Author Archives: Shadowtwin

George Bush doesn’t care about poor people

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As the anniversary of Hurricane Katrina nears, The Discovery Channel is releasing a documentary called Surviving Katrina. In what is probably the ultimate in ironic detachment, it appears to be a show focusing on what people did to help each other in a time of crisis. Now I am all for a good story, but if that documentary focuses on the good aspects and ignores all of the negative aspects, I am going to start looking to see if it was funded by a GOP contributor.

I don’t live in New Orleans, of course, so I can only base my assessment of what was really going on down there on what I saw on the internet (I do refuse to watch television news, you are better off just making things up and calling them the truth). Because of an absolute lack of any immediate help, many of the residents (particularly those in the low income areas who couldn’t realistically afford to evacuate) were forced to extreme measures to survive. I don’t mean to say that all the looting and the such actually happened, I want to focus more on the assisted evacuation, some week after the initial tragedy. Think about it, and use common sense. You are trapped in a flooded home with no electricity, food or running water. A week later, buses show up to start evacuating people, but not nearly enough buses to get everyone out. Do you really think people just lined up in an orderly fashion, then said “too bad” as the last bus drove away without them? Hell no, I am willing to bet they fought each other for seats on those buses, because that is exactly what I would have done.

There was relief from non-governmental sources during the whole fiasco; I remember reading that Wal-Mart (how I loathe that corporation) actually had semi trucks with bottled water on site in less than 24 hours; There were many other organizations that also provided much needed support, things like food, blankets, and personal hygiene products -again, all private organizations- Once the evacuation was complete (at least 10 days after it should have been), the people’s good nature got a chance to shine through.

The Red Cross raised an astronomical sum of money to help those left homeless, as did many other organizations. Many foreign countries even made substantial donations to the relief effort; Kuwait alone donated 500 Million dollars, many other countries joined in with multi-million dollar donations. Eventually, television news stations quit running stories about the affected area, so, in the eyes of the average US citizen it was over. The problem is that the average US citizen doesn’t actually live in New Orleans.

When Katrina initially hit, I remember thinking to myself that it was tragic that a city with such history could be destroyed. But that got me to thinking. A city with that much history has something else that many cities don’t have: old, privately-owned homes with extremely poor residents. I don’t know this to be true, but I am not actually going to look it up either, as such I am just guessing. Many houses in the New Orleans area were old, it is fair to assume that many of the houses had been privately owned for decades, and that the owners of the homes could certainly not afford to buy a new home on today’s market. Since the homes were already paid for, it can fairly be assumed that many of the poor residents may also have quit carrying homeowners insurance, as it is not required unless you have a mortgage. Do you see where this is going?

In addition to these low income homeowners that are now displaced, there will also be low income tenants that are affected. Certainly there were many old homes that were being rented, the type that barely made it past inspection, and probably wouldn’t even do that were it not for the area they were located in. These run-down homes would have been renting for far less than fair market value because their condition would have required it. Again, the only people this would be affecting is the poor. Aunt Nellie (even though she wasn’t really your Aunt, that was what you always called her) had been renting you that house for the last 11 years, you could barely afford to make the rent, but Aunt Nellie was compassionate and would let a little slide so long as you helped her change the shingles on the roof to keep it from leaking.

A lot of these houses should probably have been condemned a long time ago, but the city had let it slide, knowing the situation and not wanting to start a fuss with poor communities. Unfortunately, now there are building inspectors rolling in and checking over all the structures. These houses don’t stand a chance. Aunt Nellie certainly can’t afford to build brand new houses, and even if she could finance it, she wouldn’t be able to rent them so cheap, since she would have to make mortgage payments. Even if 10% of the Aunt Nellie’s out there are willing to be so philanthropic as to rebuild on their own dime and keep the rent the same, that will still leave the vast majority of the poor without an affordable place (affordable to them) to live.

So now to do a quick news search.

Here is the first story I found that matched my search criteria:
Report: New Orleans lacks affordable housing

The news stories that I am reading don’t go into a lot of detail, but I think it is fair to assume that the very poor in New Orleans are the ones affected by this the most. It is sad that as the city tries to rebuild, the struggle of the displaced poor doesn’t get any sort of national attention. As the outpouring of support when the hurricane actually hit shows, the American people really will help those in need, as I am sure they would help now, if they only knew that for the poor in New Orleans this ordeal is far from over.

Free Speech TV

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Sometimes when it is really late at night there is very little on television worth watching. On one of those nights, I happened to flip way to the high end of my satellite’s channel listing and came across Free Speech T.V.. I was unimpressed at first, since I happened to flip to it when the show on was 5 minutes of a cricket standing on a pocketwatch (no kidding). But I left it on that channel when I turned the T.V. off. The next morning when I flipped the T.V. on, there was a documentary showing called Toxic Sludge is Good for You. Now that was a program.

If you have ever been in doubt as to whether or not your local news stations are reporting actual news or not, you really should watch that documentary. It goes into a great amount of detail about what isn’t actually news, how and why it is on the local news, and who is paying for it. I think everyone knows (even if they hate to admit it) that some of the stories that make it onto the six o’clock news aren’t really news, but advertisements. This show details how the ads make it onto the news in the first place. Even if you think that such an idea is a ridiculous lie, you should still watch it, just for the differing view.

The next show to come on was Liberty News. Liberty News is political news with less spin than I have ever seen. While I am pretty sure that it is definitely a product of democrats, I think that is only because there is no news channel in the nation with the balls to show anything even remotely critical of the Bush administration. To those who would disagree with that statement, making the argument that Rove, Delay and Santorum (among others) have taken a beating in the media, I have to point out that they committed jailable offenses and the so-called “liberal media” is calling pursuing charges a witch hunt. Clinton got a little head in the white house and people were calling for his resignation, yet even mentioning the charges against Bush administration officials(I just had to) is considered taboo. I can’t say that Liberty News is actually politically left though, since they also took Hillary Clinton to task for her campaign statements not meshing with her voting record. Showing the truth about both sides and letting you form your own opinion? What a novel concept.

If you have FSTV on your channel line-up, I urge you to flip it on and watch a couple of shows. Much of what is on does look like it was made by college students who were really stoned (a cricket on a stopwatch?), but when it gets to the documentaries and news, you are never going to find an outlet that is as critical of both sides. It certainly is a welcome alternative to the Rush Limbaugh and Larry King crap that fills the airwaves now.

Roseburg Nights: The ballad of nameless racers

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My wife and I are probably looking forward to seeing Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby more than most. Sure, we are well aware that it isn’t going to be taking home any oscars and the plot (insofar as there is one) is going to be simply ridiculous, but sometimes it is nice to just go to the theater and laugh at the spectacle.

This movie has gotten me to thinking of my youth, and how close I came to going down the road to calling myself Donnie Joe. It’s probably not much of a story, but it is what I am thinking about, and thus it shall be typed.

Roseburg, Oregon doesn’t really have much to offer. It has gotten a lot bigger since the time I spent there as a child, but it is still nothing more than a fuel stopover on your way from California to Eugene or Portland. The population began to boom when I was a child, as that was the time when Roseburg Lumber (which is actually located twelve miles away) was the best paying job in the county, and every able-bodied man was taking up a job there. They began to marry off and start families in the Winston and Roseburg areas, and somewhere in the early 1970’s the population of children was probably larger than that of the adults.

