Mean Gene

You Gotta Kill Cinderella When You Get The Chance

Congrats to Royal on winning the WPBT event last night. But the 2nd place finish by Moonstomp was incredible. The guy (I think it's a guy) was down to one chip. ONE CHIP. Literally. Uno chipolte. He went all-in (duh) and won that hand, and then there came the hand where I had a chance to end this Cinderella story before it got started.

We were playing Hold-Em, Moonstomp raised and it was folded around to me in the big blind. The computer chirped, telling me I had to act, and seeing that I'd been dealt Q-5 of hearts I mucked. I failed to see that no one else was in the pot, and that Moonstomp only had $72 left. I'd just won like 6 hands out of ten and was flush for a change, and had I noticed the circumstances I probably would've gambled. I didn't notice because Ernie, one of my cats, was screwing around with my phone line and I was in the middle of administering a savage reprimand when I got beeped. I was probably behind in the hand, but one never knows. I was on a rush.

I had "fun" playing the different games. I place "fun" in quotes because I didn't really have a clue as to what I was doing outside of Hold-Em. And even in Hold-Em I'm hardly Sherlock Holmes. I played superdupertight and superaggressive, and that saw me through. If I had a hand, I was pushing chips with both hands. If I didn't have a hand, I sat there like the Buddha, contemplating the Universe. It got me to the money, but left me little chance to win.

Speaking of Cinderella, its time for March Madness, one of my favoritest times of the year. This year, alas, will be the first time in about a decade I don't take off Thursday and Friday to spend all day in a sports bar drinking and rooting. Still don't get paid for time off, and my gang can no longer be counted on to show up at noon for the opening tipoffs. Used to be we'd have 7-8 guys clustered around a table, a score of empty 28oz glasses cluttering the table, cheering maniacally for schools we couldn't place on a map. Ah, good times, good times.

Why is March Madness so popular? The wall-to-wall games, the underdog triumphing over the major-conference behemoth? Well, yes, but I think the biggest reason is that everyone gambles on it. You fill out your bracket, pay the nominal fee, and suddenly you're rooting for Niagra as though you spent four formative years strolling it's campus. Nothing like a little action to add spice to a game, yes?

A few years ago Billy Packer opined that the NCAA should re-seed the Final Four, so that you don't end up with a semifinal featuring two Cinderella #6 seeds and the other two top-seeded powerhouses. This was one of the stupidest things I have ever heard in my life. CBS should have canned him on the spot, because obviously his brain is going. If you re-seed the Final Four, you can't fill out a bracket. You don't know who might play who. What, are you going to ask the guy in Accounting who runs your office pool to re-calibrate all 127 brackets to adjust for the new pairings? Take away the brackets, and you take away about 75% of the interest in the tournament. And as CBS recently paid a few billion for broadcasting rights, idiotic talk like Packer's is bad for business.

Speaking of idiotic talk, here's my Final Four--Oklahoma State, Gonzaga, North Carolina and Syracuse, with Carolina beating Okla. St. in the final. I think it's Roy Williams' year, the Tar Heels mulligan against Georgia Tech nonwithstanding. I have G-Tech in the Elite 8, along with Utah, who will conquor Kentucky. My Pitt Panthers I picked over Washington to make the Sweet Sixteen, but that's just an obvious rah-rah pick. Actually, Pitt is a very dangerous team, if they play at their peak they could make the Final Four. Thing is, it's more likely that they'll have a brain freeze game and get beat by Pacific by 15. A very odd team.

My friends will be getting back from Vegas tonight, but we have to play our volleyball game without them. So I get to be our primary offensive option. At last, an opportunity to show I can actually hit the goddam ball!. Now, I just have to, you know, hit the goddam ball.

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