An early Christmas

Now I just need world peace and it'll all be good.



The Canon Powershot 10.0 Megapixel. I'm stoked. Prepare yourselves to be inundated.

Expect rain.

But not today. The sun is peaking out now and then, and the dew will burn off right before sunset. Just because it is not raining doesn’t mean that it is not wet. We’ll need three or four days of “dry” weather before the moss slows its growth.

Days without rain also means that I can get outside and get some work done on the farm. There’s garlic that needs planting. The little dry creeks that run through our property are once again flowing, so I have to clear a path to the seasonal pond we have for the ducks.

As autumn progresses and winter lingers, I suspect I will be writing a lot about the rain. It is never far from my mind… our minds, even on days like today. We could still get a shower or two.

By April we will be thoroughly convinced that the rains will never stop. Come May, we will begin to slowly shed that belief. And in the meantime, if we are paying attention, or rather, have the proper attitude, the weather itself will tell us that the rain is not all-encompassing. Many evenings, just as the sun is about to set, the western sky will clear and we will have five minutes to enjoy a glorious sunset, purple and red clouds, maybe even a rainbow.

Let’s get physical

Skunk is staring me down… I think. He’s giving me the eye, perhaps. One eye is pointed my way, the other at the blank TV screen behind me. The game is five-handed, he’s short (10M is short for Skunk) and is first to act. He has just had to re-buy after being one of the big stacks at the table just a short time before. He jams. I have AQo and call. The button calls and is all in. Skunk has QKo, the Button has J6o, the flop comes with a Qd and two other diamonds. Turn and river are diamonds. No one has a diamond and we chop.

Dave has big calluses on all of the first knuckles on his hands. I can only imagine.

Still five-handed. I limp UTG with J Qh. One other limper and the BB. Flop is AKJ rainbow. BB bets, I raise, he calls. Turn is a 10. He has Q6 off. I flip him off.

The young blonde calling station dumps 2/3 of her huge stack into mine. Thank you.

I have the chip lead, for a while, anyway.

I go absolutely fucking card dead. The woman to my right keeps giving my thigh short rubs of comfort. The touches are of the motherly type. Her husband is sitting to her right. Lovely people.

Mom takes me out in fifth place out of a field of 24.

I’ll take it

First there was this session of 10NL:

During current Hold'em session you were dealt 258 hands and saw flop: 20 out of 34 times while in big blind (58%)
14 out of 34 times while in small blind (41%)
30 out of 190 times in other positions (15%)
a total of 64 out of 258 (24%)
Pots won at showdown - 2 of 7 (28%)
Pots won without showdown – 12

A win rate like this is more like a bleed rate. Pairs went nowhere, suited connectors, suited Ace, nothing, and when I caught a draw, it either did not hit or I was priced out. I wrapped it up not too long afterwards.

Or rather, I took a break, went to see what was happening at Poker Academy, settled into a loose cheapy as “ubu roi” and came back to Stars for a single table grind.

PokerStars Game #21941242620: Hold'em No Limit ($0.10/$0.25)
Table 'Riviera V' 9-max Seat #6 is the button
Seat 2: bastinptc ($26.70 in chips)
Seat 3: Sampayka ($4.65 in chips)
Seat 4: ARAZ76 ($26.40 in chips)
Seat 5: ands1 ($29 in chips)
Seat 6: PilsBier ($25 in chips)
Seat 7: horob ($15.80 in chips)
Seat 8: FEARisPOWER ($26.15 in chips)
horob: posts small blind $0.10
FEARisPOWER: posts big blind $0.25
floggi1: sits out
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to bastinptc [8d 8c]
bastinptc: calls $0.25
craig719 has returned
Sampayka: raises $0.75 to $1
ARAZ76: folds
ands1: folds
PilsBier: calls $1
horob: folds
FEARisPOWER: folds
bastinptc: calls $0.75

I started my chant. I had seen soooo many pocket pairs tonight.

