Answers

1. The Isles of Langerhans are:
     a. in the South Pacific
     b. off the coast of Norway
     c. now independent, but at one point part of the Soviet Union
     d. wherever you are, baby. Wherever you are.


Answer: D. The Isles of Langerhans live in your pancreas.


2. "Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny" is:

     a. incomprehensible.
     b. misunderstood.
     c. obsolete.
     d. not even English, for Chrissake.


Answer: C. Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny is the scientific theory that an embryo going through its development (ontogeny) goes through all the physical forms (recapitulation) of the adult creature's evolutionary path (phylogeny). It was accepted science in the 19th century, but has long since been debunked.


3. A "cleek" is:

      a. a golf club.
      b. the name the British assigned to the Daschund while they were at war with Germany.
      c. a machine used in sausage-making.
      d. style of moustache.

Answer: A. It's an old golf club, more loft than a driver but less than a 1-iron. History records it was a bitch and a half to use.

4. The word "assassin" originated from:
      a. a body part.
      b. sex.
      c. drugs.
      d. rock and roll.

Answer: C. The original Assassins were Arab hired killers, and they were rewarded for a job well done with the drug that inspired their name: Hasish.


5. "Pruno" is:
      a. corrosive but effective.
      b. illegal but common.
      c. colorful but tasteless.
      d. kid-friendly but prone to staining furniture.

Answer: B. Pruno is prison liquor. Get a bag, a bunch of fruit, some sugar, and a heat source. Let sit a few days. Strain, re-sugar, maybe skim off the mold, and re-heat. A few days later, Pruno. It's either drunk or sold for a buck a glass. Reports indicate it's vile, but it does get you mildly buzzed.

The Inaugural "Don't Be a Douchebag" Trivia Contest

I like trivia contests. I think they're a lot of fun. So I'm going to have one from time to time. Why do I call it the "Don't Be a Douchebag" contest? Because, of course, you have the mighty awesome power of the Internet in your hands, and nothing is stopping you from using it to answer these questions, except for this: doing so makes you a big giant douchebag. So don't do it. This isn't a contest to see how fast you can look something up. Answer the questions if you know them or if you think you can noodle them out, or don't.

OK? Fair Enough? And my promise to you is that I will only use questions that I know the answers to without looking them up - although post facto I will confirm the answers so that I don't lead you down the primrose path.

Absent any further questions then, here we go:

REMEMBER: DON'T BE A DOUCHEBAG. DON'T LOOK THESE UP!!

1. The Isles of Langerhans are:
     a. in the South Pacific
     b. off the coast of Norway
     c. now independent, but at one point part of the Soviet Union
     d. wherever you are, baby. Wherever you are.

2. "Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny" is:

     a. incomprehensible.
     b. misunderstood.
     c. obsolete.
     d. not even English, for Chrissake.

3. A "cleek" is:

      a. a golf club.
      b. the name the British assigned to the Daschund while they were at war with Germany.
      c. a machine used in sausage-making.
      d. style of moustache.

4. The word "assassin" originated from:
      a. a body part.
      b. sex.
      c. drugs.
      d. rock and roll.

5. "Pruno" is:
      a. corrosive but effective.
      b. illegal but common.
      c. colorful but tasteless.
      d. kid-friendly but prone to staining furniture.


Answers in 48 hours. If you want to email me the answers directly please feel free: it's gpjacobs at cox dot net. Winners get a shout out full of false sincerity.

In Which Your Humble Scribe Provides Further Detail

Two items on the agenda today: yesterday's Mookie and the events of today, which forced my alarm clock into service for the first time in eight months.

OK, the Mookie: yes, I took a bad beat, bla bla bla. It's poker; it happens. It didn't erase what I thought was a decent showing for The Kid, and I can hang my hat on that until the next Mookie. I did well without being the overlarge beneficiary of lucky hands. One hand I remember, I would have lost around 20% of my stack unless I pulled a miracle queen for a chop, which is what happened. That's really the extent of my suckoutus disgustus.

Here's a hand that was extremely profitable without requiring a lot of poker genius on my part. Not "lucky," but the hand played itself right into my pocket. Positions are my best recollection: Jew II or Joanne might be able to recollect a bit more accurately.

I'm in middle position. Joanne111 and PokerMeister were SB and BB respectively. I look down at A3 and I decided to make a play for the blinds so I raised it up (I think - I mighta just called. Forgive my forgetfulness please). Both blinds stay in; I make a mental note to drop it like the conversation about Ma's yeast infection.

Flop comes 245 rainbow. I flopped the prettiest wheel in all the land. I figure at least one of them has something they think is enough to grab the hand so I check.