It was fortunate that there were so many children though, since there really wasn’t anything for us to actually do other than play with each other. Since Roseburg Lumber was such a large supplier of forest products, there were train tracks criss-crossing the town that effectively cut it into zones (at least for the children who weren’t allowed to cross the tracks without a parent -that being all of us-). Roseburg was actually quite a beautiful town, with many lush parks for the children to play in, all connected by miles upon miles of paved bike paths. All of which were also across tracks, so most children weren’t allowed to tread them without an accompanying adult.

When I was around six years old, a rumor began to circulate among the kids that a girl was murdered on the bike trail. I was never able to actually confirm the information through my parents, but the fact that they wouldn’t actually deny it either led me to believe that it was probably true. After that point no kids were really allowed on the bike trail without their parents. Not that it was a law or mandate, unless you consider boundaries established by parents to be such. This turned the whole town of Roseburg into no more than one block to me; bordered by railroad tracks to two sides and major (4 lane) streets on the other two.

If I would have been older when I lived there, I would have had access to a car and a little bit more freedom. In that case, I could have seen how big it really was. The town went on in fits and spurts for miles. The names would change as you left the city limits, there were names like Green, Melrose, Winchester, all still part of Roseburg (at least most considered them so), but just on the outskirts. All of them were small, and the citizens were pretty territorial, but we were all part of that wonderful little community. A community that was exactly one block to me.

Roseburg had a drive-in movie theater, as well as a traditional one. Some of my greatest memories involve watching movies there. I watched E.T. at the traditional theater, on opening weekend. It was during a canned food drive, so the entrance fee was literally a can of corn (creamed in my case). I watched a double feature at the drive in with my Mom and Brothers. The movies were Star Trek: The Wrath of Kahn, and Beastmaster. I actually watched Beastmaster, but fell asleep during Star Trek. The only thing I remember about that one is the I had nightmares about earwigs (slang for a type of bug) for weeks afterwards. The drive-in has since closed, and was subsequently replaced by a warehouse foods store. The other theater may still be there, but I think it only had two screens, so it probably lost in competition to AMC or Harkins by now.

A trip to the movies was the ultimate night for a kid, but it required extensive planning and willing parents. My parents were willing to go to the theater, of course, but for reasons that I couldn’t understand back then, they didn’t want to see the same movie 9 times. Roller skating was another popular activity, but it also required willing parents. This one was easier achieved though, since they could just drop us off at the doors and pick us up three hours later. The skating rink was managed in a way that it was not possible to get in without a ticket (exceptions were made for parents), and the doors were locked to keep out any unscrupulous, bike-trail murderers (of course you could get out from the inside, you just couldn’t get in. It was effectively a large baby-sitting room for the three hours that we were there).

The only other forms of entertainment were the ones that we created ourselves. Every kid with any sort of a reputation had an obstacle course for bicycles in his back yard. If your yard was too small, you could still be one of the in kids so long as you took the time to build a nice little action figure war zone for the myriad G.I. Joe, He-Man, Transformer, Go-Bots that we all had. As I say, we were all limited to that one block, we really had to reach for entertaining things to do.

Roseburg did have one event that parents as well as children really enjoyed though (and I probably should put fathers and sons, but I don’t want to be sexist): Racing. Every Saturday night (I am sure there was actually a racing season, but in my memory it was every Saturday), drivers would flock to the local fairgrounds to battle it out for nothing more than bragging rights. I don’t think there was a trophy or a points system, just a bunch of guys who wanted to race and took advantage of the opportunity.

The race track was small, I think it was a quarter mile. The 8 cars would line up to start and the rear cars would be in the final turn. They would go around a lap or two awaiting the green flag, then the engines would roar in the way that only a racecar (or the amplification from the covered grandstands, not sure which) could. The night would disappear in the smoke of the tires and thunder of the engines as the cars tore through the turns at speeds possibly in excess of thirty miles per hour. To the strightaways, where the drivers would again gun the engines hoping to pass the guy in front of them, or stay ahead of the one behind them, before the next turn, which could really only be taken in single file. After some amount of laps (or when the audience got bored), the checkered flag would come out and a victor would emerge. Until the same time next week when it all happened again.

That was the stock cars though. And the stock cars was by far the least exciting event. The stock cars all had logos covering their freshly painted bodies, and many of the drivers were not local boys, we wanted to see the real racers. The real racers (in my eyes) were the ones the competed in the other two events: J-cars and Sprint cars.

The sprint cars were a hell of a lot of fun to watch (if you are unfamiliar with them, you can see what they look like here). Sprint cars really thrive on small tracks like that. They are small and nimble enough that they don’t have to lock up their brakes before the turns, and because of that, there was a lot of edge-of-your-seat action as you watched. You would be praying that they made it through the turns without rolling over, but at the same time hoping that they would roll over. The crashes were amazing to watch, as there was never a minor fender-bender with a sprint car, it was pretty horrific if they missed a turn or rolled over. There was one event where we watched one of them miss the corner, crash through the wall, and tumble several times before stopping several hundred yards out of the stadium. Always fun to watch, the sprint cars.

The J-car event was always the local favorite though. I think J-car is supposed to stand for jalopy, and these cars definitely fit that bill. The sprint and stock cars were mostly in actual racing circuits, and Roseburg was small potatoes to them, but the J-cars were all local boys, none of them sponsored, all racing just to race. The cars were as varied as they could be, since anyone with an old Ford Fairlane and a roll cage could sign up. We all had our favorite local driver, and though I have long since forgotten his name, my favorite was the one that drove the 07 car.

The J-cars weren’t meant to be a demolition derby, but since the cars were all just beaters with horsepower, and the drivers were a proud bunch, they often became little more than that. The drivers weren’t afraid to trade paint (well, primer) in the turns or gently nudge someone (read: push them off the track). The cars didn’t go very fast, I don’t think they had anything more than the dated stock suspension, but the drivers didn’t let that keep them from competing harder than the drivers in the other events. At the end of the race, whoever was ahead (or whichever car was able to finish under its own power) would get kissed by a pretty girl. I really think that was the only award for winning: a kiss and bragging rights.

Something about the J-cars captivated me. I really wanted to be one of the drivers. It had to be a J-car though. The audience would actually boo most of the stock car drivers, and the sprint cars looked like toys (although with adult eyes, I can see that they were easily the fastest and most dangerous of all). The J-car was what I hoped to someday race. When I put a numberboard on the front of my bicycle, it wasn’t because of any bicycle or motorcycle racing I had seen, it was to emulate the J-cars. Each time we went to the races, I would patiently wait for the J-cars to come out before starting to cheer like only a child can. That was truly what I hoped to do with my life.

Perhaps I should be thankful that my childhood innocence (at least as far as racing goes) would be stripped from me before it became an obsession. During one of the J-car events, there was a crash. One of the cars smashed into the the tower that the guy with the flag stands in (which is obviously made of reinforced steel) and caught on fire. The driver was knocked unconcious on impact and it took rescue crews a couple of minutes to get him out of the car. I am not sure about the severity of his injuries, but I do know that that was the last time I ever saw his car racing at the fairgrounds (to be fair though, he wouldn’t have been able to race that car again anyway). That was the very first time that it ever occurred to me that you could be injured while racing. And that effectively ended my racing career long before it ever got going.

