Monday, November 10, 2008

Bullets Kill the Snowmen

Hey Gang.

Being an experienced blogger, I know that if I was any kind of host worth a damn, there would've been a nice long interesting post up this morning for your reading enjoyment.

There should've been, but I was just too damn tired to do one last night, and I slept in this morning. But as soon as I typed that last sentence, I realized that it's only 7:30 in the morning. I'm not wearing my glasses and thought the digital readout on the cable box said 8:55 when I woke up. I guess it was just 6:55. Doh!

Anyhow, it's been quite the weekend for me.

I'm still feeling a bit under the weather, but not nearly as bad as I was on Friday. After my hour of work on Saturday, I came home and slept literally all day long. It was just what I needed, but when I woke up around 8:30 at night, I was feeling much better, yet very restless. I did not want to stay home cooped up in my germified room all night.

So I showered, shaved, and got dressed, yet I still had no plan for the evening. I figured something would come to me eventually, so I just got ready to go out and do something, anything. I realized that I was very hungry, having subsisted on nothing but apple juice and crackers for a couple of days, so finding some grub was definitely on the agenda. But since I was feeling better and well-rested, I decided to go take a shot at a poker tournament.

Looking online, there were a few options available, but I eventually gravitated back to the old reliable choice of Binion's. Their 11:00 pm tournament is a pretty good one, and Dougie and I both cashed in it two weeks ago, so I figured my chances were good. And oh by the way, that left me plenty of time to drive down and get some dinner beforehand, too.

Once I paid my tournament registration fee, I thought of hitting the coffee shop again. Although I never made it that far, it appears that they're back to being open 24 hours again. I'm not sure, but the promo signs I saw indicated that they had some 24 hour specials going again, as did their website. But instead of that, I decided to really tempt fate and hit the snack bar instead.

It had been awhile, and even though I wasn't sure if my system could handle the shock, I ordered a bowl of chili with cheese and onions, a side of cornbread, a tall Coke, and just for good measure, at the last minute I said I wanted a hot dog, too. Told ya I was hungry.

A few minutes later I was happily munching away, really enjoying a hearty bowl of chili and cornbread on that cold Vegas night. (Yeah, it's cold here now. I was wearing socks. And a fleece jacket). In fact, it was so good that a random couple walked up to the counter, saw me eating it and said Damn, that looks really good--let's get that!, and they sat down right next to me and ordered the same thing.

The hot dog was good, too, but my 'chili bean' soup was off-the-charts enjoyable. And I counted a grand total of two beans in the entire bowl, so it was that much better. (I prefer no-bean chili, myself). While sitting there enjoying my meal, I briefly considered sending Hoya a text message telling her what the Bean of the Day was (Northern white beans), because it's one of those silly things I've been doing for years. Whenever she's out here, and downtown, she goes to the Binion's snackbar and orders whatever the bean of the day is... But it was after 10 pm here, making it 1:00 am back east, so I decided that I'd withhold that information until now...

Anyhow, I came pretty damn close to finishing the entire meal, but couldn't quite polish it off. And my system must've needed the nourishment, because there were no ill effects, I'm happy to report.

I got back over to the tournament area about five minutes before the cards went in the air, and I saw that there were three full tables. Not too bad--another $700+ payday for first place, I figured. I was playing pretty well, and had turned my $5000 in starting chips into almost $10,000 after the first hour. I liked my chances.

But it was a fairly tight tournament--after the first three or four quick bust-outs, nobody seemed to be going anywhere for almost two hours--the chips just seemed to be moving around the table. Unfortunately, I didn't make it to the money this time, as I got a hand that no matter how many times I replayed it in my head, would've made me go broke no matter what I did.

Basically, I was on the big blind for $400, and everyone folded around to the button, who limped in. The small blind called, and I looked down to see pocket Eights. I figured I was golden, so I bumped it up to $1200 to go. The button folded, and the small blind called.

The flop was 2-5-7, rainbow, so I had an overpair. The small blind checked, I made it $2500 to go, and the small blind thought for a second and called.

The turn brought a blank three, the small blind checked again, I bet $4000. It took a little longer to call this time, but the small blind eventually came along. By then, I had over half my stack in the pot and figured I had the best hand, so I was committed, no matter what came on the river.

It was a harmless ten, and again the small blind checked. I pushed all in and the small blind went in the tank, presumably, for almost a minute, before finally saying Well, I guess I'm beat, but I just can't lay this down, so I have to call.

The rat bastard had pocket Aces. And he had my stack covered by a measly $25. Mikey out!

I drove home, pissed off, replaying that hand over and over in my head, but I realized that there was just no way around me going broke. The guy in the small blind caught a perfect storm of circumstances--everyone else folding, so the pot was shorthanded for the flop, causing him to limp, and somebody (me) behind him catching a pocket pair and driving the action because I had position on him. Couple that with the fact that no scare cards hit the board for me, and well, I couldn't help but dig my own grave.

Oh well. That's two hands in the past month that have knocked me out of a tournament that no matter what happened, I couldn't get away from. That info will go in the vault for future reference, but for right now, I have no idea how to use it.

Anyhow, once I got home, I was wide awake, so I stayed up all night surfing the net and watching TV. Early the next morning, I talked to the family back in Nashville--there was some sort of gathering that weekend, Reverend Dave had come up from Alabama and a bunch of my siblings had gone to some BBQ & Bourbon fest downtown. Sounded like lots of fun, and I wish I could've been there to join 'em.

About the time the morning football games came on is when I hit the wall, so I finally dozed off around 11:00 am. A couple hours later, I woke up to my phone ringing--they needed me down at the poker room ASAP, so I got dressed and made it down there in time for the next push.

It turns out that we were quite busy on Sunday afternoon, so it was a pretty good day for me, and the previous night's loss of buy-in was recovered in my first hour of work. As a bonus, I managed to pick up another shift on Tuesday, so my original two-day workweek has already doubled in size. I ended up working six hours last night and making a nice chunk of change for the day, but man, was I ever worn out once I got home.

I'm still sick, it's just that the drugs have killed most of the symptoms. But when I finally punched out, I was tired, achy, running a slight fever, and feeling kinda crappy. So I stopped on the way home to get some more medicine, and while I was hungry (I was thinking about chicken chow mein--don't ask me why, but I had a weird craving going on), instead I just bought a bag of pistachios from Walgreens and had that and some Gatorade for dinner.

I stayed up to watch The Unit (man, what a great show!) and follow the final table action online on the WSOP site (the Novemeber Nine have been whittled down to two, and they'll finish off tonight). I finally went to bed sometime around 1:00 am this morning and got a full night's sleep.

Since I've got that graveyard shift late tonight, I'm not worried about getting called in to work today. So I've got some free time. As soon as I hit the 'submit' button on this post, I'm gonna take a shower and then go run a bunch of errands and do a little shopping.

If I can think of anything interesting to post, well, you'll know where to find it.

Mikey

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