Well, I blinked, and took a breath, and looked up to see that they were both all in, and would I care to call?

Damn Skippy I would.

Well Joanne had pocket fours. The flop gave her a set. She must have thought she was a lock for the hand.

Jew II had 45. The flop gave him two pair. He must have thought he was a lock for the hand.

Now, I'm not privy to this information but I have to suspect after seeing my straight that both of them poo'd, just a little bit, just enough to make it a little squidgy below decks.

I wasn't out of the woods - J2 needed a 5 (no more fours left) for his boat, and Joanne needed a deuce or runner runner for another pair to make hers (a 5 would have helped her too but would make her boat a smaller one to J2's). But no, everything held up, I dragged a huge pot, crippled Joanne and knocked the Hebrew one back to Mt. Ararat. Poor guy, he was the final table bubble. I took no joy in knocking him out. Wait: that's not true! After the first break (I think) he said that now that his other game was over he was going to devote his full attention to felting me. I told him thanks for the heads up and crushed the little Red Sea Pedestrian right where he stood, the little turd.

Actually he's a good guy who was just giving me some good natured shit, but that's how the cards fell.

And I guess the other stuff will have to wait, since I just invited myself to a private tourney that starts 21 minutes from now. A plus tard, mes amis!

Epic Suckout at the Mookie

Came in 2nd, shoulda won. Heads up, me n the villain were within 1000 chips of each other but I was a tiny bit ahead. Looked down at 99, he goes all in, he calls, he has 55. Catches his 2-outer on the river. Buddy Dank Radio was railing the tourney and they all went apoplectic on my behalf. Buddy called for a protest!! Thanks guys.

I'd write more but I need to sack it now. Big day tomorrow - hopefully more details in about 14 hours.

It's the most won-der-ful tiiiiime of the year

So it's wey-hey-hey for the black and gold today...

The world is going to hell in a handcart, mes amigos. At its best, it's bad, and at its worst it's friggin' unbearable.

But not today. Today I got my Bruins tickets. So fuck you all, you lords of trouble, of strife, of grimness and of quiet desperation: opening day is October 21 and I got my tickets. Who wants to go with me?

Best-of, or maybe Worst-of, the Crafty Southpaw

Shoulda posted this yesterday. Gonna try to remember every year - it's worth remembering. This was from 9-11-2008.

Where Were You?

Like most adults, I guess, I was at work. I had a meeting scheduled at 8:30 and after about 20 minutes when nobody showed up I called the meeting's organizer and asked her what the deal was. She said "sorry, I'm just so caught up in this World Trade Center thing," and that is how The Day That Changed Everything first entered my consciousness.

I knew it was big when I couldn't connect to cnn.com - when their servers are overloaded you know it's a big news day. We heard the same half-truths and non-truths as rumor spread in the first 20 minutes of chaos. Our accountant ran home and brought in a TV and we congregated in a corner conference room and sat, and stood, slackjawed, at the images that unfolded before us.

Images that are seared forever in my memory: a building afire, thick, acrid, ebony-black smoke spewing out of the top third of it. And not just any building - the World Trade Center, for God's sake - gargantuan symbol of, and paean to, commerce, the almighty American Dollar, and by extension our great nation itself.

One of our salespeople was also a local firefighter (find me a fireman without a second job and...and...well it doesn't matter, they ALL have second jobs) and I remember asking him how much time a person had in smoke that thick and hot.

He thought for a moment and said, "One breath - maybe two."

We sat and watched as the attack - for by now we knew that's what it was - went on. The buildings burned; we heard stories of other planes being hijacked; a plane hit the Pentagon. The PENTAGON, for Chrissake. These guys certainly knew their symbolism!

There was confusion within the halls of power - here in Massachusetts various politicians came on to say that a local election was taking place, others said it wasn't. The President was on Air Force One - first here, then there, spiriting President Bush to various points of safety.

They pulled EVERY SINGLE AIRCRAFT out of the sky. Landed them all.

Then after an hour or so of intense heat and metal stress, we watched in abject horror as first one tower then the other succumbed to the indignities foisted upon them, and they fell. Just collapsed like an old Vegas casino. The only difference is, each collapse took place while hundreds of live human beings still occupied the towers. In those several seconds, albeit shrouded in thick poisonous smoke, we witnessed the mass murder of thousands of souls, whose greatest offense to Islam or anyone else for that matter was getting up that morning and going to work, to conduct business, or serve food, or to clean, or to guard. My boss at the time watched the first tower collapse and put his hand to his open mouth in a gesture of horror, shock and revulsion that, like so many snapshot images of that day and the days to come, I will never forget as long as I live.