The racing continued after that horrific crash, and following the pattern of racetracks being reactive about safety (as opposed to proactive, which would save a lot of needless injury), the flag tower would be surrounded with a whole bunch of car tires. Think about that. All it would have taken to keep this guy from impacting the tower and getting (possibly) horribly injured was a stack of used car tires, but no one took the time to wonder what would happen if a car hit the reinforced steel tower at full speed. I continued to watch the races, but with far less enthusiasm than I had before I saw what could happen when things go really wrong. So someone else’s misfortune probably saved me a great deal of my own.

As we step into the theatre to watch Talladega Nights, I have no doubt that it will bring back memories of those nights spent at the racetrack when I was but a lad. No doubt Will Ferrell will be playing a character that sees racing much as I saw it when I was so youth, and I am sure it will be fun to watch. If it does nothing else, it has already made me recall something that I hadn’t thought about in twenty years: a happy memory of time spent with my Father. If you have read many of my posts, you know that I am always trying to come up with examples of those, but they always escape me. This is one of them. Those nights spent at that little racetrack in Roseburg, Oregon. I felt like we were friends, not Father and Son. We would talk about the drivers and the cars while we shared a popcorn and a soda, and basically just left everything else behind. Tomorrow would be different, he would be the Father again, but for that time spent under the grandstands, we were just a couple of guys watching a race. Maybe that is why it is so difficult to think of specific examples of happy memories spent with my father; it’s not as though there aren’t any, it’s just that I found happiness in such mundane activities.

But for the love of God, did we really have to wear matching Goodyear ballcaps when we went? Sure, I did it because I wanted to be like my dad, but imagine the crap he probably got from his friends for sitting with his son -in matching caps- and sharing a popcorn and a soda, instead of drinking beer and hanging out with them. I guess he really did just want to be a good dad sometimes.

Sick suckouts galore!

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The last three days, I have seen the final table in three blogger events. Though this is obviously a product of extreme luck, it still feels pretty good. The blogger events still always include at least a dozen people who I don’t have any business being at the same table with, let alone actually competing with.

The Mookie went pretty well, and I think I actually played that one pretty solid. I didn’t make a lot of stupid mistakes and I was able to win a couple of races when I needed to. I did get my chips all in on a pretty questionable call against Drewspop when he pushed from the small blind:

I haven’t ever read a poker book, and I let a lot of things influence why I make a call. The cards come into it a bit for sure, but usually only after a whole bunch of other factors. On this particular hand, I put a lot of thought into his stack size before I made the call; If I fold it right here, he adds 30% to his stack uncontested. I have a pretty fair hand, but not one that even I would normally call an all in with (push with, sure, but not call with). Trying to put him on a hand here, I figure there are really only two possibilities 1) he has an A-x, and I get into the flop as an underdog. 2) this is a straight bluff, and I get into the flop way ahead. I eventually call it, fully expecting to either win or lose a coinflip, and it shakes down like this:

I wasn’t expecting to see him flip over an Ace-Queen of hearts, I was thinking it was more likely to be like A-7o or something. So I was more of an underdog than I thought I would be, but the poker gods gave me one here. But like I said, I knew I was going to be looking at a race, and had I lost the race, I would have still had 2400 in chips with the blinds still at 75/150. I would have hated to lose the chips, but I knew that it was a very real possibility when I pushed them in.

Not much more that I really care to comment on happened in this one. Well there was this time at the final table where I raised 3x from MP and got the table to fold around to me. That was just wonderful, since it was the first time I have ever been able to show this at the final table:

Shortly after dropping the hammer, I found myself with a pair of 9’s. I raised to 3x again, and Tripjax scoffed at this 1200 bet. He threw some godawful huge bet out there, which would have left me with only a few hundred chips if I were to call. I really thought he was trying to teach me a lesson about stealing blinds, after the hammer just a few hands before, so I decided to go all in. I figured he probably had two over cards, and that I was going to be looking at another race. But when he flipped over aces, even I don’t have that kind of luck. So I managed to donk myself right the hell out of this one, again, in 7th:

This was a call that I really shouldn’t have made just because I would have still been in really good position if I would have laid them down. Tripjax had been stealing pots with abandon, but I really should have waited for a better (or worse) hand to take head to head with the chipleader. He had no reason to be risking that much of his stack when he could easily just watch everyone else kill each other off. I should have given his raise in that position some respect, and in the end the reason I didn’t was because it was so insanely large; I thought he really didn’t want me to call it. I think I would have gone out on that hand if he would have just called it though. Unless the flop would have come up with three over cards, I would most likely have pushed on the flop anyway.

Then last night, I signed up for the WWDN: Not. I had been playing Guild Wars (geek alert! geek alert!) and barely made it in time, but make it I did. Unfortunately, my pc required a restart after an afternoon spent slaying demons, and I completely forgot to fire up my screen cap program, so the few that I am going to throw up here were ripped off directly from this photo album. I absolutely have to put them up here though, ’cause I was sucking out like nobodies business.

I started it out innocuously enough, donking off a third of my stack early. I happened to get jacks early on, raised pre-flop, then called a bet on the flop even though it had a king and an ace in it, and eventually layed them down on the turn -which is exactly one more card than I should have paid to see, but I am new to this-. The good news for me is that this was the last stupid play I would make the last time that the board wouldn’t bail my ass out on a big hand. I made a couple of calls that I really shouldn’t have made, but I was feeling lucky, and each of them paid off. It did lead to a lot of apologizing in the chat, but when I am hitting the cards, I am going to take more chances than when I’m not.

The first hand that I am going to post about is one where I got into a pot with Hacker. As I said before, a lot of things go into why I do or don’t make a call, and the cards I am holding are only a small part of it. In this particular hand, Hacker is the short stack with 1448 in chips. Superman raised it to 600, which I called, and then Hacker pushed his 1448 in chips into the pot that was now at 1500. Hacker just doubled up if I don’t make the call here. I have an A-6 s00ted, and figure Hacker could be pushing with any two cards at this point (note that he doubles up even if no one calls). I really think that my ace is probably ahead, and I call off the additional 800 chips to find out:

What I got instead was that suckout. I am posting this one only because someone asked how I made that call, and I wanted to explain it. It sure is easy to look at it after all the cards are dealt and say that it was a horrible call, but I really didn’t think he was holding anything at all. If you were the short stack, and you could double up if you pushed and the other guy folded, would you make that push regardless of the cards? I would. It sucks that I was wrong and then went on to bust him out with a lucky card, but in my mind that is a call I have to make. We are all trying to win the game, and letting the short stack double up without a challenge, when I am holding an ace, is something that I just can’t do. Had it not been raised on the way to Hacker, that would have been the easiest lay down of the night for me.