*** FLOP *** [4h 8s 7s] … looking to check-raise
bastinptc: checks
Sampayka: checks
PilsBier: checks

Well, that didn’t work

*** TURN *** [4h 8s 7s] [6h]

and now I’ve got myself into a fine pickle with a straight and two flush draws out there.

bastinptc: bets $3.75
Sampayka: calls $3.65 and is all-in
PilsBier: raises $7.75 to $11.50

Well, shit. I couldn’t rule out pocket 5s, 56 or 9 10 suited. And with the short time to act, I was stymied by such a coordinated board. In hindsight, of course, PilsBier wouldn’t be reraising with merely a flush draw unless he was a maniac, which is not the read I had. Pair the board, please.

bastinptc: calls $7.75

*** RIVER *** [4h 8s 7s 6h] [3h]
bastinptc: checks
PilsBier: checks

Clearly, he was just as worried as I. Still, I wasn’t sure if this was the right move, erring on the side of caution instead of a small value bet that could possibly backfire. I wonder what I would have done if he had bet the river.

*** SHOW DOWN ***
bastinptc: shows [8d 8c] (three of a kind, Eights)
PilsBier: mucks hand
bastinptc collected $14.95 from side pot
Sampayka: mucks hand
bastinptc collected $13.60 from main pot

*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot $30 Main pot $13.60. Side pot $14.95. | Rake $1.45
Board [4h 8s 7s 6h 3h]
Seat 2: bastinptc showed [8d 8c] and won ($28.55) with three of a kind, Eights
Seat 3: Sampayka mucked [Ah Ac]
Seat 4: ARAZ76 folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 5: ands1 folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 6: PilsBier (button) mucked [7c 7d]
Seat 7: horob (small blind) folded before Flop
Seat 8: FEARisPOWER (big blind) folded before Flop

Little Pariah

The problem with this game is that I came here to ask lots of questions but poker makes you silent.

Poker is a school of silence.


This photo revealed your passion for poker.



Yes.

It made it public.

What does poker mean to you? It is a constant in your life.

It’s a constant… It’s a logical, or, if you prefer, a Cartesian constant.

But isn’t the love of poker also a love of mathematics in a certain way?

Of course, I was always interested in mathematics but not in a serious way. I have no natural talent for mathematics, but the little that’s involved in poker has always interested me and I mastered that aspect quite easily. It’s logic and mechanics rather than mathematics. Mechanics in the sense that the cards are dealt, interact, destroy each other. They’re in constant motion and that’s what intrigues me. Cards placed in a passive position have no visual or aesthetic appeal. It’s the possible combinations that can be played with your hand that make it more or less beautiful. The cards are the block alphabet which shapes thought, although making a visual design on the table, express their beauty abstractly, like a poem… I have come to the personal conclusion that while all artists are not poker players, all poker players are artists.

Do you see a symbolism in poker?

No.

So it’s pure pleasure. It relates to nothing else…

No. It does tend to act like a drug. Drugs are not symbolic but the addiction is similar. If you start playing poker when you’re young, you’ll grow old and die playing poker. It’s a passion that’s not easily…

You’ll take it to the grave.

Yes, absolutely. And that, no doubt, makes you waste a fantastic amount of time. That happened to me and probably helped me do what I wanted. Photograph as little as possible and not repeat my photographs. It works out well… Poker fills your time when you don’t photograph.

So what’s next? Play the game? But which one? Save? Put things away for a rainy day? But what for? I am still a victim of poker. It has all the beauty of art -- and much more. It cannot be commercialized. Poker is much purer than art in its social position.

A reflective pause

Thinking I’d get out and find some carpets of fallen foliage to explore, I loaded my photo gear into the truck and headed down to the river. I found myself following a truckload of harvested Christmas trees and immediately decided that I should change subject matters for the day. The tree harvest is a pretty interesting process involving lots of workers scurrying around cutting trees, others wrapping the trees in mesh for shipping, and in some instances, helicopters shuttling the trees from the field to awaiting trucks. I would need to get some gas if I was going to drive around and find an active harvest site. Yet, no sooner had I driven into town, the rain started. They’d still be working in the fields, but I wasn’t too excited about getting my old Canon A-1 wet. I headed back home.

And back down into the basement to figure out how to make the rest of my day productive.

One sure way to avoid making such a decision is to go online. I started to cruise poker blogs and came to Pauly’s Tao of Poker. (See my sidebar.) He’s live-blogging from the WSOP ME final table. A small circle began to take shape in my mind.

I followed along last summer as Pauly gave us a rundown of the action that led up to this day. I enjoyed his writing style, and refreshed his page many more times than he had entries each day. His was also the first “professional” poker blog that I had ever read.

