I Can Pass, But I Can't Pass a Card Room
Me, last night:
"So I peek at 'em, and I'm looking at ace-king diamonds, right? So I hit it for three times the big blind. Two next to me cave, Donkey down the end calls, the rock on my right calls.
The flop arrives, ten-queen diamonds, rag. I check, Donkey hits it for half the pot. Rock calls. I need one diamond to the nut flush, so I call. I figure Donk's on a pair of tens and wants to scare me out.
Next card out is the deuce of diamonds. I've got the nuts, so I shove it all in. Donkey bloody well calls. Rock folds.
I figure Donk might be getting optimistic with two pair, but no. We flip over--the twerp's got pocket deuces, clubs and hearts. Three of a kind against my nut flush.
I'm just about to start raking chips when the river comes: Deuce of spades. Friggin' quads! Damn hee-haw."
Anthony Aloysius St. John:
"Yeah man, baaad beat. That guy's been loose and lucky all night."
Me (thinks): My god--I'm speaking in jargon!
Briefly: I play freeroll poker at one of the local restaurants. Players accumulate points. The top eight players will get to play, in December, for a trip for two to Las Vegas. Which is a fine place to be in the midst of a Canadian winter.
Because I'm a respectable poker player, most times, I've struggled into tenth place with 2650 points. The fellow above me, in position number nine, has 3200 points.
He wiped out early last night, so didn't earn any points. I earned 500, which leaves me in ...
Yup. Tenth place.
As Emo says: Some mornings it just doesn't seem worth it to gnaw through the leather straps.
Labels: Angst, Celebration, Disturbing, General, Justice?, money, Psychology, Random, Sickening, Tales of the Metrolife, the art of the blog
posted by Metro @ 10:14 am
3 Comments:
I come from a family of game players. My father was a very good poker player and as well he played a lot of bridge. My brother was also a very strong bridge player when he put his mind to it. In high school, I played canasta, a lot of it, and some backgammon on the side
My father liked to gamble and before he met my mom, he played a lot of poker and as well, bet the ponies like it was a career.
I got the game gene but not the gambling gene. When we visited Vegas recently, I played roulette for two minutes and blackjack for five and wasted away perhaps twenty minutes at a slot machine. I came up just about even and walked away.
The game I like to play best is Go, that curious Asian game involving black and white stones on a 19 line grid. I like it because it seems to get richer the more I play. It is simply mind against mind, no hands, no dice, just the placement of stones on the grid.
A few years back, the Washington Post Style Invitational had a competition for names of unlikely-yet-necessary support groups.
Second place went to "Adult Children of Parents Who Were Bridge Partners".
As the child of two Life Masters, that resonated deeply. To this day, Mum makes Dad play at another table--even at home when possible.
I haven't played Go, but I've always been interested. Presumably there are some sites dedicated to it--any reccomendations?
In Korea, I once visited a Buddhist monastery with a monk friend, and she introduced me to her friend who lived there. He was ensconced in his room, watching Go (paduk or baduk as it's called there), on a dedicated TV channel. Just the board, slowly being filled with the stones...quite mesmerizing. I can imagine how it could be addictive to watch.
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