The next in my long line of suckouts was a push I made with a suited A-J. This one really should have sent me home. I thought I was going to be ahead when the chips went in and instead I was way, way behind:

Yeah, that one really should have sent me home. Hoy even wrote that only a fish calls an all in with A-J, so what do I do? But, on a 1-10 scale of suckouts, this one was right up there. But it was nothing compared to what was about to come. With three people left, I make an all in call on the turn with nothing but a king high and a flush draw. There are no face cards on the board, so I am figuring that we are in a battle of high cards, until he flips over pocket queens. I got about ten outs and, well, I got lucky again:

I went on to win the heads up, which is only the second heads up I have ever won. I didn’t really get a lot of good pocket cards, but the poker gods were bailing me out there as well. Except for one hand where I would have ended it when I made a flush on the turn and got all in, only to see him complete a flush on the river, and his ten beat my 8(?).

Like I said at the beginning, I made some pretty big suckouts that led to a lot of apologizing in chat, but that’s poker, and after having this done to me a while back, I can’t feel all that bad. I hope that I can limit the foolish calls (notably those last two shown) in the future, ’cause it sucks to have to write about making a bad call and sucking out huge. Also, it sure is nice to see this once in a while:

Well, I thought it was funny. And the more I think about it, the funnier it gets.

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I was text chatting with my Mother the other day (it seems the world has come full circle, we used to exchange letters, then came the telephone, followed by emails, which has now led to real time text chat, which will probably be followed by morse code, odd how that is going, eh?), and we got to talking about movies. I don’t watch many movies, since I am generally disappointed with them. It just seems to me that if they are going to spend 150 million on a movie, it really should be somehow better than the 1 hour shows that are on television every week, yet they rarely ever are.

I find that the movies I enjoy seeing the most are the ones that were released at least five years ago (from today’s date, you know?), and that I have never heard of. Or in some cases, like The Butterfly Effect, it can be of any age, and as long as I never paid any attention to the press about it, I can still enjoy it. By far the biggest part of enjoying the movie, for me at least, is not knowing what is going to happen. I don’t mean that they give to much away in trailers, I mean that if I have seen a trailer at all, I probably already know too much to actually enjoy it (I exclude comedies from this, since my only expectation when watching a comedy is that it will make me laugh. If it accomplishes that -no matter how absurd the plot (if there is one) or the characters- I am satisfied).

A great example of this is the movie Seven. I had absolutely no idea what that movie was about when I sat down to watch it (on video). When it went into the VCR, I was kind of expecting to see a gangster movie about gambling in Vegas (no idea why), and having absolutely no knowledge of the story really made that movie. I have since watched it again and I still find it enjoyable, but there is something about seeing it with absolutely no knowledge or expectations that ups the ante as far as the suspense is concerned. Good stuff.

When I recommend movies to my Mom, I like to recommend the ones that she has probably never heard of either. We have roughly the same taste in movies (imagine that), so I am perfectly comfortable with giving her the titles of some of the dark comedies that I enjoy, yet would not really cop to watching -at least not in person-. Sometimes I manage to recommend movies that she really enjoys, sometimes though she is forced to yank that crap out of the deck ten minutes into it. Hey, nobody’s perfect, right?

I recommended two movies to her while we were chatting. One is 11:14, and the other one is Lucky.

When I watched Lucky a couple of years ago, I threw up a review typed thing that made complete sense to me when I wrote it, but as I look at it now it is quite convoluted. I remember that when I wrote it, I was just pissed off that everyone that reviewed it had missed one extremely key point, and I wanted to note that. I didn’t do a very good job of it, but I was probably as drunk as old Millard himself when I wrote that, so I suppose it is to be expected. I am not going to try to fix that pseudo-review, so read it at your own risk and don’t expect me to answer any questions about it. Do watch the movie though, well if you happen to really like your dark comedy. Lucky was probably the best dark comedy I had seen in at least ten years, and some might not even classify it as “dark comedy” (which would just further prove my insanity, but who is really doubting that at this point anyway?).

11:14 is another movie that I had never heard of. The cast is a who’s who of people you’ve never heard of (or forgotten all about). Patrick Swayze is in it, but he is far enough removed from his bad-ass-turned-into-wussy-spirit days that his role in this one wasn’t huge, and I almost almost made it all the way through without once thinking of Whoopi Goldberg. Hillary Swank was also in it, but while I have heard the name, a quick look at her film credits (while impressive) shows that I have actually only ever seen her on screen in the movie Insomnia, and I don’t know which character she was playing in either film (at least I don’t recognize her face in either film. I never watch any of the shows or look at any of the magazines that paste the faces of actresses all over them. I honestly wouldn’t be able to tell apart Hillary Swank and Hillary Duff. Unless one of them really is named after the skin mag, in which case I probably had a few or her pictures on my wall at one point -no tape, no glue, no thumbtacks, just stuck right on the wall-).

11:14 is another movie that I went into knowing absolutely nothing about. I had never heard of it, didn’t know who was in it, and only decided to watch it since it was on a free preview channel so I knew it wouldn’t have any commercials. It is another dark comedy, and another one that works pretty well. An event happens at the stated time, actually several events, and you get to see it all through the eyes of five different people. The flow of the movie is similar to that of the older comedy Noises Off, in that there are so many things happening at the same time that you find yourself rooting for a bad person who is doing a bad thing, since there is a worse person who is doing a worse thing, and you just hope that they don’t run into each other. If you find yourself rooting for anyone, you are rooting for someone who, were it to happen in real life, is going to be spending a long time in prison. But you do root for people, ’cause just when you think you hate someone, another guy trumps them in the evil deeds department.

Yeah, I really liked this one. Again, it probably had a lot to do with the fact that I had never heard of it (I wish Ebert had so that I could steal a snippet of his review; mine does it no justice. Alas, Ebert has no such review, so you will just have to take my word for it). It is obviously going to help if you are able to make light of death (deaths), because if that offends you it is going to be a real deal breaker.

Yeah, anyway. So my mom put these movies on her blockbuster on-line order list, and she got one of them in the mail yesterday. She started watching Lucky, and called me a few minutes into it to ask me if she had the right movie. See, when I told her about this movie, I gave her the release date, the actor’s names, and the character names to make sure that she got the right one, as there are a lot of movies that share that title. She was reading the description from the back of the box to me, and she indeed had the right movie. But when she took the dvd out of the player to see if perhaps it was the wrong disc, she found that while the movie was indeed called Lucky, that was only the US title. The one that she had was a foreign release distributed by Eros entertainment. Yup. They put a porn in the box for the movie they sent my mom.

Being the caring and compassionate son that I am, I did what any caring, compassionate son would do in that situation: I laughed so hard that it gave me cramps. And the more I think about it, the funnier it gets.

Creamy WWDN goodness (Turkish and Domestic, baby!)

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I was having a conversation the other day with slb about how we both play much better in the Tuesday night WWDN than any of the other blogger events. He is on the east coast, and he figures that the earlier start time just means that he is more patient since it isn’t so late. That is some pretty sound logic. I am in Arizona, so the majority of the blogger events start at 7:00 my time, which is hardly late -in fact that is the same time I take my nearly daily crack at the ftp 20k. The only reason I can come up with as to why I might do better in the Tuesday events is that they generally have a larger field (though not lately), and I ususally don’t end up at a table with 5 guys that I am terrified of. See, I don’t play well terrified.

