Posted on December 19, 2005 by Ching under Poker.
Brian talked me into going to be at 9 pm tonight. That is the most insane idea ever. He went to bed and told me to just follow after I finish my sit and go tourney. At least, he was nice enough not to force me to go until I was ready. We were on the bubble with me sitting pretty as chip leader. Then I made one fatal mistake. My two pair ran into a straight. The flop was all hearts too but I made the right read. Somehow I could tell he had no hearts and my two pair was safe. I pushed by betting pot after the flop. He called. I bet pot again, hoping to push him out. Again, he called. After the river card, I started to question what he was calling me with but I was representing the flush so I went all in to put him all in. He was in second place so I had him covered, but not by much. I had somewhere between 5000 to 6000 chips at the time. Losing the hand would leave me severely short-stacked at around 400 chips against three other people who had at least 3000 each. I had to convince him I had the flush, though, so I had to go all in. There was no other way. The guy didn’t believe me. He called me again. Do you know how annoying that is? To get no respect at the table? It’s really aggravating! Guess what?! He chased his straight all the way to the river and got it. I had no idea the ace on the river was the one card he was waiting for. Of course, he was on an open-ended straight draw. The call would have been reasonable had it not put his tournament life on the line and had there not been a possible flush on the board. What annoys me is that he called me after the flop with nothing, and after the turn with nothing, despite my astronomical bets. I guess the most irritating part is that he just didn’t respect my bet enough to buy that I had a better hand. Had his ace not landed, my two pair would’ve held up. And he should’ve had enough sense to fold because there was a possible flush, which is what I was trying to represent albeit unsuccessfully, and he had absolutely nothing. The moral of this story is that it pays to be a fool I guess. That’s what’s so great about newbies is they do not have enough sense and they have no idea how to calculate odds. So they call when reason says not to and then get lucky, which annoys the crap out of me! Anyway, I took that as a sign it was time for bed. Granted it was barely past 9 pm but Brian was already in bed so it made sense just to hit the sack too. Except I wasn’t sleepy yet. Typically I will ask Brian to tell me a story to put me to sleep but, as he was already fast asleep, I was left to toss and turn. Counting sheep never works. I’ve found over the years that there are only three things that have ever worked for me. I need one of three S’s to fall asleep: sex, story or sangria. Usually a full glass of sangria will do the trick. We don’t have any in the house, though. I would need Brian awake for the other two alternatives and, as he was down for the count, I was left with absolutely no options. The ironic thing is nothing keeps me awake more than trying desperately to fall asleep. I would’ve tried reading my accounting textbook but I sold it back already. I should’ve kept it as a cure for insomnia since all I got in exchange was a measely $20 bucks. However, when you’re as broke as I am $20 sounds pretty enticing. Besides that, I despised accounting so much that I never wanted to see that book ever again. I couldn’t get rid of it fast enough. It would’ve been nice to have in this situation, though. As they say, hindsight is always 20/20. After almost three hours of trying, I just got up. I need to send my body to obedience training or something because I’m really tired of it not following orders. So here we are.. It’s one in the morning and I’m sitting here blogging.
Posted on December 15, 2005 by Brian under Life.
I truly don’t know where to begin with this one, I should go over all the details of the year since that’s what I’m posting about but its just too much to write about. So instead I’m going to sing a song! Kidding, instead I’ll pick a few goods and bads out of the year, things that just really stood out.
January was one of the worst months of the year for us, we had this incredible Ice Storm come in and blanket the entire city in ice and snow. People were without power for weeks; my wife who works for the power company was working almost 18hrs a day for over a month. She was so stressed out that she was about ready to kill everyone that spoke to her. It was a pretty tense time for all of us, but we worked it out.
In April I finally got a job with Cox Communications. It was fun, we had TV’s all over the place and I got to learn something new about a product that I actually used (quite regularly). I also learned that to some people the cable is just as important to them as oxygen is to everyone. I spoke with people that just could not live without their cable, but didn’t have jobs to pay for the services they had. I believe that 50% of the people that I spoke with were on some sort of fixed income like Social Security or Disability. However, they did not budget this income and instead paid cable before everything else. It was really sad to see how much television has infected the minds of society. I watch TV don’t get me wrong, but I have the responsibility to realize that their are more important things to pay like house, power, food, transportation. Some folks just don’t realize that their is a big world out their and television will only make that world smaller if they allow themselves to get engulfed in it.
About July my mother lost her job, this was an eventful time. I tried to console my parents as much as I could, my father thought the world was going to end and my mother lapsed into a deep depression (mainly because she has never been fired from a job before in her entire life). Finally my father realized that this is not the end of the world and tried to look at the positive. My mother is still to this day unemployed. She is continuing to look for jobs in the field that she worked before as a Paralegal Secretary, but the job market is pretty thin in this area.
