Of poker and planting

Been a bit of a busy Memorial Day weekend.

Made another trip to Bally’s on Friday. Yes CK, I know it’s rigged. Headed out about 5 in the a.m. to beat the work traffic and came back after 8 at night to miss the work rush the other way. Glad I wasn’t heading down Friday afternoon. With the official opening of the shore for starters and the weatherman calling for sun and temps in the 80s the rush was on. As I headed home the traffic heading down was heavy and this was late. Would have hated to be on those roads around 5-6 that day. Had actually planned a trip down Mon night for an overnighter but was reminded I had a doctor appt. on Tue so got shot down.


Still stuck on the limit tables for the time being but it looked like it was going to be a good day. Was up about $100 in the first half hour. Second hand I was there I raise with suited connectors. I flop open ended with an 8 man pot and bet and get 8 callers. I turn the flush draw and call when someone else bets out. Still 5 players. River brings me the nut straight and there’s a better and I raise. Get two callers and take it down over top pair and 2 pair. Guy with 2 pair starts mumbling about going broke chasing gut shots. I just keep my mouth shut. If he wants to think I was chasing a gutterball then who am I to abuse him of that notion. Anyone who ain’t gonna throw $4 into a $32 pot with another possible $20 behind with open ended and flush draws is more than welcome to sit down and play at my table. Took another 2-3 similar pots early on and started to think it was going to be a profitable day. Silly me. Both the pots and the cards started to dry up.

One of my buddies from my previous trip, the guy who limped and checked called with aces sat down. I eventually got a better read on him if I run across him again. Seems he never actually bets unless he has 2 pair or better. Top pair only brings check calls. Saved me a couple of bucks then and maybe more in the future. Had a couple of others like him at the table though and they cost me a few. One guy though cost me more than a few. He started off by playing passive as hell, check calling with big pairs. 3 or 4 hands I had a big pocket pair and kept betting into crappy boards only to have him turn over a bigger pocket pair. Then all of a sudden he did a complete 180. He started raising blind and throwing in raises on the flop. To make it even better one of the idiots from my last post showed up and he kept reraising and egging this guy on. Pots got big and I got a lot tighter knowing that I was going to have to play hands to 2-3 or even capped bets if I wanted to play. Unfortunately my cards sucked and I went on a folding spree. Now that wouldn’t have been so bad but the consequences of the actions of these two cost me later. While these two were one their wildman spree there was a young kid at the opposite end of the table. He’s in almost every pot with them and these guys are egging him on, trash talking and telling him he should call, or bet or raise or fold. Every time the kid would bet the one, or both, of them would raise him and then start the trash talk. Poor kid didn’t know which way was up. As it was he was making piss poor decisions. He would call a 3 bet on the turn then wind up folding to a single bet on the river and the way he was tanking on these decisions made me think he had at least some sort of hand and wasn’t just folding busted draws. Then these guys, the one in particular, would show the bluff and the kid would get razzed by the rest of the table. Got to the point were this kid became a bulldog and wouldn’t let go of his cards for anything. Actually a way to make money in the long run but became a short run killer for me as he started getting lucky as hell on the river. He’d hold on to bottom pair against my top and catch two pair or trips. He’d hit top pair against my flopped two and match his second card on the river. No matter what I did I couldn’t get him to lay it down if he hit a pair on the flop. It seems he decided he wasn’t going to be embarrassed by being bluffed again. Of course by this time Frick and Frack had left and I was paying for the shenanigans. Couple of others too although a couple of players were making out thanks to his doggedness. Guy knew he was playing bad cards too because when he was forced to show he would show his paired A or K or Q but was reluctant to show his kicker and the dealer kept telling him he had to show both. Other than the fact I couldn’t get this kid off his hands and that my cards sucked big time during the period that there was money to be made I had only one more problem at the table, the cell phone or in particular, one woman’s cell. Nice woman and decent player but she would play a hand or two and then would get up to answer her phone. She spent more time away from the table than at it. If you play low limit at a casino regularly knows that you rarely play a full table. There are always a couple of old guys who play for a while then go wandering. It’s even worse midweek as most of the players are these old guys so you are usually playing 8 handed or so. That just made this woman’s jumping up and down even more annoying. Not that I approve of what the old guys do, that also annoys the hell out of me but for some reason, disappearing every 5-10 min to answer a cell call just got to me. Turn the damned thing off will ya.

The rest of the weekend was taken up with planting. No, no more trees or fruit bushes, just plain old veggies. Seems I’m getting later each year when it comes to getting in the tomatoes. Garden also getting smaller every year. Was a time I had an asparagus patch and I put in about 36 tomatoes, an equal number of peppers of various types, couple of rows of cukes and beans and played around with pumpkins, corn, eggplants, squash, both summer and winter, radishes, carrots, broccoli, cauliflower, lettuce and cabbage. One year I even tried potatoes and other peanuts. Had a fair sized garden and varied success. This year however I’m down to 7 tomatoes, 4 green peppers, 4 red peppers, 4 hot longs, a cherry pepper and a fryer. One reason is that years ago we had no idea what to do with most of the stuff I was growing. Some stuff you had limited production by the nature of the veggie, like broccoli or head lettuce. Others just didn’t produce as well or were small items like radishes or beets. The mainstays however, the tomatoes, peppers, cukes and beans, you could wind up picking 2-3 grocery bags full every couple of days. Had to resort to putting a picnic table out front and a coffee can and put people on the honor system and if they weren’t honorable, who cared, the stuff was going to rot anyway so any donation was ahead of the game. Guess I did tend to overdo things. Alas those days are gone. Just hasn’t had the time, or these days the stamina, to do things like that. Have been cutting back the garden the last few years. The asparagus patch stopped producing a few years ago so we let the lawn overrun it and last year let the lawn encroach over more garden space. Last fall I took up about half the remaining space for the berry canes. Just enough room left for the planting mentioned above and a couple of rows of beans and cukes and even the cukes are getting trellised so they go up rather than out. Even this small amount of plants are a drain when you only have 1 ½ arms and you can’t get up and down on your knees to dig. Had to resort to post hole digger, my grabbing tool and a hoe. Hell of a balancing act, juggling between the three. Got everything in eventually and actually got some rain the day after I finished. Now we’ll have to see how the veggies grow. Hopefully we get some good tomatoes; I’m tired of eating flavorless, pink tennis balls from the supermarket. There was a time you could get nice Jersey tomatoes here during the summer but it seems they have even found a way to screw them up as I haven’t tasted anything good from the store in a long while. As for last fall’s work, blueberries are going great and blackberries are looking like I might get some production next year. Raspberries suck however. May have to do a replanting this fall. Or next spring. On the hole I prefer time spent at a poker table, it’s easier.

Well, time to go. Thanks for your attention.