Mean Gene

The Power of Perception

Rather than cry myself to sleep after getting bounced from Wil's tourney I decided to play a little SNG and hopefully win my entry fee back. It ended up as rather a testy table--there were at least EIGHT all-ins that were decided by a lucky card on the river, and some of those less fortunate weren't too happy about it. I myself was on the losing end twice, though I could hardly complain, in both situations the other guy had enough outs to make it a toss up. That's poker.

There was one goofy hand early on. I fold, the guy to my left calls, a shortstack goes all-in, another shortstack goes all-in, a guy with a healthy stack ALSO goes all in, and the guy to my left, our chip leader, calls. The shortstacks have pocket eights and A-J. The healthy stack has A-3. Huh? The chip leader has...K-5 suited??? The cards come out and A-J ends up winning the hand. I type "uh, that was weird" into chat, and a few seconds later the chip leader says, "I got distracted, I hit the wrong damn button."

OK, it happens. The game moves along and I get in a bad way chipwise. I'm down to like T700 when I notice something. The guy to my left is Sitting Out. Hmm. I'm in the small blind, it gets folded around, I raise, and he automatically folds. Hmm.

The next hand I'm dealt king high. It's folded to my on the button and I go all-in. Small blind autofolds, the big blind folds. Hmm. Hmm.

No lie, I did this a half-dozen freakin' times. The overwhelming chip leader was sitting on my right, all he had to do was min-raise and I would either have to push or fold. He only raised me once. I went from T700 to T3000 by stealing the AWOL guy's blinds and then going all-in when I had the button. The poor guy in the big blind had even fewer chips than me and he was desperately trying to get to the money.

Well, he ended up finishing second, so his strategy worked. The guy who vanished appeared when he only had T460 left and the blinds at 200-400. He immediately pushed in all his chips with 2-9, got called by A-10, and was out. He typed "gg!" and was gone. A few hands later the chip leader called with A-2 against A-J, and rivered a deuce to send a very unhappy player to the rail and the rest of us to Cashland. Had I not lost to runner-runner I would've been in good shape indeed, but it wasn't meant to be.

I found myself wondering what happened to the guy who suddenly walked away for a half-hour. His avatar was a picture of a acceptable-looking guy, and I put my powers of deduction to work and came up with this--he was getting laid. Here he is, playing poker, doing well, and his lady-love walks in the room with nothing on but the radio. She snuggles into his lap and whispers, "Are there any other games you'd like to play". He's torn. He's in the middle of a tournament, he's got chips...but she smells good, doesn't she? No, no, if she's in the mood now she'll be in the mood an hour from now...though it's hard to concentrate when she's doing...that. I'll just fold this hand and I'll tell her to warm the baby oil...wait, was that the fold or call button? Oh, shit! I just donked off half my stack because she couldn't keep her tongue in her mouth! Dammit, this is no way to play poker! Especially because there isn't room for her to kneel down under the desk!

So he hits the "Sitting Out" button, takes her by the hand, and they merrily traipse off to a more comfortable setting. When he returns 30 minutes later, assuring his paramour that he's just going to "turn the computer off", he sees that he's down to the felt and shoves in his chips with postcoital joie de vivre. So he didn't win the hand, big deal, he already got lucky enough. He types a jolly "gg!" and leaves we pathetic losers to our sad, lonely game.

So that's what I think happened. Which is much nicer than my secondary hypothesis, that he was taking a Category 4 dump. But I'm a romantic at heart.

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