Bad blogger! Lazy blogger!

I admonish myself.

The last few days have been full of poker, but no details have been posted to you loyal readers. That could be because I played so much damn poker that I haven't had time to do a write up! Add to that the fact that my workdays have been insanely busy I couldn't even do the blogging from work. I mean super busy. Like, "wow, I just looked up for the first time today and it's 5:15pm" busy.

So I'll try to give some highlights of the last few days, with the understanding that the details are hazy and scarce.

Monday:
We had 2 tourneys on Monday, followed by a cash game that went until 3:30AM. I did terribly. The big loser of the night, I lost $200 large on 3 buyins. As Carol said, I wasn't playing poorly, just getting cold-cocked by the deck. A good example...I have QT and the flop comes T74 with two spades. I push with my short stack and get called down by Edwin, a friend of Carol's who is in town for training. He turns up 8s7s. I have him crushed, but I feel I should protect my profit and off to do business. He has no idea what this means but we explain and he grasps the concept immediately. So he accepts and we run it 3 times. I win the first one, he spikes a 7 on the next one and then he goes runner runner for a flush on the 3rd one! Yes, I lost twice while 'protecting' my profit. But at least I made my money last a while. Poor Walnuts got 55 against Carol and the flop was AT5. Carol bet big and Paulie smooth called. The turn was a Ten. All the money went in on both sides and Carol flipped the heartbreaking AT. Yeesh, what a cooler.

Tuesday:
Blissful rest

Wed: (Shortened because I can't spell Wed. in full)
The 'Midtown West' game. I have heard whispered tales of this game, run by someone Abbie knows somehow. I was invited a long time ago, but I've never gone because I have enough poker the rest of the week and Wed.'s are 'me-time'. But I felt obligated to at least check it out, so I went. The apt. is on the west side near the Lincoln Tunnel. They normally play out on the roof deck of the building on nice days, but the seats were wet so the game was held in the apartment. Too bad for Abbie though, since the host's cat meant that her allergies wouldn't allow her to sit, so she left. When I showed up, the game was in full swing. Walnuts, in attendance, gave me a knowing nod and I sat down for the full buyin, $50. It was a .50/1 NL game, so the buyin was small but the game played pretty small and it wasn't an issue. Unlike Monday, I couldn't do wrong at the table. I hit sets and got paid off on them. I hit flushes, I hit top two pair. I even hit middle set vs. a bottom set for the biggest pot of the night. In the end, I walked away with $176 profit. Of course, I almost got myself kicked out by knocking over the host's glass of whiskey onto the floor, but we were having such a good time and she was drunk enough not to care. Good thing too, because the glass was from Ireland and if it had broken, uh...it wouldn't have been good. Sometime during the night, Andrew walked in and we looked at each other. I never met him before, that I know of, but he looked oddly familiar. I ignored it but 10 minutes later he said, "Jamie, don't I know you from somewhere"? I assumed he had been to the Wall Street game, but he hadn't. Then it hit us, "Hewlett High School"? That's it! Andrew graduated 2 years before me and as we caught up we remembered where we knew each other from. We had both been in the Marching Band (I played cymbals and was in the color guard) and also on the Archery team. Yes, yes, laugh if you must, but I can kill you from 35 yards. We spent a good 30 minutes talking about the various people we knew. It turns out, by the way, that yet ANOTHER Hewlett Grad plays in this game. He was a year ahead of me at Hewlett and I knew him (it's a small school) but he wasn't there that night.

In short, I was up big, I ran into an alumnus and Paul even made some money too. I went home at midnight on the 2/3 train with Paul and Shannon, the host's 19 year old cousin. Paul 'protected' her on the dangerous 2 train all the way to Clark Street, Brooklyn. What a gentleman!

Thursday:
Another Wall Street game. This time, there was a new format at the game. One tourney followed by cash. I have to say it worked out pretty well. Only Toby, from the game the day before, actually dropped out of the cash portion of the night. Everyone else stayed to play cash. Oh, Liezl won the tourney (brilliantly), while Thomas placed second and Stephane placed third.

Cash was wonderful for me. There were 11 people at the table after Darko showed up and we played for about an hour when I doubled up with A9 and the flop came K99. David R., with AK, went the whole way with me. No sooner had I doubled up than Carol and her friend Jesse showed up to play. Oops, not enough room! I dropped out to make room for one of them and then Wendy decided to go running in the meantime. Carol took her seat. Then, Thomas, who had been doing poorly, ended up busting out of two buyins and had to leave before he lost more. Darko left with him, intending to return after they had had a few drinks. So there was room for me to play after all! It took a few minutes more, but I took the spot. Incidentally, Darko provided some fireworks the moment he sat down. On his FIRST hand of his first buyin, he lost his entire buyin of $100 to Vivian. I forget the hand exactly, but Darko didn't show anyway. TWO hands later, he took the same hundred back from Vivian when he got AA and pushed all in after the flop! I told him, if he wanted to buy in for $200, he should have just said so. :-)

So, while Darko and Drama were gone, I availed myself to more of David's chips when he doubled me up again. I had Kc9c and the flop was Ac7c5c. Hello Nizzuts! Now it was just a matter of extracting the most chips possible. This turned out to be easier than I thought because David had also flopped a flush. He never showed me this hand, but I believe him based on the betting. I was accumulating chips at a good pace. Darko and Drama returned an hour later and started splashing around vigorously. Scott St. G. was a benefactor, taking lots of chips off of Darko. Carol, who normally excels in these situations, just wasn't hitting it like she's used to. She got double whammied actually. Not only did she finally get felted (by me. Yay!), but her blog name, BWOP, was the source of much amusement during the night's festivities. 'Nuff said on that subject (It's not for the kiddies). Even Wendy said she wasn't getting cards but she was having such a good time she didn't care.

As for me, let's just say that winning is MUCH more fun than losing. +296 in the cash portion for me erases all my anxieties. I love this game.

There's a Crackhouse tourney tonight that is sure to be a blast, as usual. More fun blogging to come...