A Poker Game, the Winning Dame, the Hands Are Lame

A big weekend for your Uncle Crafty, after a week which did not start off at all well.

One of the members of my erstwhile poker game, Noodles, lost his wife on the evening of April 8. I found out about it the following morning. She lost a battle against cancer and heart disease and left behind a grieving family. She was 52.

I was pleased to see that Noodles' friends rallied around him the way that they did, and if there's ever such a thing as coming back from something like this, he's got the infrastructure around him to do it.

I tagged him with the name Noodles, by the way. It's what we used to call someone who wasn't all there upstairs. One day Josie's sister Cricket insinuated as much to him and I suggested hell, why don't we just call him Noodles and have done with it. It stuck.  A propos of nothing, giving someone a nickname and having it stick is one of my most sublime joys, so I was quite happy.

But moving on to the weekend: I played some poker at the ol' Sportsman's Club. We had 18 runners pitching cards all together. Did really well but didn't cash. I got a monster pile when, holding AA, two people went all in in front of me, and the aces held up. It was the third or fourth round of blinds and I was still putzing around at my original stack size, so I was the beneficiary of a massive triple-up and then some. That, plus some good aggressive big-stack play, let me coast to the final table

But, the blinds got big, the cards went away, I got to a point where I had to take a few chances, make a few steals, and nothing worked. I lost a good chunk when I overplayed a weak ace. Bottom line, I finished 6th, two out of the money.

But that's not the worst of it. The player that took me out, the player who would eventually win it all, the one player in the world who has my number more than any other, was none other than...Very Josie. I was shorty short, holding 10-6 as BB, caught top pair, shoved, got called with a higher 10, and that was the story of me.  GG Crafty.

One funny little thing was that my hands seemed to have betrayed me yesterday. I was fumbling cards, spilling drinks, fucking up shuffles...hell, it got so bad I didn't want to take a piss. I've never had such a clumsy day before.

I wonder if this is what it feels like to be clumsy. I've never been hugely coordinated but I've never been clumsy in the sense of fumble-fingered. I guess I am now. Or maybe - hopefully - this was a one-day anomaly. I reckon time will tell.

Anyway, that was my weekend. It was absolutely grand, even though I didn't cash. Had a lot of laughs, a lot of fun, a lot of good food, and being in that club I secondhanded so much smoke it was like I was smoking myself. Ugh, can you imagine smoking yourself? Gross.

That's it for me. Go see your doctor if you haven't lately.