And you thought the last one was long

Didja ever feel the need to just scream? Happened when I got home from work last night. Just before Christmas I made a trip to Shady Maple. It’s about an hour’s drive away but the meat counter; combined with the prices, make the trip worth it as long as you have a freezer. Usually like to make the trip up there to get my Christmas dinner and I stock up while there. Besides the rib roast I usually make I have been picking up whole tenderloin which I then cut in half, half as a roast for Christmas, half I slice into fillets. As I’ve grown older fillet seems to be the cut I want when I eat steak. Occasionally I’ll partake of a NY strip done on the grill during the season but I’ve given up on the sirloin and porterhouse. Screw struggling with bones and thin cuts, give me an inch and half or better fillet. That’s also a reason I cut my own, to get them thick enough. Few markets will give you a good steakhouse cut. While there I also saw a nice boneless strip at a damned good price and since everyone else enjoys the strip steak I decided to be nice and pick one of them up. Come the spring my brother can throw some on the grill. To get back to the subject, yesterday I am informed my mother is making steaks for dinner and knowing my tendencies, asked if I wanted one. Since, as explained above, I’m not a big steak man these days and with the bad arm not feeling like struggling with trying to cut one I said no and went on my way figuring that the strips were finally going to get used. I get home from work and first thing I find is everyone eating fillet. WTF??? Not only that one of my special cuts found its way on to a plate. My special cuts are cut just a tad thicker than the others, specially for me. Taking one of them is like taking my last beer, not something you want to do. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not above sharing the fillets, if I was I would cut all of them thicker knowing no one else is going to touch them, but I prefer to save them for when I’m doing the cooking. Besides, there are over twice as many strips in the freezer as fillets. If you are just doing a regular dinner I fully expect the strips to be used. While standing there open mouthed, looking at my fillets on the table, I am informed that everything was frozen, nothing was marked so she just pulled steaks from the freezer not knowing which ones they were. I can’t holler at mom but how the hell can you not tell a strip steak from a fillet. Ok, I cut my strips almost as thick as normal fillets, almost but not quite, but strips are at least twice as long as a fillet, not to mention noone would cut a strip anywhere near the thickness of my specials. So now I’m down 3 fillets from an already limited supply, remember half the tenderloin went as a Christmas roast, and I can’t even rant and rave and blow my stack about it. After all, mom’s been good enough to do the cooking for me while my arm is screwed up and dad’s been playing main chauffer for me so I can’t be churlish enough to scream about it and make them think I begrudge them the fillets. I don’t. It’s just that, as good a cook as mom is on some things, when it comes to steak those fillets aren’t going to taste much different than standard grocery store sirloin. Since they aren’t likely to read this, it’s my scream about the situation.


Played the Wicked Chops freeroll for a seat at the Borgata Winter Open the other night. Last time I looked there were about 1600 runners. Finished 20th so did halfway decent. Shame only top place got paid. Got started late and was down about 100 chips when I got to the table. One guy was there with a double stack so I figured he had already taken someone out. He was playing all in every hand and because of that it took me a few deals to realize no one else was playing. Tilt does not notify you of sitouts and with his all ins I didn’t think it strange everyone was folding, Wasn’t until I noticed how fast the folds went that I figured it was a dead table. Went on like that for an orbit or so, this guy all in, all fold and then him revealing crap. I had a couple of hands I might have played under normal circumstances but with him going all in, even though it was mainly with garbage, I wanted to make sure I had a chance in case he woke up to a hand. Luckily I was to his left. Time eventually came. Caught A-T, not the greatest but good enough to make a stand against the wild man, so called his all-in and doubled up when the A hit the flop. He still had about 4K in chips and continued his tactics but another orbit found me with pp9s so again I played and they held against his T-Jo and I was tripled up overall and he was gone. After that is was a matter of just min raising for the next hour to collect blinds. Boring, and though easy chips at no risk, not a good way to have to play in this type of tourney where only the winner gets paid, as others were building so decent stacks and I while I was holding overall position I found myself falling farther behind the leaders in chips making it a much tougher row to hoe later on. Also while at that table I was a freaking rack, collecting A-A 4 times, K-K twice, Q-Q three times, once back to back, and J-J twice. Also had T-T a couple of times and 7-7 at least 6 times. It all went to waste and I knew it was eventually going to bite me in the ass.

Break came and most of the players were under 1000 chips so I figured we would start losing players soon and maybe get some action finally. In the meantime another fellow had joined the table and wound up cutting into my easy pickings. New players did start to come in as others were knocked out but even though they had a couple of thousand chips they were as dead as the previous group. Finally, after about an hour and a half of this crap I got moved to a table with some action. Boy did it have action as I got dumped right to the left of Roy Winston. As I thanked the poker gods for small favors, they could have put me on his right; I noticed he was actually playing. As the last I read he was still in Event 11 at the Winter Open and it wasn’t late enough for them to have shut down I wondered what was going on. I had noticed his name in the entries but figured that, as I have seen happen in charity tourneys, he put his name on it but would probably sit out. He was sitting with about 6K so I felt a touch better with my 20K, which was decent but only about the middle of the road for that table. That felling didn’t last long as he proceeded to climb to about 38K in the space of one orbit and did it by going to a showdown only once or twice. Was astonished with the amount of min raising preflop he did but somehow he made it work. After hearing a lot of min raises are useless and should almost never be done lectures from some knowledgeable people here was a guy not only using them fairly regularly but making them pay off. After awhile a few observers hit the table and started pelting him with questions which he answered politely. He was very gracious even when one character kept harping at him for money or a book or anything. Handled it better than I would have as the guy was annoying. Since the questions had started flying I decided to ask why he was there saying I thought he was playing at Borgata. He said he was but that Event 11 ended, for him anyway, on a sick suckout and left it at that. Seemed like a decent guy.

