Quite Contrary

I didn’t get a nap. I had planned on laying on the couch for a half hour or so before heading over to the home tourney. I ate the right breakfast and took my regimen of pills, all designed for optimum brain octane. I skipped my nap to play a couple Sit ‘n’ Goes to warm up. Card dead in the first one; won the second. Brushed my teeth, kissed DW and was out the door.

There was a meal before the game: smoked turkey with varied and sundry noshes. I brought dinner rolls and a stick of butter, along with a six-pack of Rogue’s Dead Guy Ale. I left the hat at home.

There were fourteen people at two tables. About half of the players also play in my Tuesday pub tourney game. Buy-in was $10 with a $10 rebuy. Starting stacks were 2K. I had Paul to my left, an aggressive but sometime reckless player who likes Bud Light. Next to him was Mom. It was her house. Nice place. Big. She had a cold so touchy-feely was at a minimum. Next was Wade, the guy who tried to fist bump me earlier this week at the pub. Then Louise, another pub regular who plays out five nights a week. She had just come back from two days at the casino playing penny slots twelve hours each day. She made $1500. Mary had the next seat. Mary is Paul’s wife. Neither one was pleased that they had drawn the same table. Mary is an occasional player. Brian was to my right. Brian is even more occasional (“Burn one first?”). He is Barbie’s husband, and it’s not surprising that he’s pretty quiet. Nice guy.

Within an orbit, Paul had tripled up. He continued to apply pressure for quite some time until people started pushing back. One of those people was Brian. Brian was a card rack all night. I may have played six hands for the first five levels, and each time, Brian was there to shut me down. Finally, I started to liven up and took a lot of Paul’s stack away from him, so much so that he was short and eventually had to rebuy. And then I funneled a bit more to Brian. AK went nowhere to his 6s and to a flush he didn’t know he had until after the pot was awarded to him.

I wasn’t the only one having an overall bad run, nor was mine the worse. I still hadn’t gotten a rebuy, but nor would I, for the blinds were so big by the time I had 5M that the 2K extra in chips would do little good. The blinds were killing me, so I was glad when we combined tables. The other big stack besides Brian had also played just a few time. I knew what I was up against, as do we all in these situations: the drunk or newbie takes it down and there is nothing one can do about it.

Even so, and short as I was, AK looked like a good hand to jam. Mary called with her remaining stack. She had 74off and boated up on the turn. I was now down to 3M. Mary took down another pot with a naked A, so I’m thinking that with A8, I’m golden. Mary had limped UTG and I jammed. She had me covered now and called with K2d. Both the A and 8 of diamonds made an appearance, along with the Jd on the river. In her rationalization for even being in the hand she made some noise about having bad cards all night.

I bid all adieu.