{"id":923,"date":"2008-04-05T21:01:58","date_gmt":"2008-04-06T03:01:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/brubakers.us\/blog\/?p=988"},"modified":"2008-04-05T21:01:58","modified_gmt":"2008-04-06T03:01:58","slug":"eight-way-chop","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brubakers.us\/?p=923","title":{"rendered":"Eight-Way Chop"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I got to participate in an eight-way chop tonight, for the first time ever.  Usually, the chop happens right after I get knocked out.  I&#8217;ll walk away barely breaking even, while everyone else gets the big bucks.<\/p>\n<p>I wasn&#8217;t even going to play today.  I laid in bed until about 3:00 pm.  Brian asked if I wanted to go play poker.  I didn&#8217;t really feel good so I said no.  I told him I just wanted to stay home and stay in bed.  He asked if I cared if he went to poker by himself.  I told him, that I didn&#8217;t mind at all.  It&#8217;s a $1500 prize pool.  One of us has to represent at least.<\/p>\n<p>He came back with a bagel and tomato soup for himself.  I got to thinking, I&#8217;m really craving pho.  We stopped by mom and dad&#8217;s yesterday after the doctor (our doctor is in Derby) and they were telling us about eating pho at Kim Huong.  The more I thought about pho, the more I thought of how boring it will be to stay at home while Brian is out playing poker.<\/p>\n<p>So I changed my mind.  I talked him into taking me to Kim Huong for pho before poker.  That got food in my belly so I could take my second antibiotic capsule for the day.  I took a teaspoon of that prometh vc with codeine also. Good stuff.  The pho, specially.  It&#8217;s the Vietnamese counterpart of chicken and noodle soup.  Whenever it&#8217;s rainy or snowy out, or whenever I&#8217;m sick, that&#8217;s the stuff I crave.  I get the #18 (rare steak) with no onions.  None of that mystery meat and meatball stuff.  I squeeze the lemons in it, add some of the minty leaves, and drop a couple of handfuls of bean sprouts and I&#8217;m good.<\/p>\n<p>I played really tight tonight.  Tighter than usual.  Must be the codeine.  Who knows?  I laid down several winners.  I laid down queen-jack several times.  Ace-queen suited even.  King-jack, pocket tens, pocket nines&#8230; I was laying down some really good hands.  I was playing so tight, it was sick (pun intended).<\/p>\n<p>Brian got knocked out right before we dropped to two tables.  I always seem to get knocked out at the two-table mark.  I was really careful not to end up as bubble girl this time.  It paid off.  I made it to the final table.  I maybe had $80k in chips.  I had the second shortest stack.  It was such a relief to get an eight-way chop.<\/p>\n<p>Brian and I went in with $20 ($10 chair rental for each of us) and left with $175 (after $100 lopped off the top for Brent, our tournament director for the evening).  Not too shabby for about four hours of play and being low stack at that.  I&#8217;m figuring that&#8217;s a little over $40 per hour.  I wish every night of poker were this lucrative for me.<\/p>\n<p>Anyway, it was a good deal for everyone because third place only paid out $150 (most of the $1500 prize pool went to first and second place, with first place paying out $750).  So when you think about it, you must outlast six other players just get more than $150 &#8212; $175 per person doesn&#8217;t really look too bad.<\/p>\n<p>I told Brian, I&#8217;m really glad I decided to come out because I almost stayed home tonight.  Now I have money to buy my graduation regalia and then some.  Woo hoo!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I got to participate in an eight-way chop tonight, for the first time ever. Usually, the chop happens right after I get knocked out. I&#8217;ll walk away barely breaking even, while everyone else gets the big bucks. I wasn&#8217;t even going to play today. I laid in bed until about 3:00 pm. Brian asked if [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[16],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brubakers.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/923"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brubakers.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brubakers.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brubakers.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brubakers.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=923"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/brubakers.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/923\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brubakers.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=923"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brubakers.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=923"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brubakers.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=923"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}