Day: June 4, 2006

Finally a hand I am happy with

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I am guessing that Party Poker must have the most television advertising going on right now. While the level of play at any of the major poker sites is erratic at best, especially at the low limit tables, even I feel superior to the majority of the players I run into at Party Poker. I have by far my best winning percentage over there and finish in the money probably 2/3 of the games I enter. Of course when I bow out early it is generally because someone is in on a hand they have no business calling with, much like I was doing not so long ago, come to think of it.

I was in a $6 buy-in game this morning, and had been chugging along with maybe one playable hand in the first thirty. Thankfully, it was playable enough that I busted someone out, though he was the short stack so it didn’t contribute greatly to my stack. It did give me enough chips to compete with everyone else though (truth be told, I had made a horrible call earlier in the game with a pair of queens and it took me all the way to the river -even when the flop was a pair of kings- to admit defeat and lay it down. Stupid, stupid mistake.

I was in the big blind when I got dealt a nice, high-end suited connector. There were five people at the table and everyone called the blind, which I raised hoping to eliminate a couple of K Q offsuit limpers. I only raised it 400 (I think) but that was enough to knock two guys out of it. The flop came up just beautiful for me, and I bet into it, knocking out one more player, leaving only myself and one other guy. (pity I only thought to take a screenshot after the turn).

So, just to set it up a bit, I knew this guy had a high pair, or he had made what could be the worst call in the history of poker -it was Party Poker, that is always a possibility. If his pair was Queens, the flop would have given him a three of a kind, which I am sure he would have gone all in with he should have played a bit stronger to my weak bet. He must have thought that I didn’t have the queens either though, or he would have folded. Currently, I was in an open ended straight flush draw, which necessarily implies any straight or flush draw. At any rate, the turn came up in my favor and I went all in. There was already 2,500 in the pot and I didn’t care if I knocked him out of it or he called because there was no way he was going to beat my hand -barring a nut flush draw, and I don’t think there is any way he is playing the A-K of clubs that strong. I am not basing that on anything at all, just a gut feeling.

When the guy actually called the all in, I was left re-evaluating my previous thinking. Maybe he really was in it on a nut flush draw. I found it far more likely that he had pocket queens and thought he was going to take down the pot. There was also the possibility that he was also holding a 10-J, but I don’t think he is going to play it that strong pre-flop. Of course there is also the possibility that he has just made a lower straight with a 5-7 or a 7-10, which he really shouldn’t be in the hand at all with, but again it is Party Poker.

I was extremely confident that the turn had given me the win. The river, however, was just kicking the guy in the nuts:

Yes, he went all in with pocket jacks despite there being a flush draw and multiple straight draws on the table. My only question is what did he think I was holding? He must not have considered that at all, it is either that or he thought I had flopped middle or low pair and was trying to bluff my way into the pot. I suppose there is also the possibility that he was going all in on the gutshot since the pot was so big. But enough about what he might have been thinking.

I am extremely pleased with this hand. Not just the outcome of it either. I am pleased that I had the confidence to raise from the big blind to knock off some of the competition, even though my hand was less than ideal. The rest of it was just the luck of the draw really. The flop could just as easily have brought up a pair of aces and a jack. Once I learn how to play that flop and still come out with the chips, my ego will increase exponentially.

What has become of me?

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So I was lying around the house today watching some hardcore porn…Actually, that isn’t true, although admitting to that would be so much easier than admitting what I was actually watching. There is a new show on The Learning Channel called Honey, We’re Killing the Kids, which I thought was going to be an interesting docudrama that followed a couple around as they hunted down their own children and savagely beat them to death with rusty machetes. When it turned out to be something completely different, I was far too lazy to push the button on the remote that would end my misery, so I watched it anyway.

First off, shouldn’t Disney file a lawsuit against the creators for using their intellectual property? Isn’t it an obvious ripoff of the movie Honey, I Shrunk the Kids? Bleh. The series is probably owned by Disney, or the network is owned by Disney, at any rate I am not going to waste the time to look it up. Because when it comes down to lawsuits, I think Mattel is the company that really has a case. Look at the images and judge for yourself1:


At any rate, the show is all about exploiting fat children. The premise is that a nutritional expert will show the parents what the child will look like at age 40 if they don’t change their lifestyle, but the reality is that it is a show that will be watched by millions of people so that they can think that their children aren’t really all that fat by comparison. The particular show that I watched had a twelve year old kid on it that was only 10 pounds lighter than I am despite the fact that I am almost two feet taller than him. It truly boggles the mind.

I really can’t see why anyone would ever watch more than one episode of this show. I watched the very beginning of another episode and it is exactly the same thing only the people have been changed. I don’t think this is going to be a Jerry Springer type thing, where people like to watch it just to see what happens when the gene pool dries out. I can’t see how this show would be any different ever. Act 1: show the parents grossly exaggerated (or not when you look at the exploding waistline of the U.S. population) age renderings of what their children will look like in a couple of decades. Act 2: Insert change in the form of better food and a more healthy lifestyle, which the family at first rejects but slowly starts to accept. Act 3: show the parents grossly exaggerated (for sure this time) age renderings of what their children will look like in a couple of decades now that they have eaten a piece of fruit (imagine that, they could all be runway models). The End.

It would be nice if they were to go into the epilogue. You know, fast forward a couple of years to find out that the second the cameras were off everyone reverted to old habits and the kids are fatter than ever, but that would sort of make the entire premise of the show kind of pointless then, wouldn’t it?

Normally I am not the type to make vast and sweeping generalizations without factual basis2, but I am going to go with my gut on this one (pun intended). The only people likely to watch this show are going to be the parents of children who are borderline morbidly obese. If they can find just one child on the planet that weighs more than little Timmy, you see, then that means that little Timmy isn’t really that fat. Who else would watch the show? Parents of normal3, healthy, active children wouldn’t want to watch it, and certainly wouldn’t want their children to watch it. So I guess that means that they will always have an audience, at least until every family except for the fattest family in the U.S. has seen it.

1) I think I probably lose a lot of cool points for knowing the Mattel logo well enough to immediately recognize this blatant ripoff. Even more for actually admitting that I recognized it. Thankfully it wasn’t the Kenner logo or I would gain like 2d20 geek points on top of the cool points that I lost. In fact I might get those geek points anyway since Kenner was absorbed by Hasbro a long time ago and only the real Star Wars GeeksTM remember Kenner, and then only because it is printed on the front of their complete set of action figures from the first film.

2) I leave that to the Republicans. *rimshot* Thank you. I will be here all week.

3) That makes it sound like I am implying that the extremely overweight children are not “normal”, I would like to clarify that. I am not implying that they aren’t normal, I am saying it flat out.