Bandwagon

Gordie: Mickey is a mouse, Donald is a duck, Pluto is a dog. What's Goofy...?
Teddy: He's a dog, he's definitely a dog...
Chris: He can't be a dog, he wears a hat and drives a car...
Vern: Yeah, what is weird. What the hell is Goofy?

"Stand By Me"

Yeah, I can feel the wave of conformity coming over me.

I have a bit of a psychological problem. If everybody in the world wants to go left, I want to go right. If somebody tells me plan A is the best, I’ll argue for plan B. I don’t do it consciously, I don’t mean to automatically go the opposite way to everyone it’s just the first impulsive thought that comes into my mind. I just always see the merit in the opposite to what other people say.

Even my wife, the lovely Distraction, has noticed that I tend to adopt things – hobbies, fashion, themes, imaginary friends – long before they are popular and then loose interest once the rest of the population has caught on. I guess poker is also considered in this example, as the real reaches not fully encompassed Australia yet…almost, but not quite.

So even though I consider myself a bit of an outsider within the poker blogging community, I have started to do something that everybody else has been doing for years. I’m joining this bandwagon much later than your uncool cousin with the speech impediment.

So I’ve started reading Wil’s blog. I don’t even like Star Trek, and I haven’t seen “Stand By Me” since I was playing with transformers.

And what was the result? I went online an hour later and bought Munchkin 1&2. I’m still a little surprised in myself, but I just felt like it would be an awesome idea thanks to Wil’s tiny little endorsement on his site. Am I just another sheep? Surely not. It can’t be.

Even though it will take a month to get here, I am looking forward to getting my hands on the little game. I love games, even those you play without the chance of wining money. Board games, computer games, card games – keep them coming. I hope to have a massive collection one day where we can pick and choose what to play on any given day. Add some alcohol and any board game becomes a drinking party.

Here’s a prediction from me – board games are going to make a comeback. Hopefully not in the shape of lame “Same shit game, now with a DVD!” that has already tried to revive the tired old tradition.

Our most recent board game purchased was “Cranium”, a game that combines charades, pictionary, trivia, word puzzles and other similar talents into one. We’ve played it with a few people, and as always the more the merrier, but some of my friends have re-dubbed the game “Heath Wins”. Oh, for my new readers, in case you didn’t pick up on it, “Heafy” is not my real name. It is a clever disguise to my true identity…which happens to be Heath. Lets move on.

I’m undefeated in Cranium thus far, but that too becomes a problem. I can’t talk trash because the others will just get the shits and stop playing. But if I eventually do loose, my god there will be hell to pay. I will never hear the end of it.

We have a few other games in the cupboard, and I am looking to expand thanks to Munchkin and then more. I would love to get another copy of “Poleconomy”, a monopoly style game that uses corporations and politics. I know there was a Canadian version of it too, I presume there were others. We used to have a copy years ago and we thought it was great, just have no idea where it is now. I haven’t seen it in about 15 years – more than likely it disappeared in a garage sale when we left our home town those years ago.

Some of my favourite times at Uni were drinking in the cottages and playing stupid board games. Wild times, hey? I still remember a monopoly game against the Distraction and three others. She was winning quite well, and was not shy about telling everyone about it. She got one of the other players with a massive bill and he was forced to sell his assets, which he did to me for $10. Since the $10 was all he had left, he had to give that over to the Distraction only. After she busted the other guy, he did a similar deal and within an hour or two the Distraction was also on skid row and lamenting her position. She hardly ever wins in these things, and this time she had a chance but blew it because of her trash talking. I’m sure it wasn’t as funny as I remember it, but like I said before you throw in a few drinks and any of these games become a blast.

Speaking of cheating in these games, I remember playing poker with the same guys – we were not playing for money but we were using monopoly money to bet. Well we had been drinking pretty heavily when the same guy as spoken about before needed a Queen to complete his hand. He saw that I mucked one and quickly grabbed it from in front of me. I saw him do it, and he knew I saw him do it. He won the hand and then slipped me $200 for my troubles. Of course I let this happen, because he was heads up against the Distraction at this stage. Don’t get me wrong, I love my wife to death, but tormenting her in these games is one of my life’s simple pleasures, in case you hadn’t already figured that out.

From then on, we basically swapped cards at will. It was amazing, one hand I got pocket aces (and hit the flop), the next hand he would do the exact same thing. How did this happen? When I dealt, the aces were given to the other guy and when he dealt they went to me. Thing was, the other two players were so drunk they didn’t notice that they hadn’t had a deal in over an hour, and we were cleaning up.

I think cheating in free poker games at uni while exceedingly drunk should be allowed. But at no other time. Well, not unless it is really funny.

And how is the poker thing? I am still finding new ways to loose all my chips. I got real deep in a MTT but busted before the bubble when KK got done by AJs with two aces on the flop. Very next hand I push with K2 because I had 2BB in front of me, and the same player calls with KK. Yeah, I’m not winning that little match. In other MTT, I get AJo and raise it my usual raise to get 4 callers to the flop. Flop comes all spades, which matches my ace. I decided to gamble it up when the large stack bets out at about ¼ the pot. I push over the top (T1700 into a T1400 pot) hoping to get folds. The player immediately to my left calls, and he has me covered by about 100. The raiser folds and the caller flips over 84 spades. Wow, I didn’t put him on that after the pre-flop raise, but the miracle card did not come and I was heading to bed earlier than hoped.

I managed to get some of it back later at the 10c/20c tables. I bought in for $13 and got some good cards that hit, got a good image that allowed me to steal a few pots and cashed out 60 hands later with $25. No massive score or anything, but I was happy none the less.