Trust the Russian?

A brief example of how I continue to run bad at the tables: Saturday playing 1/2. Within the first hour of a ten-hour session I am dealt a set three times, one straight, and quads. Pretty sweet, huh? Good start. Should be up - Something. Except I am down $160! Don't ask.

Much later in this roller coaster session, where after hours of playing tight, tight, tight - I finally claw myself back to even when this hand comes up. In middle position I limp in with 8, 7 (but it was SUITED). Three of us see an un-raised flop that comes 7, 7, Q rainbow. Check, check, I bet $20 - and get one caller. I'm thinking, nice. A, Q, maybe. Turn is a 2. I reach for chips and the young Russian (or Eastern European - hard to tell - they all sound the same, and are starting to menace the tables with their tough-as-nails play) whispers to me, don't do it. But I do. I toss in another $20. He calls.

Back story - this same whispering Russian-Eastern-European-whatever, has been caught running three fairly big bluffs. He has been heard to say, okay, no more bluffing. The river is an A. There are no straight or flush draws. If indeed he had A, Q, he just made two pair. As I reach for chips, I hear his voice in my head, don't do it. But there is exactly one hand that beats mine - and come on, this is Poker - I'm supposed to trust a whispering Russian-whatever is looking out for my best interest and is warning me I'm beat by the only possible hand that can beat mine? That he doesn't want all my chips? Right. And when in an unsure voice I say, same bet his reply is, of course, all-in. Whatever. I push in the last of my stack. He turns over pocket Q's. Nice hand, sir.

On a semi-cheerier note: The next day I had a free-roll into the Poker Stars $200,000 Sunday Guarantee. There were only 29,000 entries. They paid out to 4270. By a miracle , I survive to the money. We get down to 3120 players. I have an average stack. It's become shove-city when I wake up with A, A. The blinds are 2400, 1200 and I make it 10,000 and the BB shoves. I get it in great against his A, J until he runs down a straight. Still, I cashed - survived 26,000 players. Whatever.

ed. note: the author is aware that 7, big would also be a winning or chopping hand against his, but the case 7 was inadvertently mucked face-up pre-flop. the author regrets the omission.

That virtual yet tactile touch

It must have been a phone company. AT&T? That had the tag line, "Reach out and touch someone". It was a Great line if only because I still have it lodged somewhere deep in that part of the cortex that believes and believes deeply in such nonsense. Reach Out. Touch.

Because I'm so easily touched.

You move away and you move away. Just for the sake of moving away. Sometimes. Just the other day at the WORK I less than love, I counted up at least three - count 'em - 3, jobs that most people would never leave. Yet.

And so you stay up too late and in between virtual poker hands you get a virtual touch on the shoulder, on the heart, asking why Roth and not Updike. Good question. Thanks for asking.

The Rhythm of the Absent Saints

It's as if a switch got switched. Off. The one that controls my appreciation of sentences that sing, sentences with dead-perfect stops. Interior rhymes. I'm just not reading as much anymore, and when I do it's all hit-or-miss. Hard to find something to really hold on to. The Roth book I'm currently on, "Everyman", has its moments, but it's the first in awhile.

It's a muscle that needs to be worked again. I'm thinking all the Poker has made it all dull, made much of the rest of life dull. When you're into it, it consumes you - elbows everything else aside. Which is okay. For awhile. But I want both. Salter and Brunson. Carver and Ivey. A well rounded life. A (poker) room of my own.