In September we got 2 new additions t the family, our sugar gliders. They are adorable. If you want to know more about them then just go to my wife’s page. Their is always new pictures and stories about what they have done.
In November I finally quit Cox and started working for Engenio technologies. It’s a great company and I am much happier. I have a lot to learn and it’s real advanced as far as the type of knowledge I need to know. Unlike most of my other jobs I can’t bull shit these people because they actually know what the hell they are talking about. Unlike your average customer in the consumer world that doesn’t know jack shit about anything accept that it’s broke and he wants it fixed.
Other than that we are working every day to make the world better. My new motto; Healing America by Beating People Up!
Brian and I were going to go to Sumo for a post-finals celebration dinner (to celebrate my temporary freedom from school work, at least until next semester) but once again, long wait for Sushi. The last two times we tried to go, people were packed like sardines in the waiting area and there was a long wait in both the hibachi and sushi sides. It used to be that we could get in relatively quickly for sushi, but it seems sushi has grown in popularity. Either that or people just like to feel trendy and decide they’ll go to a sushi bar so they seem cool even though they despise eating sushi anyway or it could be that these are just people waiting for their hibachi table and they don’t care that they’re taking up room from real sushi lovers like us. At any rate, an hour and a half wait for sushi. Bummer. Plan B was to go to PF Chang’s and eat there but the wait was 30 minutes and we were starving! I guess it’s all those office holiday parties going on right now. Almost every decent resto is packed. We were left with Plan C – take out. Better than having to cook, I guess, specially since there’s nothing at all to cook in the house.
Posted on December 14, 2005 by Ching under School.
Posted on December 11, 2005 by Brian under Poker.
Where do I begin? Let’s just start at the beginning of the evening. We were asked by a good poker playing friend of ours to come over and play a friendly game of poker with some folks and just basically have a good time and get to gather with other couples like our selves. I got directions to her house and we started off, as we entered the neighbor hood I noticed that one of the landmarks that Michelle (that’s our friend) had given me was a Christmas tree all lit up in her front yard. Well that really didn’t help me any because everyone and their freaking neighbor had a dammed Christmas tree in their yard lit to the point that Astronauts could see them from space. So I moved to the next land mark which was the type of house they had. That was easier to find! So we go in and get settled and start playing. About 45 min into the game my dad calls.
DAD: “What are you doing?”
ME: “Playing Poker, what’s up?”
DAD: “It’s your Mom, I need your help!”
ME: Sigh…”I’m on my way”
So I tell everyone to just post and fold me and I would return as soon as I could. I jump in the car and leave Ching to play her game while I got blinded out and mucked while I was away. As I’m coming up on Rock and Lincoln I notice an Ambulance coming out of the station. I say to myself “that’s got to be for mom” and so I follow it like a Lawer looking for a case to chew on. Sure enough I get to the house and the Ambulance and rescue truck are their and I pull in right behind the ambulance. I get in to find my mom in a caesura on the bed. Now here’s the part I haven’t figured out (till later). My father (In his infinite wisdom) decided that the Monday after Thanksgiving in the middle of an ice storm he was going to take his ass up on the roof of his house and fix the flashing on the chimney. Not to my surprise he fell off the roof and broke his back. He is now in a back brace for 6 weeks to let it heal. So what I’m wondering is how does a man with a broken back that cant even get a pencil up off the floor get a woman like my mother into bed off the floor. I found out later that my mom used what little energy she had left to help my dad get her into bed and then she was done and the caesuras started. So this also explained why my father was in so much pain for the rest of the evening. Now we return to me and what was about to happen. I tell dad that he’s going to ride with my grandparents and I’ll come pick him up when they get her admitted and everything calms down, I told him that Ching was still at this party and I couldn’t leave her their. He was fine with this and said to go back to the party till he called. I did and when I got their I had already been chipped up twice and was fixing to get put all in by the blinds. I managed to last till the final table by playing very conservable and getting what ever I could in the way of chips. I actually outlasted my wife who was at the final table with me. I was explaining to everyone what happened and really at this point was not in the mood to play poker any more and wasn’t paying that much attention when I got to the last three players. I knocked the third person out and it was left to me and Annette (the sister of the friend that invited us). We bounce back and fourth then in an act of desperation (mainly to finish it off so I could go spend some time with my dad) I go all in on a King Seven off suite, Annette had a King Queen off suite. When all the cards were laid out I wasn’t even paying attention. Then everyone looked at the table and looked at me and said “you won!†I thought they were full of shit till I looked and saw that I had the dammed straight with my 7. I couldn’t believe it, I freaking won.
That’s when my wife tells me “Wow, you play better poker when your not here then when you actually sit and play”. So from now on I’m going to leave my game for about 30 minutes and then come back. Maybe I’ll start to win more!
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