Philling (sic)

I just sneezed. Twice. I normally wouldn’t give it a second thought were it not for a conversation I had at R’s game tonight. L, a woman who I’ve met and played with once before was to my right. L likes to talk. L likes to drink. I might say that she talks more when she’s drinking, but I don’t have a non-drinking L to compare against.

L asks me, “Are you sick?”

“Me? No.”

“Are you sure you don’t have a cold? I’m very sensitive to such things. If you’re not sick now, you will be tomorrow. I’m always right about these things, It just freaks D (her boyfriend) out.”

I get up to take a leak and she goes for a smoke. The conversation continues, or rather, she repeats herself in any number of ways. I make sure to wash my hands thoroughly.

Back at the table she continues to press the issue. “I’m sorry if you took offence.”

“No, I’m not offended. But I will be freaked myself if I wake up with a cold tomorrow.”

I take a big pot from her with a rivered boat, tens full of eights to her pair of Queens. She says, “I thought you were bluffing.” Not yet.

What she had missed about the hand that others might have noticed was that I had opened my game up tonight. I figured I had driven home my nittiness in previous sessions, so tonight I added some suited connectors/gappers and called light. I was playing Fuck Phil’s game. R opens from early with a 6 x BB raise, and by the time it came around to me, two people had called. I looked down at Q9d. Sure, why not? Two more people called. The flop came with a nine. R checked! So did everyone else, including me. The turn brought another nine, checks around and I bet 1/2 the pot. Discussion ensued but I took it down then and there. I was up playing like Phil and was up about 75% of my buy-in.

 Phil, who later called my 6 x BB raise from the button with 5-6 off in the BB and cracked my Aces with a straight on the turn. (I didn’t pay him off.) Phil, who limped as I did and hit a bigger straight on the river. I figured him for the seven, just as I had, just as R had. I tried to blow them off of their hands with a Button value raise. What I didn’t figure was that Phil had what I was representing.

Miracle of miracles, I left up 18 bucks.

I dug out my hand sanitizer gel as soon as I was in my truck.