Before I get to my recap of the game, though, I want to share a couple of screenshots that I thank my stars I didn’t want to take my 3-8o to war with. The first one here is a perfect example of what happens about 98% of the time if you get all in preflop with Queens:

The next one I am glad I was not in because as the play unfolded, I was fairly certain that Aquaverse was sitting on a queen based on the betting. The way Sires played the hand made it seem like he was scared, and I think everyone at the table bought that act:

Well played, Sires, well played.

Anyway. I said that I usually end up at a starting table without five people that I am completely terrified of, and that held true of last night’s game. There were, in fact, only three people that I was completely terrified of. Hoy scares me on principal alone (though getting the opportunity to see some of the crap he bluffs with -as posted on his site- has taken some of the edge off), Hacker seems to be at the final table, or at least near it, at every damn blogger event, and this horse guy has smacked my ass around on a few occasions. The other people at the table, I didn’t recogize, which just means that I wasn’t smart enough to be terrified of them. So the starting table looked like this (though not for very long):

Last night, I decided that I wasn’t going to call anything in the first three levels if I didn’t have the absolute nuts. And what is funny is that I really believed that I was going to stick to it, yeah, like that ever happens. I was forced to lay down a pair of jacks early when an A-K-x hit on the flop, and was coupled with an aggressive bet. I paid too much money to see one more card, praying it would be another jack, which it wasn’t (donkey call! donkey call!), but I was able to only piss away a third of my stack on that hand -it could have been much worse.

I got to limp into a hand a short while later with a pair of sixes. Glad I could limp, ’cause after losing a third of my stack on a previous horrible call, I wasn’t exactly stoked about the idea of paying even the minimum to see if I could flop a set. But flop a set I did:

Boy it sucks to flop a set on a limped hand like this, eh? Either one of the blinds could easily have just flopped a straight or a flush. The straight is a lot less likely from the other guy who limped into the pot, but the flush is still a real possibility. Since I was on the button, and both of the blinds checked the flop, I decided to call the pot sized bet here, mostly to see if the blinds were going to lay it down, but also hoping that the turn would pair the board and make me feel a lot better about my position. The board had different ideas:

I really think the pot sized bet here probably means that he doesn’t have a flush, probably not even a pair; my best guess is that he is in it on two high cards. Unfortunately, either of those high cards could be a heart, and I really can’t justify putting nearly half my stack into a board of hearts, especially knowing that I am all but guaranteed to get called all in on the river regardless of what card happens to hit. If the board were to pair, I would surely take it down. If another heart hit, I would probably split the pot, but it could also cripple me if he had just made a backdoor flush. I layed the hand down here just hoping that I would be able to use the chips I saved on a hand in a better position later.

Instead of using the chips on a better hand, or a good hand in a better position later, I went ahead and confirmed all theories of my donkicity (is that a word?). The next big blind, I have K-garbage offsuit, and get the joy of seeing a flop (if I had a dollar for every time I am in the blind, pair on the flop, then bust out to someones two pair or trips, my bankroll would be booming). Of course the flop hits my bottom card (and they don’t get much more bottom than that), and drops a pair of queens. Why I didn’t immediately fold to Hoytlite’s bet is a mystery even to me. In this instance, I don’t think I even ran through what he could be holding before I made the call. I know that I was thinking he didn’t have a Queen, beyond that, I got nothing. When it got to the river without another face card hitting, I figured I was either way ahead or way behind. He bet 210 into the pot, which looked a little fishy to me, if he would have pushed here, I probably would have folded. The small bet though, lent credibility to my theory that he could be in it with two high cards and didn’t pair either of them. Since a straight call would cripple me if I lost, I decided to make my stand right here, on a frikking K-3o:

He took a long time thinking about it, but eventually called. I was almost shocked when the chips got pushed my way at the end of this one, but it is a call that I wouldn’t have regretted making if it had gone the other way. From the time that I made the decision to call his bet on the flop, I think I knew that I was going to stake my tournament life on this bottom pair. A horrible, horrible call to be sure, when any pocket pair but deuces dominates me, but when no more face cards hit, I just couldn’t put him on a queen with the minimal bets. I knew I dodged a bullet on this one, and I was going to do my best to keep from putting myself in that position again.

I would catch an actual hand shortly thereafter, again from a blind, and again it would be Hoytlite that was in it with me:

He raises 4x from under the gun, which I take to mean he probably has a high pocket pair. Of course the bet was enough to get us in the hand alone, so there was nothing to do but call and see the flop, which I hated: Q-J-10 with two spades. I had guessed that he was in it with a high pocket pair, which could easily be queens, jacks, or 10’s, but when he led out with a bet that was a little than half the pot, it either meant that the flop missed him, or that he just made a hand and wanted to suck every last chip out of my stack. Of course there was also the possibility that he had A-10 or A-J and had just paired his bottom card, but I am more of a worst case scenario speculator. The turn was a rag, and at this point I figured I was going to live or die by this hand, unless he pushes on the turn. The board looks like this:

I missed the screenshot of the end, but, if memory serves, I think he had a pair of 9’s. We ended up all in on the river and I won the hand. This is another hand that scared the holy bejeezes out of me, just because of the obvious straight, flush, and set possibilities right there one the flop. With the range of hands that I was putting him on, I am really surprised that I won this one.

The next big hand that I got into, I almost feel guilty about. I don’t know why, I’m sure if the situation was reversed there wouldn’t be any such feelings. I can just imagine how the guy felt, though, when he pushed his flopped set into my flopped straight:

And, unlike my luck of late, the flopped straight actually held up:

I was all set to go to war with an A-K, when Vtepes pushed from under the gun, but someone else called it, and I figured I would let them battle it out (at least I don’t think I played this hand). Anyway, once Weak Player was at the table, the chat got fun. I made mention of his avatar looking a bit like my brother, which led to a brief Q&A session, ultimately capped by Astin making the observation about my brother that you can see in the chat of the screenshot below (and it almost made me shoot diet coke out of my nose):

Upon arriving at the final table, my only goal was to outlast one other guy. That is kind of a shitty goal, considering that I was actually in second when I got there. This is actually my third final table in a WWDN (remember about the doing better in the Tuesday tournaments?), and would ultimately put my average finish in the event into the high teens. Not much of note happened to me at the final table, except that I actually wasn’t card dead for the first time at a final table. Unfortunately, the cards that I was getting weren’t quite good enough to actually be betting big with, but they also weren’t crappy enough to fold with. Let’s just say that I saw a lot of suited face cards that I got to lay down to big bets on the flop -which completely missed me in every case-.

I got into a race on this hand figuring that I was going to be a slight underdog:

I wasn’t sure if TransFish was sitting on a pocket pair or a high card, but I was relatively sure that the push at this point had a lot more to do with the size of the pot than the hand she was holding. With the pot at over 6,000 already, figuring that I was about 50/50 to a mid pair, and a slight underdog to an A-x (not to mention being way ahead if it was a stone bluff), I eventually made the call. Trans was holding an A-4o, making me the dog. The flop helped no one, but the turn paired her ace, then the river dropped a 4, as if the poker gods were trying to say, “well dude, you had a good run, but from this point forward bend over. Oh yeah, if you got some lube, you may want to use it”.

