Very Josied

Last night I played the second Very Josie poker tournament, a semi-private tourney hosted by my best friend and worst enemy, Josie. It's a convivial affair, in which some prominent poker bloggers swap stories, describe their private parts in terms of tall fauna, and play some REALLY good poker. If by the way you'd like to participate, just email me at gpjacobs at cox dot net and I'll get you the password.

Tonight did not start off well. On the very first hand I was dealt AQ offsuit. After a raise and a re-raise the pot was already healthy when the flop gifted me a queen. I had no desire to play it cute; these guys are all too good for me to run a line of nonsense at them, especially at hand 1. I bet at it hard, and would have been just as happy with a fold there as anything else, but I got called. The turn paired the board, 4's if memory serves, which did me no favors but seemed to perk up my opponent, who bet with gusto. In hindsight my call was ill-advised there; I should have either folded or jammed it. But I called, only to be moved in upon on the river.

Well, shit.

Belatedly I came to the obvious conclusion that top pair top kicker was not going to take this pot down. Had I become acquainted with this fundamental truth 30 seconds earlier I'd have saved many chips and I would not right now be a bitter, crotchety bastard who just yelled at his cats for being so goddamned frisky. I folded, my opponent volunteering that AQ was no good, with only 600-odd chips remaining from my stack of 3000.

I mounted a comeback as best I could, but it was difficult given the quality of my opponents and the shortness of my stack. The coup de grace came from Very Josie her Very Self; after I went in with - you guessed it - AQ, she snap-called me with A10. In theory, as an 81-19 favorite, I had at least a fighting chance. But no, of course she found a 10 on the flop, and all over this great land of ours, fat ladies suddenly and unexpectedly burst into song.

Did I deduce that I was not meant to play poker this evening? Did I realize, based on a cool-headed analysis of how the cards fell, that my best course of action was to curl into a fetal position, wrap myself in my Zoo Towel, and watch Police Academy 7?

Of fucking course not.

I signed up for a $33 sit-and-go tourney, was dealt QQ on hand 1. Raise-reraise-reraise-all in, and lo and behold I found myself against JJ for all my chips. Did my opponent catch a Jack for a miracle set? No. He caught TWO MIRACLE GOD DAMNED JACKS FOR QUADS. I will say this: when the poker gods wish to make a point, they do so with enthusiasm and creativity.

At this point I finally understood that playing any further this evening and I'd be wearing a barrel with suspenders before too long, and I don't have the legs to pull off that particular ensemble. I decided to do something pleasant, like getting yelled at by the wife.

A few shout-outs are in order: GoBurn for crippling me, VeryJosie for killing me, and Lightning, Coop, Waffles, Mojo, Floppy -- and Cricket, who turns 29 tomorrow.