Monday, June 20, 2005

Poker, High Stakes and Low

This is allegedly a poker blog, so before I begin I'd like to once again point you to the indefatigable Pauly slaving away at the Rio covering the World Series of Poker. While I'm enjoying his tales of urinating next to Howard Lederer (in the bathroom, I mean--Pauly's not walking up to the Poker Professor and relieving himself on the carpet) and his many pictures of Isabelle Mercier, I look forward even more to hearing more about his wacky neighbors. Today Pauly talked to a young lady with bowling-ball sized breasts. Actually, that alone is story enough.

So hit the following links for all your WSOP needs:

World Series of Poker Live blog

World Series of Poker Photo Gallery

World Series of Poker News

World Series of Poker Podcast

Oh, and Otis is out there too, I'm sure keeping Pauly in line. Heh.

Back to the original content. My wife's out of town visiting family for a week, so while the cat's away, this mouse shall play. I gathered a few friends together and got a little poker game together, the first time I've had live cards in my hand since last summer. It was hardly an intense game--many beers were drunk, many cheese curls (ed--originally I wrote "girls". talk about a Freudian slip) eaten, and the tough laydowns could probably be counted on a single extended middle finger.

We played a ring game for the first few hours, and the cards were hitting me in the face. Twice I went runner-runner to make trips by the river, and when I was dealt my lucky hand (pocket tens) I hit my set on the river to win a nice pot from Mark. I think the biggest pot of the night was when I held K-7, made trip kings on the flop, hit a seven on the turn, and got paid off by Mark who was chasing a flush. I more than doubled my buy-in, which sounds a lot better than saying I won twelve bucks. And I did show down the Hammer once, marking my territory as it were.

We then played a $10 tournament, and I knew I was screwed when we switched decks. Bad karma. I didn't get a hand worth playing, which didn't mean I didn't play a few. My brother built a big stack which grew bigger when his KK beat Matt's JJ. I needed to double up to get well, and when I was dealt JJ I figured now was the time. Ryan had AK this time, your classic race situation. No ace or king appeared, and a jack hit on the river...the jack of clubs. Unfortunately, that put a four flush on the board, and while Ryan and I were too polluted at that point to see he had the king of clubs, Ted wasn't, and that was the end of me. My brother went on to win the thing, bastard. Even flashed the Hammer to me once. Bastard. Friggin' jack of clubs.

posted by Gene @ 11:10 PM   |