Then I went card dead. After a couple of orbits which involved folding and more folding (someone was raising every damn hand, effectively eliminating any possibility of a steal -at least for a donk like me), I eventually ran a 4-9o into a hand that two people were already all in. Again, this call was made for no reason other than the pot size. My chip stack would have been just enough to cover the blinds another time and pay the antes along the way. My river suckout capabilities usually bail me out of those situations, but last night, it was not to be. I busted out in 7th, which is pretty respectable from a field of 52:

After I busted out, I stayed around to rail (Matt Damon!). Someone, though I forget who, asked me if I was in a cash game. I told them that after the buy in to the tournament, I had exactly 96 cents left in my PokerStars account (I am not exactly what you call a high roller), and I think that people thought I was joking. So, this one is for you guys:

With the 7th place finish, I live to fight another day.

Mother flubbing circuit breakers

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I hadn’t been in an ftp 20k for a while, so last night I decided to go ahead and sign up for one. I didn’t have a decent hand to play for the first hour of the tournament, which has become the status quo around here, but thanks to playing with Guin quite a bit over the last week or so -and having him chatting at me on the girlie chat thing- I have gotten a lot better at using my tight play to steal enough blinds to keep me around. Why this newfound stealing has yet to work its way into my blogger tournament play, I may never know. Perhaps it is because the field there is so much better, and most of them are willing to call that huge preflop raise with crap cards since they figure you have crap cards too? I dunno.

I was able to double up once before the first break, on what had to be the most insane play I have ever been involved in that I have ever won. I was on the button with a 3-9o, and when it folded around to me, I decided to go for the steal again. It seems that the big blind took offense to my having my way with his stack (which I wasn’t really doing, since the big blind in this case was also the chip leader at the table). In the end, I think I just raised a little bit too much here and made it pretty obvious that it was a steal. I raised it 6x preflop, since I obviously don’t want to see a flop with those cards, but that was also 1/3 of my stack, so I really needed to get my chips back (I could have gone on without them, it just would have been tough). He took a while to think before eventually calling, no raise, just a call. Of course if he raised it I would have been setting world speed records for how fast I fold.

This is exactly the kind of hand that I really need to not be in at all if I plan to advance in MTTs. There really shouldn’t ever be a time when I am seeing a flop with a 3-9o, but that was the way the poker gods (read: my flawed steal attempt) willed it, so I sort of had to. The flop hits 3-9-K rainbow giving me two pair, oh how I hate this hand. He checks it to me, but remembering Hoy’s observation that everyone will check if they hit a set, that could have meant anything. I checked right back. I am not sure what I should have done in that situation. In all likelihood, two pair had to be ahead right there, barring the set of course. But with the way my luck runs, it was entirely possible that he also had two pair, but that he hit with a king and a nine. When the turn came up an ace, he bet into it, but he just went straight all in. Normally, in my experience, if they want you to call it, or possibly get all your chips into the pot, the bet will be less than pot sized if they believe they have the best hand. The ace did put two clubs on the board, but at this point I don’t think either of us were really afraid of a flush. I took that bet to mean that he probably just hit a pair of aces, but didn’t really want to see the final card, and certainly not a showdown. After some thinking, I decided that my bottom two pair was good and pushed. He thought for a lot longer than he probably should have, but eventually called it and flipped over a pair of threes. Yep, that flopped set that I should have been worried about was about to take me out. Until a nine hits on the river, giving me a boat of 9’s and 3’s to his boat of 3’s and 9’s. Guin would be proud of my river suckout capabilities.

That left me smack at average as we went into the first break. I was also a bit gunshy after coming so close to going home on that flawed steal attempt. Thankfully, I would get a hand right after the break (possibly the third hand or so) that would get me back into the fray, so I thought… I had a pair of aces in the big blind, two guys limped in on the way around and the small blind raised it 4x. I made a minimal raise to that to get it to a nice, round 500 going into the pot, which one of the limpers as well as the small blind called. Flop comes up A-J-6 rainbow, which is just gravy for me. The pot is at 1500, I have about 2700 left in my stack and the small blind has me covered..barely.. I figure now is the perfect time to put out a bet on flopped trips (take that Hoy!), but I want at least one of the other guys to come along for the ride. A pot sized bet puts one of the guys all in, and probably makes them both fold, so I decide to go with 2/3 the pot. But two thirds would be exactly 1000, and that doesn’t feel right to me, so I bet 950 instead, no idea why. The guy to my left thinks about it for a while before calling it (what is he drawing to? Does he have the other ace?), and it is on the small blind’s timer when my wife goes to melt some cheese on top of her chimichanga…

See, for reasons I can’t explain, the microwave runs on the same circuit as the television in my living room. Since the room where our pc’s are located is on the other side of the living room wall, her pc shares a circuit with the microwave. Unfortunately, and unbeknownst to me at the time, my DSL modem also shares that same circuit. So while I had decided to wait until the end of this hand before going to reset the breaker that had just tripped, I didn’t realize that I had just lost my connection. By the time I did realize that, I was not able to get to the breaker box and get the DSL reset before my hand timed out. Since sitting out forces you to fold to any bet, my flopped set of aces, as well as the 1500 in chips (about half my stack) were lost right there. Which absolutely sucks! Sure, it’s possible that one of them flopped trip jacks or 6’s and went on to win with quads on the turn or river (also no able to see hand history once I reconnected) but I have to believe that I was going to take that pot down. That pot would have taken me to well above average stack, possibly way above, as the one guy ended up all in and was eliminated by the time I got back to the table. That one hurt.

So I was back to about 1700 in chips, which was far from ideal, but the blinds were still low enough that I could take my time. Which I didn’t do, of course. About three hands later, I had a suited A-J that I called a min raise with. Flop hits an A-x-x and I decide that third kicker is good and push. Well, third kicker would have been good, had the other guy not been holding one of the x’s. Fortunately for me, the x he was holding was the lowest card on the board. I say fortunately because the poker Jesus was about to bail me out again. The turn brings up the fourth ace, and the river pairs the other card on the board (a 7 I think) giving us a split pot with the boat. Saved. My. Ass.

So score that Awesome hand being folded by circuit breaker:1 Having my ass totally bailed out when I make a questionable call:2

Now you guys only think you have seen me play tight. I am here to tell you that after these two near death experiences I was ready and willing to fold anything up to (and possibly including) aces. I didn’t play a hand for roughly the next century. Down to about 360 people left in it, and I had folded my blinds enough to put me squarely on the list of short stacks. I ended up in the small blind with 870 in chips -100 (possibly 150, can’t remember for sure) already in the pot. I had a 6-10o, and three people had pushed in front of me. I was to the point that I needed to double up nearly three times to get back to average, and I was the short stack of the tournament. 6-10o is good, right?