Then it was over, if over you could call it. The wreckage steamed and smoked from a dozen underground fires while rescue workers frantically looked for survivors, moving cement and girders with their bare hands. Fire crews from around the region and around the country came to the site by the busload to spell tired rescue workers and to show sympathy and solidarity. Charity of every stripe poured in. Whatever the current rumor had the rescue workers needing, it poured in by the truckload: Gloves. Masks. Dog food. Oxygen. Blood. Everybody wanted to give blood. The Red Cross had to turn people away!

And we mourned. All of us. We mourned for the lives of the fallen, and their families. We mourned for the death of a lifestyle we all instinctively knew was gone forever. We mourned for police and fire crews, those who ran in while everyone was running out. The overarching emotion for most people was not anger - it was sadness. Tears were everywhere. Dan Rather crying on Letterman. Jon Stewart crying on his own show. And how could we ridicule them? We were crying right with them.

Much has happened in the shadow of the events of September 11, 2001. Some of it good, much of it not so good. I'm not going to turn this post into an invective-laden polemic against anyone or anything, except perhaps the vermin who perpetrated this horrific crime against the innocent.

But in the aftermath of that day, the nation stood together, and most of the world stood shoulder to shoulder with the United States. We lost that too, which is also something deserving of mourning.

My People - the Jews - get together every April for Passover. The whole idea of Passover is to retell the story of when the Jews were slaves to the Pharaoh, so that it never happens again and we remain a free, albeit nebbish and neurotic, people.

We can learn a lesson from Passover if we apply the same philosophy to 9/11 and retell the story every year - shed real tears for the fallen until all passes into distant memory and we spill a drop of wine for them - and never, ever forget the events of that horrible day, when everything changed.

Fool Me Once...

It would be unseemly to tell you how much of this was profit.

So I'm back from the cruise, Hurricane Earl having done nothing but sneezed in our general direction and moved merrily along to Greenland. Yes - a tropical hurricane is lapping not so gently at the shores of Greenland. That's how I like my irony, friends and neighbors.

Anyway, the cruise was great and I made a shitpile of money at the poker table. They spread a $1/$2 NL cash game, using Poker Pro dealer-less tables. It's a choice, I guess; the cruise line doesn't have to pay for (and house and feed) another dealer - even though they employ dozens for their casino. It's not the worst thing in the world, I reckon. I like fucking with poker chips though.

Anyway it was more or less the same dozen people who showed up at the table, 12 of the worst poker players that I personally have ever seen. People calling big bets with 9-5 offsuit; people not respecting bluffs or bets from me or anybody else for that matter; people playing poker for the very first time in their lives. I don't know, maybe it's because they're on vacation, in the bag, and flush with spending money, but Ja-heezius Christ, there was some bad play going around.

Until I got the vibe of the table and adjusted my game accordingly I was already pretty far down - like multiple hundreds. One quick example: I held a pair of sevens and flopped the set. I bet huge, trying to protect my hand, but got called nonetheless, with a flush draw. Guess what? he caught, and there was the better part of a hundred bucks down the shitter right there.

So I decided that if that was the kind of nonsense I was up against, I wasn't going to fuck around. I decided that until I got some money in front of me I was going to play tighter than a gnat's ass stretched across a rain barrel. I'm talking top 10 hands only in early or middle position, and maybe high suited connectors, A9-A10, and middle pairs in late position and if it's cheap. So that stanched the bleeding for a while until I got my wind back and my legs back underneath me.

The first whiff of recovery came when I looked down at two black queens. 4x preflop raise, five callers. Flop all lower than Q, rainbow. Bet $25, four callers. Turn blank, I go all in with about $60, three callers. The Crafty Southpaw pulls down a hand that puts almost $400 in front of me. Woo hoo!

From that point on it was smooth sailing over calm seas, with one exception.

His name was Chi. A Chinese fella who was vying with me for Table Captain. Likeable, affable, and sitting affably on a mountain of fucking chips. He would buy a $14 pot with a $200 bet and tell you so: "I want that $14. I have nothing but you can't call me!" and cackle a high-pitched laugh that, really, made one want to stick a fork in his throat and pour rat poison in the wound.

