Quest of a Closet Poker Player

I was once again a great host last night as I did project work through a good chunk of CC’s Thursday Bash.  We had thirty who made it to PokerStars, and who walked away with the first crown of the year?

Uh, that would be me.  AlCantHang had his Riverchasers tourney at 9:00 on FullTilt with over 65 friends and family, so 30 for the first session was a good crowd.  Dropping the buy-in to $10+1 helped, and for awhile I wished no one had showed up as I oscillated between decent stack, brutal beats, short stack, aggressive play, monster hands, surviving my own donkified play, overbetting pots with either nothing or monsters, getting paid off on the latter and seeing folds on the former, then turning into a card rack at the right time.  Not exactly a hoy post-mortem, but I do remember winning and losing lots of chippies then making a nice surge to the finish.  Thanks to everyone for coming out as well as getting the word out.

I headed to FullTilt to watch the end of Al’s tourney then headed to see if anyone was playing.  Sure enough, weak_player, drizz, April, and a few others were playing a $0.25/0.50 NLHE table as well as a $0.05/0.10 NLHE $3Cap table.  I’ve never played a Cap game before, which really just means that it is a $3 max table.  Well, I wasn’t exactly sure how to play this since I’d never played it before, so I just limped for $0.10 if I was dealt cards, called any raise, then shoved if there was a raise in front of me or called if someone went all-in.  I asked drizz what my VP$IP was, and he estimated “Alot.”  Probably around 80% I would guess.

Everyone kept sucking out on me, calling my shoves with A-A or K-K or A-Q.  Five of us would be all-in, I’d flop two pair with my 8-5 only to see that someone else had K-8s or they’d four flush or have TPTK to my runner-runner gutshot draw.  When you’re playing literally any two cards again and again, it gets confusing trying to figure out if you have any possible way to win a hand.  At the other table, I made a horrible play against weak, stupidly not jamming my straight and letting him pair up to river a full house and paying it off.  The Cap game actually helped my NLHE play as I restole from the sb or bb probably three or four times, check-raised continuation bets when they caught air (and when I did as well).  Then I got paid off with some big hands much like some of our feared friends do when they’re in that mode.  Raveen and I chatted a bit about life and NLHE and my pre-med days, and that helped as well.  Plus I was a card rack at the right time probably.

I was able to get to bed relatively early, around 4:00 this morning.  All-In, The Big Guy, and their five-year old cousin M went with me to Chick-Fil-A for prayer breakfast this morning.  It’s turning into a nice ritual for us, and I know some of you might get creeped out with public prayer and the like.  We basically eat, read a few verses from the Bible, talk about it, each of us says who or what we want to pray for, then we each pray.  Chick-Fil-A isn’t the easiest, with Christina Aguilera’s Hurt blaring on top of us, but we’re off in a corner and not too intrusive at 6:35 in the morning.  These little things are part of the muscle memory of our lives, and hopefully these times will be a resource of strength for the boys in the future.  And for me.  It also is an opportunity for me to show them that God is approachable no matter where we are or what condition we’re in.  There is no proper prayer to say, no specific length that they have to adhere to.  We read today from Matthew 6, a particularly meaningful passage for me this morning.  In it, Jesus talks about not worrying but to seek first His kingdom and righteousness.  Very poignant for me right now as stress and worries move from being on the forefront to now transitioning into a numbing drumbeat of pre-anxiety.

This just in from my brother Econ, a story from the Onion on how the Bears are lifting the city of Chicago, a city still reeling from the Great Chicago Fire of 1871.

CJ has me on complete Kitten Cannon tilt as I can’t for the life of me squeeze an extra 150 ft out of that stupid kitten for the life of me (my current high score is 1284).  And the 2+2 top score is an unreal 4200+ ft.  Just depressing.  I’ve tried every angle and I just cannot keep up with the luckbox.  I have my Linerider up to nine or ten minutes of pure sledding delight.  Sweetie may take my laptop away from me soon.  I’ll keep you posted.

That’s enough for now.  Have a great weekend, and get some sleep!

This entry was posted on Friday, January 26th, 2007 at 8:27 am and is filed under Uncategorized.