I pushed in that situation knowing that I needed a miracle, but also knowing that I was going to have to push sometime during the next orbit anyway. With three guys already all in, if I were to hit it I would have life again, but I knew that there was virtually no chance that I was going to win it. Though I wouldn’t get to see any of their cards until the river (one of the guys in it was the chipleader, and he and one other guy seemed perfectly content to check it down), I would have been happy had I seen what they were holding. There were two A-K’s and an A-Q in it, pretty much eliminating the possibility of the other ace coming, I would have liked my odds, actually:


Of course the other Ace came on the flop to take me out of the running -which, again, I didn’t know until the river, not that it really mattered. I made my decision to go in and pray, and I think I forgot to pray. At any rate, no 6 or 10 hit the board, and even if they would have, I would have lost to the eventual two pairs of Aces and Queens. So I went home somewhere around 350th (360th?).

I know that I am far better at making excuses than I am at playing poker, but I can’t help but wonder how much better I would have done if I had been able to finish the hand with the aces. I sincerely doubt my result would have been all that much better, but I wouldn’t have felt the need to get my chips in knowing that I was way behind at that point. I probably would have had to make a similar move, but I would have been able to make it a half an hour or so later, unless of course I happened to hit a couple of big hands along the way -something that I no longer had the luxury of waiting for once the blinds were raising as my stack was falling.

I am generally able to make it through the first half of the field in the 20k tournies by playing smart and tight early. Now that I am learning how and when to attempt steals, I should be able to put myself in a better position to actually make a run after the first break. If I could just get a couple of playable hands once the field is thinning, something that has yet to happen, I don’t see why I wouldn’t be able to make it to the final table in one of these bad boys. Well, except for the fact that I suck at poker, but since when have I ever let that stop me?

Evanescence has a fan, and she is pissed!

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While looking through my junk mail to find the one with the little tid-bit that became my last post, I happened across this one from xxxxxx1993@aol.com (there was actually a name before the 1989, but I don’t think I really need to share it. Just wanted to make sure and note that it was an aol address -which my email filters all of into the junk. When you think about it, how often do you actually want to read anything that comes from an @aol.com address?). It seems that my post on song remakes struck a nerve or two with her (I know it is a her based on the screen name, that or a really unfortunately named boy).

I am going to throw the email up here not just because I find it hilarious…Okay, truth be told, that is really the only reason I am posting it. I don’t get much site related email -particularly now that you can comment on posts- and this one is really good, in that hate-filled, flaming way. Oh, and to note that I am going to copy and paste it, so the whole thing should be taken with a huge [sic] :


Your a fucking idiot. Emanescence is the best band there is right now eveyrone else just beats on there instruments and screams Emanescence plays perfect melodys and Amy Lee is the greatest singer of lal time. At least you can understand what she is saying when she is singing heart shpaed box. I dont know who y ou think you are claiming to be a music expert and callign emanescence the worst band in the history of music just because they are the first rock band that ever had a woman for a singer. YOu must be some kind of shovanistic asshole pig. How can you make a judgemnt on a band that you dont even know do you even think before you open your mouth?

your a fucking moron!

Okay, where to start? First off, she managed to misspell the name of her favorite band not once, not twice, but three times -even neglecting to capitalize it once. Sure I was beating on them when I made the post about their cover of Heart Shaped Box, but at least I took the time to look up the proper spelling of their name. But if I want to start faulting her for her spelling, there are much bigger (smaller) fish to fry. Seriously, my grammar is horrible, but the sheer number of mistakes in that thing makes me cringe. What are they teaching kids in school these days? Obviously they aren’t learning their homonyms.

She made two very valid points in the email, the first is “Your a fucking idiot”, I couldn’t agree more. The second is “Your a fucking moron!”, again, I concur. Beyond that, she seems to be suffering from the same bit of ignorance that we all have when we are that age (assuming she was born in 1993): she seems to think that the history of music started when she was about 5. Before that the world was devoid of music of any sort, and it took her listening to the radio to start the musical ball rolling. How else could she make the claim that Evanescence was the first rock band to have a female singer? Depending on the definition of “rock band”, I could probably name at least a dozen that came before her -some of which were entirely female bands. I mean, Courtney Love is still in the headlines a lot (and not for the best of reasons), and she is female (I think), and she sings in a rock band. Just looking at a couple that I can think of off-hand, Doro Pesch was the singer for the band Warlock, and running a close second (right behind Lita Ford) for the 80’s rocker chick I would most like to bang.

As for the claim that Amy Lee is the greatest singer of all time, we are all entitled to our opinions. I don’t think she is a bad singer, in fact, I really do like her vocals. Evanescence has some great songs, and her voice is a welcome departure from some gruff dude barking out senseless lyrics. I actually really like the song Bring Me to Life for exactly that reason. A really melodic voice with some heavy music behind it works well, and it isn’t what most bands are doing (unfortunately, it is what Evanescence is doing, over and over and over…). I think it works fabulously in this particular song, it does not, however, work in Nirvana’s song. To be fair to Evanescence though, I will say that I would have the same bitch no matter who it was that covered that song, if they were to try to turn it into a fucking religious hymn.

The part in the email where she says “I dont know who y ou think you are claiming to be a music expert and callign emanescence the worst band in the history of music…” kind of took me by surprise, since I have never made any such claim. I never claimed to be an expert on music, nor did I claim that Evanescence was the worst band in the history of music. I did say that their remake was the worst remake in the history of recorded music, and I stand by that. As for being a music expert, I would never claim to be one. I am just a guy with a website. I like the type of music that I like, and I realize that I am far too biased to make a fair judgement on any other type. If a barbershop quartet remakes Seasons in the Abyss, though, you can bet it is going to piss me off.

Also, it is a sad, sad world that we live in if she is really only thirteen and already knows what a chauvinistic asshole pig is (even if she hasn’t quite gotten the spelling of it down). One would like to think that a girl wouldn’t learn that until her late teens, alas, I suppose that the men in the U.S. seem to pound that point home at their earliest opportunity. It’s good to see that she isn’t willing to take that off of a man, even though I think she picked the wrong man and the wrong fight for it in this instance.

She goes on to ask the question: “do you even think before you open your mouth?” Well, the simple answer to that is: Nope. That actually gets me in trouble a lot of the time because my brain already sent my mouth a message, unfortunately that generally happens long before my logic banks kick in. It does make for some wonderful, quick-witted retorts, but it also leads to making jokes at really inoportune times. That goes double for anything I post here. If I think it, it is likely going to hit the screen in all it’s unedited glory. What is the point of having a website if not to speak my mind?

I am not without emotion though, so I must say that I am sorry. Xxxxxx1993@aol.com, I am truly, deeply sorry that Evanescence did the worst remake in the history of recorded music. But that was their choice, not mine.

Yummy, Yummy Spam!

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Of course everyone gets tons of garbage email, but I am the type that likes to read them. Come on, how else am I to know how much C1A L15 is going for these days (note to the guys who send those emails, if they have their blocker set up to filter out the word cialis, they probably aren’t your target market).

Anyway, the more advanced automated garbage mail producers have taken to including a paragraph or two at the bottom of the unsolicited garbage mails to try to sneak them past the spam blockers. Today, this gem was at the bottom of my daily “grow your penis 3 inches” email:


He wanted to say: If you cut anything else off me, Annie, I’m going to die. candide berg He hadn’t cared for her mood this morning.