So fast forward to Saturday: I'm up huge, have maybe $500 in front of me, and I look down from my lofty perch as SB to see AJ. Flop comes JXX, two hearts. I bet, Chi raises to $25, I raise to $50, he calls. Turn comes a third heart. He goes in the tank for a little while, adopts a thousand-yard stare, and puts me all in. I think perfunctorily for a while and fold. I figure he either has the hearts or the Ace of hearts - either way I'm not going to risk $500 with TPTK. He turns over an absolute bluff; he was actually drawing dead, but whatareyagonnado. I kept my cool until I get back to the cabin and unleash a torrent of obscenity that would have made Popeye drop his pipe. I lost a hundred bucks but even worse could have won $500 more.

Grrrrrr.

So yesterday, I'm pleased to say that the pattern repeated itself: After only a half-hour or so I was up $100 and doing well. Maybe that's why as SB I called the BB with A6o - it was only a buck, and I had plenty of those.

I whiff the flop utterly, but try to take a stab at it. I bet out, I think $15 or $20. Chi, my Chinese friend, raises to $50. I re-raise to either $75 or $100; can't remember which. Everybody else folds, of course, and Chi calls.

The turn is also a blank: I don't think there was a card over 8 on the board.

Chi gets that faraway look in his eyes and moves in. He only has about $80 left in front of him. And I start thinking.

"Here's the problem," I said to him. "Last time you did this, you looked exactly like you look now. But last time, I had a hand. This time I don't, but I think my garbage beats your garbage."

He starts laughing and in his broad Chinese accent says "ohhhh, you remember last time. Good, good!"

"OK, you convinced me," I say. "I call."

He gets a look like he's been constipated for a week. The table turns over his hand.

He gots himself a whole bunch of nothing. I win with Ace high. Somewhere like $300 on this one hand.

To his credit, Chi took it really well. He laughs, he leans over to high-five me, he compliments my call. Back-pats and 'good call' from everybody. And lots of yummy money my way. A few hands later I decide to take my winnings and go home.

The last two days erased my deficit and put me way ahead - I won't say how much but it reimbursed the cost of the cruise to the tune of about 25%.

And more importantly, it reinforced a very important bit of philosophy: if you honestly think that your opponent is bluffing, then move in. If you're wrong, that's fine; well, it's not, really, but it's another problem for you to work on. But don't let a big bet on its surface cow you into folding.

In any event, it was a great week of cruising, caloric overindulgence, watching attractive 20 year olds in bikinis, and poker, but I'm home now.

Back to sucking

Be at peace, townsfolk: You are safe at last. I have gone back to sucking at poker.

Finished penultimately at last night's Very Josie. As I describe what doomed me we can also play a little "what would you do," especially with the hand that crippled me.

I had jumped out to an early lead with some decent play and some good decisions - including calling crazy Josie with second pair having sniffed her seat bluff bet on the river after missing her straight.

So I was cruising nicely until hand 52. As SB I got dealt Ah7h. Josie and I both called Mojo's standard PFR of 150. Flop comes 77J rainbow. A set of 7's! Praise the lord and pass the chow mein. I check, Jo bets 150 (1/3 pot), Mojo folds, I call. Prolly shoulda maybe possibly I shoulda shoved right there but maybe I got a little greedy. I could easily put Josie on a Jack, which meant I could get all her chips with a little patience. Woulda coulda shoulda - either way, this is The Question: Assuming folding is out of the question, would you call or raise, and if raise by how much?

Well, I called, and the pot is now 750. Turn comes another Jack which gives me the low boat, 7's full of Jerks. I check, Josie bets 200, I raise to 600, she shoves.

Ahhhh, shit.

Like I said, I could easily put Josie on a Jack. Her favorite hand is J10, for christ's sake. However, I could also put her on anything -- an 89 which would give her an up and down draw, a low pair, a medium pair, pretty much anything. I say this knowing that it sounds disparaging but it's really to her credit - she's at times recklessly aggressive and she often works it to her advantage. So she really could quite literally have nothing.

Call.

Of course she turns over the J10 - why wouldn't she. Her bigger boat takes me from over 70 BB's to under 30, which coincidentally was about how many more hands I lasted (raced Mojo with 88 to his A10 - he turns his ace, and knocked my dick in the dirt even further when he rivered a straight).

As it turns out, she spiked a two-outer on me, but that's just poker. She didn't play poorly (unless you count playing a favorite hand when you otherwise wouldn't - I've seen D Brunson on TV playing 10-2 just because), the cards didn't turn my way. Well hey, at least Josie went out before me.

But I re-call to your attention The Question: what would you do?

BTW, your obedient servant The Crafty Southpaw is yo ho ho and a bottle of rum-ing it up the US/Canadian coastline from Gotham to St. Johns, New Brunswick this long weekend. If the hurricane rips us apart and I'm food for a shark that doesn't care about his fat intake, listen: It's been grand. Grand, grand, grand.