Status Update and a Kindness Over-repaid

So this Pokerstars Double or Nothing dealie is everything I thought it would be: a trickle of easy money. The trickle part is a drag, but that can be fixed. The easy money part is very, VERY cool.

So - I'm going to stick with my initial plan of building up a bankroll, then playing the $50 and $100 tables, hoping to DoN my way to a couple hundred bones a day. My win percentage is over 85% at this point, and I'm sticking to my plan, which is to play poker until I either make $40 a day or lose $60 (I figure if I lose $60 in one day to these meatballs I'm either doing something way wrong or the gods are vengeful; either way it's as strong a stop signal as ever there was). Once I've built my bankroll up to, I dunno, maybe $1000, I'll start playing the $50 and $100 games, stopping when I make $200 in a day or losing maybe $300. And if I can consistently make $200 a day at the tables, why, that's a $50,000 a year job with weekends off!

(I could use some advice regarding the limits and the goals. Do they sound realistic?)

More importantly, when people ask me what I'm doing these days, I'll have something to tell them besides "sleeping, mostly." I'm not sure how much of an upgrade "being a professional poker player" is going to be - the same set that views my lack of employement as a "Shondeh af der mishpocheh" (shame unto the family) would not view my playing cards for money as any great update.

Be that as it may, I'm going to give it a shot. And I must admit there's something appealing in earning my bread on the backs of people who are trying to do the same thing, just not as well as me. And if I can git 'er done working three hours a day, all the better.

So there's that. Now there's something else I have to do: Readers of Very Josie might be aware that I offered to let her in on a tell that I picked up on an otherwise damn good poker player, if she would write something nice about me. Well, she actually wrote 9 nice things about me (10 really - as a comment she also called me a Cat Whisperer). So I think it's only fair that I say some nice things about her, with an eye towards you all getting to know her better:

1. She knows every Italian word I've ever asked her about. She doesn't speak it, at least in front of me, but she certainly knows all the words.


2. When she hears something that is unexpectedly funny, she will execute a perfect Danny Thomas spit-take, that not only makes me laugh but also covers me with a fine mist of Sicilian spittle.


3. She is the only girl I've ever met that has used the phrase "I'd like to shank that son of a bitch."


4. She's a die-hard Red Sox fan, has been for years. Her current favorite Sox player is Tim Wakefield, and you gotta love that.


5. She is OBSESSED with being shown on the JumboTron at whatever sporting event she goes to. And wouldn't you know it, the only time I've ever been on the JumboTron was because she was sitting next to me, at Fenway Park against the Yankees.


6. She has no great love for hockey but she'll go to a couple of games a year with me when I'm stuck for a partner (I'm a season ticket holder), just to make my life a little easier.


7. She is/was a member of Mensa, and tortured me about it long enough that I finally applied and got accepted, just to shut her up. When I got my membership card I snuck it in a deck of cards and dealt it out to her. We still laugh about that day.


8. She's full-blooded Italian, yet hates sausage. When asked about it, she makes a face like she just smelled something bad and shakes her head. Maybe this isn't a "nice thing" about her but I find it oddly endearing.


9. She's mentally strong, so strong that words can't describe it. Look, nobody lives completely free of the hurts and harms of life, but she's taken her share - maybe even more than her share - and held her head up, tall and proud, throughout it all. And finally...


10. What's the most important quality in a friend? All a friend ever has to do is have your back, all the time, no matter what. And whatever else goes on, I know she's got mine.

Jesus, now I need to shower.