. A time to cry and
a time to laugh. A time to
grieve and a time to dance.
A time to scatter stones
and a time to gather stones.
A time to embrace and a
time to turn away. A time to
search and a time to lose.
A time to keep and a time to
throw away. A time to tear
and a time to mend. A time
to be quiet and a time to
speak up. A time to love
and a time to hate. A time
for war and a time for peace.

May this be
your time to laugh,
embrace & receive
personal peace,
Dr. Howdy

asdf said...

Hi there ^^

Unknown said...

An Isthmus? A narrow body of land connecting two larger bodies. A litmus? A test used to trick future judges into loosing their future jobs.

Seriously, though, love the site. It's people like you who keep me and my wallet away from the poker table.

Anonymous said...

I like this blog,and of course special k,yehaaaa



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Sherlon Christie said...

i have resisted the poker craze for a long time...I might give in 2006

Anonymous said...

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Anonymous said...

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Anonymous said...

I like Andrew's poker analogy. Except he forgot the part where you piss off all of the people you play poker with regularly. Where you go into debt 250 billion dollars to start an argument that you can never win. Where you get thousands of your friends killed in that argument, and over 100,000 strangers, but continue to lie about why you needed to argue in the first place. Then you use that argument as a reason to shred the constitu--I mean, poker rule book.

Balance? Here's balance for you: the last president sure had his corporate shill moments (the Telecommunications Act, and the "rent the Lincoln bedroom" charade come to mind). But he didn't dream of the things this one does every single day.