Pauly has a sidebar that lists about 60 other poker blogs. In between his updates I clicked on several and read. If Pauly mentioned another blogger in his WSOP updates, I hit the link. I started to recognize that there was a rather small group of “intimates” bloggers that clearly knew each other, hung out together, and went back several years. Some, while still blogging, covered poker for Poker News, Poker Stars, Full Tilt, etc., yet their blogs no longer had much poker content. They were writers first, apparently, poker players second, or third, or fourth. Some of my clicking led to blogs that hadn’t been updated in two years.

So, I’m reading Pauly’s accounting of the final table and I realize that I have no clue about the players except for what he has written. I haven’t watched any of the ESPN coverage. I’ve read about what it was like to cover the event, and about the shenanigans and intrigues in and around the event, but that’s not quite the same. I don’t watch poker on TV much anymore. I used to, quite a bit five or so years ago, just like every other schmoe who had an inkling of an idea of how to play what he was watching (I had played poker in the Navy, 25+ years earlier, but had long since forgotten if a flush beat a straight) but knew it was exciting. And I watched a lot of it, hooked into a spectator sport more like NASCAR for the thinking person.

I downloaded the last episode that led up to the 2008 final table and was reminded why I have tuned out. I am all too familiar with the excitement and heartbreak. Eventually sucked in by the edited presentations, I have been experiencing the roller coaster firsthand for close to three years now. I have no need to watch others go through it.

But watch it, I did. More out of dedication to Pauly’s writing than to the event itself. He doesn’t know it, but I owe him. I started this blog on July 14, the 7th day of the ME.

Country

Do me a favor. Load up this video and listen as you read:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oc-V8_ZkHzw&feature=related

I thought the blonde at the game last night might have been the kids’ mom. Hubby and wifey want to play some poker and, unable to find a babysitter, bring the kiddies along. She busted out pretty quickly and came over to our table to say goodnight. She smelled of hard liquor.

R says, “You could play the cash game with us.”

“How mch?” She’s trashed.

“20 or 40, it’s up to you.”

“No thank you! I’m going. Thanks for the game R!”

R says, “Take a right out of the driveway so you don’t get lost.” A right hand turn out of the drive takes one down to the dead end of R’s road. I found his statement curious, but figuring it might be an inside joke or the like, I chose to keep my mouth shout.

T was at the game last night. I checked past posts and see that I haven’t played with/written about him since August 16. He’s a big, burley, Harley riding hot head who whined last time about playing .50/1.00 so we played .25/.50. He was to my left, which was of no concern because he’s such a tight wad that when he bets, one can safely fold all but the best hands and nut draws. When the young kid busted out and his dad took second in the tourney, and goodnights were said, we moved the cash game to the other table for better lighting. T wanted everyone to know that he still had the button, and we took a break.

I went outside to relieve myself: one of the advantages of being a male out in the country. T followed me out and headed over to his truck, opened the driver’s side door, turned on the engine, and either turned on the radio… or was he talking? Then I heard a woman’s voice. There definitely was a conversation, and thought I could see a woman’s hair in front of the passenger’s seat. What the hell?

A couple minutes later, T turned off the engine and I heard the last bit of the conversation. She said, “No, you go on back inside and have a good time. I’m fine right here.” He shut the cab door and walked back up to the house without a word to the observer.

Over the next hour, T throws back two beers, eventually loses the last of his chips and leaves. As he drove off I couldn’t stand it any longer and said, “There was a woman waiting out in his truck this whole time.”

R said, “Yeah, that was V.” The blonde. Apparently she and T are an item. She tends bar at one of the bigger pub tourney spots in the city 15 miles to our west. Again, it seemed like I was in the minority to think it odd for her to be sitting out in the cab of a truck at one o’clock in the morning waiting for her boyfriend to finish his game of poker.

Still, maybe I wasn’t as alone as I thought, for soon the conversation turned to compulsive gambling.

Last night was one helluva good night. I have two good stories and I came home a big winner. $70 in and more than double that coming home. The clincher was a hand of Pineapple straddled, min-raised, family-potted and bet again with numerous folks still in for my baby flush to take down.

We wrapped it up fairly early. B and J, a lovely couple and good players (J won the tourney), had a funeral to attend today, and R, who had to take his girlfriend to the airport in 2.5 hours, was, as usual, falling asleep at the table. As B and J got up to leave, I said I was packing it in as well. P asks, ”Are we quitting?” Down about $50, apparently he still had plenty of gamble left in him.