No Points For Second Place!

... but I'm pretty sure there is some decent money involved.

Sorry for not posting anything on Tuesday, but the day pretty much escaped me without much effort on my part. After enduring all but my last hour of work on Monday night, I kicked off my weekend a bit early. No, I didn't go out drinking and playing video poker with one of my favorite ladies--Why? I have no idea--but instead of taking a chance on living the dream, I made the safe play and opted to expend less effort and money to come home alone than would be involved with coming home alone after a few hours of hormonal aggravation at the bar.

A man's gotta know his limitations...

So instead of lookin' for love in all the right places, I went to the grocery store and purchased a few essentials before heading home. Still wide awake, I got a couple of chores done before settling down in front of the DVR and catching up on a few shows. Rob made his way home shortly thereafter, and since I hadn't seen him in several days, we spent some time catching up. I can tell that he's *really* looking forward to quitting his current flea-bag gig next weekend, and I don't blame him one bit. I know the guy has been working twice as hard as I do for half as much money. And his new job will be dealing dice to 99% tourists, instead of 99% human debris.

Anyhow, after catching up on all the news and watching three episodes of Jeopardy, it was almost 7:00 am and the sun was high in the morning sky--time for bed. I was clever enough to turn my phone off before hitting the sack, because I invariably get a wrong number at least twice a week whenever I'm trying to sleep. And with no disturbances coming from inside the house, and no leaf-blowers or garbage trucks making noise outside my window, I slept all the way till 3:30 in the afternoon, waking up feeling like a million bucks.

The balance of the afternoon was kind of blurry--I remember drinking a pot of coffee and toasting a couple of English muffins, and then the next few hours were lost to the Deadliest Catch marathon on Discovery HD. Man, I can't get enough of that show--I don't know why I enjoy it so much, but it's the best thing on TV as far as I'm concerned. I'm really looking forward to the new season starting next Tuesday. Just like Sex and the City at the sorority house, it is appointment TV in the Man Cave.

Finally, around 9:00 pm, it hit me that it was Tuesday night, and that meant the $1500 guaranteed prize-pool poker tournament over at the Silverton for casino employees. I played in it a couple of weeks ago, and I actually played pretty well, but got unlucky a couple of times and busted out without even sniffing the money. And I feel like my poker game has gotten much better these past few weeks (a secret I've been sitting on is that I made about $400 during March Madness playing limit poker), so I wanted to go give it another shot.

I checked my wallet to see if I could go, but I only had $42 left in disposable cash to last me until Friday. The tournament buy-in is $40, with a $20 re-buy, so my immediate thought was Screw it--I'll scrub the bathroom tonight. I just didn't feel like I could afford to go.

Ten minutes later, overwhelmed by the bleach fumes and having absolutely no fun at all, I said to myself Man, fark this. If I'm afraid to lose forty bucks, I shouldn't even play poker in the first place. Then doing my best Mike McDermott impression for nobody at all, I said out loud, F*ck it--let's go play some cards!

I had to hustle to get there in time. I did a quick change of clothes, put on some sandals, and lead-footed it down the 215, hoping to get there under the wire. I shouldn't have worried, the tourney never gets started on time, and I found myself at the desk with five minutes to spare, anyways.

First loss of the night--a couple of guys were wandering away muttering under their breath, pissed off. It turns out that the poker room management suddenly decided to stop guaranteeing the prize pool, and that all payouts would come from buy-ins and re-buys only--no house money.

Damn. That was the only reason for going down there.

On the other hand, they lowered the buy-in to $33 with one $20 re-buy in the first hour. And since I was already there, I found myself signing up, realizing a few seconds later that I still didn't have enough for a re-buy. Oh well, gotta fold my way to the first break and worry about it then, I thought.

Even after the pissed-off crowd left the building, there were still 30 players. And since it was all dealers, bartenders, and waitresses, it was a fun, easygoing crowd, not the usual assortment of sunglass-wearing jerkoffs one normally finds at the nightly tournaments around town. Since we all had much in common, the conversation was pleasant and the asshattery factor was relatively low.