Well, enough about Roy, he eventually went down. As for me, though not the rack I was earlier I did get my share of playable hands. Some paid off, some cost me but on the whole I floated between 25 and 30K for awhile. I would hit a decent pot to build my stack a bit then I would catch a middling pair and see my raise reraised either all-in or a healthy amount with another caller or two in front. Now maybe I was too tight but in the first case I really didn’t feel like risking my chips at that point on what was a race at best, after all blinds were still fairly low in relation to my stack, or, in the second case I figured with a caller to a reraise my piddly pair was beat somewhere along the line. So I just folded and waited for better times. Twice I got really pissed though. Both times I had pulled ppKs and there was a guy who had three moves, fold, call or all in and he was really pushing the all ins to limps and even standard raises. Both times I tried to lead him in, raising only about 2 ½ times preflop hoping for a reraise but both times he only called and then folded to my bet on the flop. So, while I was winning some they weren’t really as large as I could hope. So it went, I was on the Red Queen’s racetrack, running like hell just to stay in place. While all this is going on, my nephew is calmly accumulating enough chips to move to into 3rd place so I am taking a ton of abuse from that direction.

I eventually get moved again, with about 38K and this table is poker hell for me. Card rack? What’s a card rack? The cards have gone farther south than Tierra del Fuego. The deck is so cold I’m getting frostbite just touching the keyboard. By this time the blinds are getting up there and the antes have kicked in and the table is aggressive as hell. I catch a J-Q suited in position and am contemplating a raise when a guy in MP goes all in for about 40K and is called by the cutoff. There went that hand. One of the blinds also called. Except for the blind, who had 7-7 my Q-J was ahead and of course I would have turned the flush. Damn. Shortly after I grab K-Q suited in the SB. BB raises and I call. Flop is 3 middlings so I throw out an air bet figuring it missed him and he calls. Figuring he probably raised with a pair pre I decide to check the brick that hits the turn figuring to fold to his bet and he checks. The river brings another crap card, 4c,, and now I figure he’s got an A that he jut couldn’t let go of on the flop but hasn’t hit a damn thing so I throw out a pot sized bet and get called. Damn guy had a T-4 suited. Ok, made a play on the flop with the raise but called my air on the flop with even less and then a pot sized bet on the river with bottom pair? WTF? After that I had nothing until the end of the game. Didn’t see anything higher than an 8 for 3 orbits. Started bleeding what chips I had as I couldn’t even defend my blinds and the table was really aggressive with preflop raises almost every hand. About this time I picked up a few railbirds including Schaubs from the blogger community and Cory and Doug from Riverchasers. In addition my nephew and I had been keeping an eye on each other throughout the game so the chat box became a real sideshow, especially with Doug. Doug is a very aggressive player, sometimes bordering on being insanely so and when I first started playing him he had a habit of collecting my chips, mainly because I was a very passive player at the time. I would either let him bully me off a hand or, when I figured I had the best of it I would only call his raises, often allowing him to turn his garbage into something. I credit him with helping me improve my game, at least from the aggressiveness standpoint. Although I have grown more aggressive I’m still nowhere in his ballpark and he loves to bust my chops about my play. This being said I have to give him credit for my getting thru the, what was for me, final stage of the tourney. I was down to about 24 K and caught A-4 suited so I raise and the BB calls. Flop comes a row of bricks and BB leads out for 6500, bout half the pot. Figure what have I got to lose, I’m down so I shove. BB lays it down and Doug starts in, cheering me but at the same time poking good natured fun at me since the over the top shove isn’t usually something he sees from me. Later, when I told him it was done with nothing he really loved it. That kept me around for a bit more. I picked up a few bots here and there, mainly with semi bluffs but I’m still bleeding chips until I pick on the same guy again and again it was with A-4. In the BB and it folds to me and I check. A hits the flop; I shove and get called this time. He has T-T and the As hold up and while still relatively short I’m only on the edge of ATC territory and not right in the middle of it. Don’t know if I would have folded the A in the BB to a raise from the tens but limping with hem didn’t even make me have to decide. Couple hands later I catch another A, this time with a T, I think. Not sure because the card played no part in the hand. I raised pre and again the same guy calls. This time the flop comes 3 suited to my A so I again shove on the nut flush semi bluff. I again get called by this guy and he has a hand but the 4th diamond falls on the turn and as Dougie said, BOOOOOM! Or, as my nephew so succinctly put it, “you’re a scumbag”. Felt sorry for the player and am sure he was muttering under his breath about me as he left but hey, I didn’t want him calling me there, I was willing to take the pot as it was. That was the last decent pot, or possibly even the last pot I took. Cards stayed crappy and I limped into 20th. Stayed and railed my nephew and Smokkee until my nephew went down in 15th. By then it was around 2 in the am and I had work to get to later so I had to wrap it up. Had a great time and thanks to WCP, Full Tilt and the Borgata.
Hokay, finally wrote about some poker and I bet you guys wish I hadn’t. I’m a boring writer as well as a boring player. Hope to see you all next time