Birthday Celebration

Kassandra: Why didn't he just kill me? Nothing could be worse than this!
Giles Redferne: His very thought.

"Warlock"

This is my formal apology to the 8 other players at the table with myself last night, and an apology to the poker devils that have toyed with me over the past few weeks.

I sincerely apologise for what happened at the table last night firstly to the other players, but I did not try to deceive anyone. After getting down to the final 5 players, two of our friends of whom the Distraction and I had been waiting for arrived.

We had planned to go out for dinner last night, as it was my 26th Birthday, but when we were due to be seated our friends called and said they were on their way. So we decided to head home and wait for them before dinner, and since they lived in the city it would be a while before they made it.

While the Distraction returned to DVD copies of "Grey's Anatomy", I had permission to get into a little poker. Earlier in the night I had tried, but ran into another player who was on a hot run and lost about $10 before I got sick of the bad connection and logged out early.

This time I decided to jump into a $5 SNG, just the nine players for some quick action before we were due out again.

I hadn't had much luck by the time we got down to 5 players, and that is when our guests arrived. Not wanted to be the idiot playing the computer while people waited to go out for dinner, I tried my best to loose in a hurry. Sure, I could have just logged off and be blinded away, but it would be more fun to become a lunatic instead.

So I raised every un-raised pot. If I was re-raised, I pushed all-in. On the button, I had one limper so I raised with Q5s. Both the blinds folded and the limper re-raised me to put me all-in. I had been honest with the table in the chat box and said I had dinner reservations and had to leave – and I think my call with Q5s showed this. My opponent had…pocket aces of course! What kind of story would it be if he didn't?

When you are holding Q5s, what kind of flop would you be looking for? Most people would say QQ5, but that is not what happened. The five came on the river, to be sure, but the flop was a little different. You see, I held the Queen of spades, and when the digital flop came out it was a little something like this…

Queen of diamonds…

Queen of hearts…

Queen of clubs.

I had alllllll of the Hilton sisters, and then a few more. I couldn't help but feel sorry for the poor sap with pocket Aces, who I knocked out moments later with Ace-high.

I then knocked out forth when he was short stacked and was desperate. I knocked out third when I called a pre-flop raise with 45o, and called his all-in when the flop came KK5. His A9 did not improve. I then knocked out 2 nd place with an almost identical hand and took home the 1st place money (all $22.50 of it) with glee – but I was still feeling a little guilty over the QQQ flop.

Who am I kidding, I loved that flop. I loved it even more that I had an eye witness to the madness in one of my waiting dinner guests. I managed to wrap this game up in a matter of minutes and it made up for the losses earlier in the night. We then went out and had a fantastic dinner and came back to some Family Guy, before the Distraction and I put on some Law and Order CI before crashing half way through the first episode.

As I go back through the archives, I notice that on my last two birthdays (yes, this blog has passed it's second birthday with little fanfare) I have had some moderate luck. Last year not as much, but yesterday marked the 2 year anniversary of my very first MTT win. It was a free roll at Aloha poker, for the grand sum of $28. My how times have changed since then. On that day in 2004, I came second in a SNG for a profit of 2 cents. Today the profit was $17 – that's an improvement of 850 times the original! So, if I can make the same improvement for a MTT win, that means my next score should be worth $23K. I would like that very much.

But I have gone off point. This post was to apologise to the others at the table. I'm sorry I had to leave and thus played like that. It was very out of character and I never lied about what I had to do – I was trying to leave early.

Also, I don't won't the Poker Demons to think this makes us even. Or worse still, make it seem like they need to get even…

I'm sure my doom is just around the corner.