I raked three pots without going to a showdown, and soon found myself in second-best chip lead at my table. That's about the time I was feeling pretty confident about my game and I looked down to see an Ace-Queen, the MOTHER of all death hands, staring up at me. I raised to about four times the big blind, thinking that Ace-Queen has got to win eventually, and of course the chip leader came over the top of me and went all-in, forcing me to retreat like a scared Chihuahua hearing fireworks for the first time.

Damn. Not wanting to visit an ATM again this week, I figured that folding was my best move.

I was right--some other genius made the call and found himself pulling out another twenty-spot just a few minutes later, having been run over by pocket Aces.

I was playing pretty well, I had to admit, catching myself making only two mistakes in the first hour--raising with a weak Ace out of position, and getting caught with my hand in the cookie jar on a semi-bluff, but otherwise I was doing well and raking a lot of smaller pots, accumulating chips at a pretty good pace.

Just before the break, I was on the big blind and was dealt pocket threes. I was able to check in for free and luckily caught trips on the flop. I checked, one guy with a big stack went all-in, and I started doing the naked happy dance in my head when the other two players folded. I had the all-in guy covered, and I called. He managed to pair his Ace on the flop, but I had him drawing dead on the turn. The fact that the case three that came out on the river was just basically a kick to the nuts on his way out the door, and I had a huge stack when we got down to two tables a few minutes later.

Even better, I didn't need the re-buy!

I tightened up a bit, letting the short stacks chop each other up, which was about all I could do because I went completely card-dead for about an hour. The best hand I got was a jack-ten suited that ended up costing me about $2000 in chips, so I went in the tank, content to let the increasing blinds do my dirty work.

When we got down to six-and-five at two tables, and a guy who had only had $500 less than I did went all-in. I had pocket tens against Big Slick, he didn't pair up, and I basically doubled up--knocking him out and arriving at the final table with the third-highest stack of chips.

The blinds went up to $2000/$4000, and there were six short stacks, three big stacks (of which I was one), and one HUGE stack. All the short stacks were trying to fold their way to the money, but unfortunately, they couldn't do it. The blinds were forcing them to gamble, and after about 20 minutes, we were down to five players--one away from the money. Of course, I was still card-dead, and in fourth chip position, so when somebody suggested that we chop, I was ok with it. But the chip leader was against it, and the discussion ended right then.

The low stack took to folding like it was his job, hoping that a couple of the bigger stacks would tangle and he'd slide into the money. But it was not to be. He got a big Ace, went all-in, and the guy with the monster chip lead took him out with a pocket pair that held up.

Money, baby--I was in it!

By then, there was still a monster stack, myself and another guy with about 20K each, and one poor schlep with eight grand in shrapnel. The big blind was $6000 by that time, and the short stack immediately got knocked out--pot committed with a decent second-place hand.

I felt like I had a chance of winning the thing outright at that point--I usually play really well short-handed. The other guy with a stack relatively the same size as mine had been stealing my blinds for a couple of rounds, so I figured it was just a matter of time before I caught him and made him pay. There was a lot of folding to the monster stack, who was going all-in on damn near every hand, stealing *both* of our blinds. But I finally caught pocket kings on the big blind. The big stack limped in on the button, the small blind went all-in, obviously trying to double up or at least steal the blinds, so I went all-in also.

The chip leader folded and got out of the way, and it turned out that my pocket Kings were facing a Queen-Jack offsuit. Heh--I liked my chances.

My cowboys held up, and we were down to two players. I was still pretty far behind--the guy had about a five-to-one chip lead on me, but I nibbled away at it for a few minutes before he started going all-in every hand, eating away at my stack. Unfortunately, I was getting crappy cards and couldn't do a damn thing about it. I knew he was stealing about half the time, so as soon as I got a King-rag I went all-in.

He called, showing the Ace-Queen of hearts.

Damn, this was a pretty shitty time for Ace-Queen to finally win a pot, I thought to myself, and I was right. The board brought no improvement for either one of us, and just like that, the tournament was over.

I got $306 for my silver-medal efforts, and I left a generous toke behind for the dealers before happily skipping directly to my truck, not even tempted to take a house-money run at the dice table. Not a bad night's entertainment for thirty-three bucks! And now that my mad poker skillz have been validated, I'm thinking of finding another tournament for Wednesday night.

I hear they have a pretty good game at Planet Hollywood...

Mikey