For one terrible moment he thought it had gone out, and then pale-blue fire uncoiled across the title page with an audible sound — foomp! Because I can, and it’s not something to apologize for, goddammit. Like the barn, with its heat-tapes. Annie had fired into the air. “Yes, Boss Ian,»Hezekiah agreed. He had gone to sleep in the monster-woman’s house and had awakened in the hospital. “Ian nearly screamed, and for the first time Geoffrey had truly understood that his friend was tottering on the brink of madness. chase

I am intrigued. I wonder if I bought their shiny placebos, would they send me the rest of this story? What happened to Annie? How is poor Geoffrey holding up after all of this? I must know the answers!

With any luck, this will play out like a serial drama in my garbage mails over the next few days. Then again, it could be there for the sole purpose of getting it past my junk mail filter (it didn’t).

Donkey-liciousness

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I sat down to a token game on FTP today, and the trash talk and name calling began right after the first hand. That is always fun. Of course both of the guys involved in the hand thought that they played a good, smart hand, yet only one of them won the hand, therefore either one of them didn’t make such a great play or one of them sucked out. Now, I sure know which guy I am agreeing with here, but since both of these guys are seasoned pros -the very best to ever play the game, just ask them- I don’t know for sure which one of them is the bigger donk.

I didn’t do a screencap during the hand, but since the trash talk was still going on when we reached the final table (from a table of two, huge achievement), I went back in hand history to get a screenshot of the hand. Which shook down like this:

Before I get started on what actually happened, I just want to note that I in fact did not call the 4x bet with my Q-4 s00ted, see I am improving.

Okay, so first hand of a low buy-in turbo. No one knows anything about the way anyone else plays the game, unless they happen to have notes on people, but I can say that this is the first time I have seen most of these people -although I do know that I have played a couple times with one of them. The cards come out and UTG instantly bets 4x. It quickly folds around to the button, who calls, the small blind folds, the big blind calls. The flop comes out 4-8-9 with two clubs and the big blind bets out 120 into a pot of 360. UTG folds (what he says was an A-Jo, which doesn’t really matter, but if you are raising 4x UTG with that on the first hand of a tournament, you probably bust out early a lot, or double up, more likely the former), and the button calls.

So at this point, we have the Big Blind betting 1/3 the pot on nothing more than an OESD, but there are 2 clubs on the board. He has to know that the flush is a possibility, right? the button is making that call knowing that he has second pair top kicker, and he has to be thinking that the only way anyone called the 4x preflop bet with a 9 would be if it was along with an ace, right? I am guessing here, but that was what I was thinking as the hand was unfolding before me. I was putting them both on an ace, figuring that one hit top pair, one hit second pair, but that one of them was suited and had the nut flush draw. Part of all that was right, and that was that one of them did hit their pair and was on a nut flush draw, the guy being in it with a 10-Jo, after a 4x preflop raise, that I could never have guessed. If that is how you are supposed to play 10-Jo, I am never going to get good at this game.

When the turn was a 10h, the big blind bet 420 at it (roughly 2/3 the pot). The button quickly called. I don’t know what either player was thinking at this point, but I know what I was thinking. I was thinking that there was no way that a 10 could have improved either hand. I still think that both of the guys are holding an ace, and that both of them paired their kicker. For my theory to be true, no one can be holding a 10 or the J-Q that would have made the straight. I thought the bet was the big blind’s attempt to scare the button out of the pot, so that made me think that the big blind was probably the one holding the A-8, and that his weren’t suited. So at this point I think the button likely has A-9c and the big blind has A-8o (I don’t know how he calls 4x with that preflop, but I can’t think of any other hand he could possibly have called with and still be in this hand).

When the river brought the little club, I don’t think that anyone doubted that one of the guys had just filled up his flush. Confirming my previous suspicions, the big blind checked. The button bet at it, but only 210. I think he did that because he knew that the other guy knew he was beat, but thought it likely that he would pay a final 210 (into the over 1k pot) to see the cards. Then I see that it was actually A-8c, so I was pretty close on that one, but when I looked in the history and saw the 10-Jo, that I wasn’t expecting to see.

For about the next ten minutes, the trash talk stayed at roughly the level of three-year-olds: Donkey this, your momma that, fish this, tuna that. Once the dude who lost with a pair of tens and fourth kicker calmed down a little bit, he started trying to rationalize his play, while at the same time explaining why the other guy was a complete and utter dipshit. I really disagree with the guy who made the 4x call with nothing but a 10-Jo though, so I joined in on the fun. A couple of quotes from the guy who lost: “how could you possibly think that second pair was ahead on that flop?” I am looking at the hand history and thinking to myself, how could he possibly not think that second pair was ahead? The only way I could justify someone pairing a nine on that flop was if they were in it with an ace, and if someone indeed had top pair top kicker, wouldn’t they bet more than just 1/3 of the pot? Especially with a flush draw on the board? Wouldn’t you want to scare anyone that is drawing out of the hand?

Another quote:”How could you call a bet for 1/3 your stack with nothing but a flush draw?” Well, he didn’t have just a flush draw, he had a made hand with second pair and top kicker, and he had every reason to believe that he was ahead, at least in my mind. The bet of 420 just seemed so odd to me; it was small enough that he would be able to come back if he was forced to fold, which made me think that he was weak, and it obviously made the other guy think that as well.

More quotage:”Only a donkey plays A-8s from early position” Even if we disregard the fact that the guy playing it was on the button, which isn’t exactly “early position”, are you telling me that good players just lay down A-x suited if there is ever a pre-flop raise? I am sure that some players do and some don’t, hell, even my donkey ass will play it in some situations and lay it down others. If I have already paid to see the flop with it though, and I paired my kicker, and I have a nut flush draw, I am probably going to pay to see the turn, and likely the river, depending on what the cards on the board are, and how much I will have to pony up for the privilege.

By far his best argument, though, was:”I was 70% to win on the turn, how can you make that call?” This one is great, ’cause it kind of implies that we are playing with the cards face up. How else would anyone know that he was still in this hand with a 10-Jo? So, to join in on the fun, I went to that handy odds calculator, checked a couple of odds, and said, “He was 68% to win on the flop, how did you make that bet?” To which he replied, “I had a straight draw and two cards to come.” So, I said, “he was 100% to win on the river, how did you make that call?” To which he said, “I thought I was ahead, only a donkey would be in it with nothing but a flush draw.”

So I am just curious. Was the guy playing with the A-8c really playing horribly, or was the guy with 10-Jo the one that needs more schooling? I obviously side with the guy who was playing the A-8, since there is no way he can be putting the other guy on 10-Jo, but even aside from that, is playing second pair top kicker such a bad move on that flop? While I was assuming they both had an ace, it is far more likely that in that situation one of them is in it with nothing more than two overs, K-Q for instance. When the turn is a ten, could you possibly think that it somehow improves one of their hands, taking into account the betting both before and on the flop?

The guy who had been playing the 10-Jo also made the following observation, “You have no idea how to play this game”. This was directed at me, after I was asking him why he was betting with nothing but a draw on the flop. While I really do think that this was his only valid point during the entire tournament, I don’t think that the way I am reading the play of this particular hand has anything to do with it; my lack of understanding and ability is certainly unquestioned, but it has nothing to do with thinking he was an idiot for being in that hand at all with a 10-Jo. This all IMHO of course, YMMV.