Grubby at PokerWorks

I’ve been playing illegal online poker while waiting 8.5 more hours for my illegal download of “The Office” to complete.

Now that Netflix is streaming some of their movie and TV DVDs online (a godsend considering I still have unwatched DVDs from five months ago with Netflix envelopes crumbling and turning brown), I finally caught “The Office” and instantly fell for it.

Keeping in line with my personality of excess, I stayed up all night watching all the episodes of the first two seasons.

During that time:

• I found my new favorite TV show. 
• I lost AA twice against someone’s flopped quads.
• I had to listen to my new upstairs neighbor’s noisy gay sex.

After season 2’s finale, I would have rolled into season 3 if it were available. Now I have to find out what will happen with Jim and Pam, so I took to locating a torrent of season 3, episode 1.

The day didn’t start out that way; it’s been such a nice cool summer so far, I’d gone out to eat and intended to catch the movie Sunshine before realizing I’d left my CTA card at home. And once I was at home…

This excess usually comes out in casinos, online poker sites, and food. I may have mentioned before that when grubette and I would go to Atlantic City and lose what we had, we’d dig into our pockets and put every last nickel we had into a slot machine and then go home nickeless.

A couple weeks ago at Fitzgeralds in downtown Vegas, mamagrub and I were playing Palace of Riches II, and a guy next to us was playing Jungle Wild. He hit the bonus but looked glum because he’d hit it on his last penny. The bonus brought him a Big Win of 200x his bet, which made him more glum because of the actual amount won ($2) and the thought that had he not played out his final cent, it could’ve been much more. (Actually not, because had he took the time to insert more money and then spin, he probably wouldn’t have triggered the bonus… the same idea of someone sitting down at the machine you were just on and winning big — the random number generator spews so many numbers every second that you wouldn’t have hit the same combination had you continued to play.)

Before penny machines, I used to play down to my last quarter or nickel. Now, it isn’t worth a bet of one penny much less a few, so with the handy ticket-in/ticket-out tickets, I just leave the ticket on the machine or hand it to someone else.

The excess also came out Friday night playing poker at Donkey Puncher’s.

After the game broke up at about 4:30 a.m., DP and I headed upstairs and played online on two computers, one of which didn’t have any letters on the keys. I left after he passed out, then fired up more Full Tilt when I got home at about 6:30.

Played cash games and an SnG, fell asleep, and awoke to find I placed 4th… again. I keep forgetting to read that Dan Harrington chapter on cashing while napping.

At DP’s game, the weather was so nice we played outside on his deck the whole time.

Unfortunately, the guy who pissed himself didn’t show up, so we had relatively small pots. No one won or lost $600 like in past home games, and there was no urine on the floor to clean up or step in.

I doubled up early when I flopped top two pair and rivered the boat. The turn gave a flush scare, which I thought the other guy was on, but he bet small enough to let me see the river.  When I bet into him on that second Ace, he pushed, and I had to re-check the board again to see if there was a higher boat or straight flush possibility.

He’d flopped a set of deuces and I got lucky.

The Hammer held up numerous times by others at the table (bluffed successfully against one person’s 10-10).  But they did give off a tell: whenever anyone would min-raise, they had AA. Whenever anyone would raise 10x, they had 72o.

The hand of the night was when DP raised UTG to $5 (blinds were .25/.50).

I look down and get excited at The Hammer — all red with 7d2h — but decide to smooth call and outplay him on the flop.

The Oberons consumed prevents me from remembering if anyone else was in the hand, but if they were, they folded on the flop of 9-9-5 with two hearts.

DP bets $15 and I go all Hollywood, looking at my cards and shuffling chips. I put him on a big Ace or a small pair. Him betting bigger than the pot meant he just wanted to take it. Throughout the night, he’d been making big laydowns or was just calling down with big hands against my raises, and I figured he could let it go.

I also figured I could wait until the turn to raise and represent that 9, but I also didn’t want to see another heart fall.

So I raise to $30 and expect to take the pot, flip over my cards, and cackle a triumphant “Hammer!” to rub in his face.

He surprises me by reraising another $15.

I look at him and show my 2 of hearts, asking if he had that beat.

I fold and show the 7 for the cracked Hammer, saying I can’t seem to win with it.

DP throws over 7h2d for the other red Hammer! Unless he picked up runner hearts, we would’ve chopped.

Figures he had my outs. He completely outplayed me, and I was completely passive with The Hammer. The whole point of The Hammer is that it wins with aggressive play, and I botched it.

In retrospect, his standard raise with anything was 3-5x.  That 10x raise should’ve clued me in, and had I thought longer, I would’ve figured it out, but what are the odds of two people holding a red Hammer?

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 22nd, 2007 at 5:19 pm and is filed under Uncategorized.