Postcard from the road: Seabrook, NH, 19 March

Saturday, Josie and I trucked up to Seabrook to take part in their special Saturday tournament: a $100 buy-in gets you 15,000 in chips and 30 minute blinds. It's a good format for a patient player who understands hand selection. Or is it? The first round of blinds are 25-50, so everyone started with 300 BB's. This led to a lot of speculation, a lot of porkchops throwing in a call because they have no concept of one BB's value.

I didn't want to enter a firefight, especially early on, so I clamped down and waited for the mayhem to die down a bit. Unfortunately, one of the late entrants to the tourney was a loud-talking, Ed Hardy shirt-wearing, white-sweat-jacket-on-top-of-that-wearing, short-bleached-hair-domed 22-year-old idiot sitting down in seat two, betting like every one of his hands were pocket aces. He would raise 3,000 chips in a pot with maybe 200 chips in it, then would turn over 2-5 or somesuch similar garbagio hand. So I had a while to wait, as there was a good deal of mayhem to die down. Unfortunately that meant that any hand I'd play was immediately folded down to, as I developed a rep as the only rock at the table. I will say this: it was a different feeling, getting too much respect for a raise as opposed to not enough.

Unfortnately my attempts in the early going were met with the typical bad luck that has characterized my experiences in Seabrook: I lost a few thousand when my two pair were counterfeited on the board, another couple grand when my aces were beat by a 10-7 two pair, etc. At the first break I had failed to chip up and in fact was down by a few hundred. At the second break I was down to about eight thousand, having burned through half my stack with the above-mentioned string of unfortunate hands.

I had chipped back up a little - the blinds, now joined by antes, were enough to start having to play second-tier hands (A10, 99, 88, KQs, etc). This, joined with a nice little run of cards, got me close to my original stack size, when I look to my left and what to my wondering eye should appear but Josie herself, out of the tournament and wearing the JSF (Josie Sad Face). Now look: Me and Jo, we're boon companions, and I'm very loyal to my friends. What's good for her is good for me, but may the Flying Spaghetti Monster forgive me (Ramen, brother) I couldn't help but smile just a little bit: my luck (or play) has been so bad at Seabrook that I had never so much as outlasted her in a big tournament up there, not ever. So having outlasted her today was an actual achievement. She went off to play some 2-4 limit and I kept at it.

I caught some nice hands, won a couple of flips, and generally played well for the next, say, hour and a half, maybe two hours. I had chipped up nicely and was still playing smart.

But you know what they say: one bad hand, one bad decision, can wipe out a whole afternoon of solid play, and such was the case with me. Seat 10 was riding a nice wave, overbetting, overraising, and turning over garbage. So when he led out everyone who was paying attention started slavering over the prospect of a vulnerable pot.

Well one hand after the third break (blinds 600/1200/100) he does his thing, but instead of garbage, he turns over pocket aces and drags himself a huge pot - becomes either chip leader or close to it. The table is still buzzing about the hand when the next hand is dealt. I look down at AQ suited in UTG +4. I make a reasonable bet of 4,000 (remember, just blinds and antes are 2,000). Everyone folds except for seat 10, who raises another 4,000. Now this butt munch just turned over AA, so I was pretty sure he didn't have that hand, so that was one of four hands to which I was vulnerable that I could rule out. That plus the fact that his raises weren't worth a used kleenex, led me to make the decision to shove.

He snap-calls and turns over pocket aces, again. Two pocket aces back to back - what are the odds? Well, if one catches aces one time in 226, I suppose the odds are 51,076:1. Anyway, I caught neither running queens nor three clubs, and that was the story of me.

BUT, although I didn't cash in the tourney, I think I did well, I like most of my decisions, I took decent advantage of my table image, and hey: I outlasted Josie. I just had a good hand that went up against a better hand. That's poker, I reckon. And, of course, there was some reasonably yummy Chinese food afterwards. And Josie learned all about what made the song She Loves You so unusual for the time. In her defense, she tried hard not to look bored.

Until next time, please remember that someone else has my money, Bali Hai has some good lobster sauce, and with a love like that, you know you should be glad.