Wednesday, January 02, 2008

2008 - The Year Of Poker On Film

Bill Lumbergh: So, Peter, what's happening? Aahh, now, are you going to go ahead and have those TPS reports for us this afternoon?
Peter Gibbons: No.
Bill Lumbergh: Ah. Yeah. So I guess we should probably go ahead and have a little talk. Hmm?
Peter Gibbons: Not right now, Lumbergh, I'm kinda busy. In fact, look, I'm gonna have to ask you to just go ahead and come back another time. I got a meeting with the Bobs in a couple of minutes.
Bill Lumbergh: I wasn't aware of a meeting with them.
Peter Gibbons: Yeah, they called me at home.
”Office Space”

Xmas has come and gone once again, and was enjoyable if not totally lacking in poker. We managed to play a few hands of holdem with my brothers, though I never managed to win a hand out of the maybe 20 we played in the early hours of the morning. The most exciting it got for me was when all-in and drawing to an 8 for an inside straight, I peeked at the river card (so that everyone could see I was looking at it before dealing it) and then grabbed a random card out of the middle of the deck and slammed it down – lo and behold, there was my 8! It didn’t stand of course, but it was funny that I could pull one of four outs from the middle of the deck, as useless as it was.

We did play some more 9 card Omaha, which I have only ever seen played before on the Phil Laak and Antonio Esfandari show “I Bet You”. Not a bad game, and when playing for free and to waste time, I prefer this to holdem anyday.

Over the Xmas period I also managed to open up the inner problem gambler in my mother by signing her up to Casino on net. She was getting into the video poker, and when she was down about $4 would ask me or my brother the casino dealer to get her back up above her starting point – like it was the easiest thing in the world for us to do. Somehow we managed to go 4 from 4 in getting her miniscule losses back, and I think she believes we can do this at whim now. If only that were true.

To complete our gambling holidays, we went to a local greyhound racing track in Melbourne and had a good night. My younger brother and his girlfriend had a big win when a dog bearing her name and 30+ odds managed to sneak home when the favourite got bumped on the last bend. The Distraction and I after 8 races pulled to a $4 deficit, which is not a bad price to pay for an evenings entertainment. Had some good results and overall enjoyed it. Though it was rough at the start – I would instantly pick a dog without thinking, and then after putting some thought into it change my selection – of course, the original no-thinking selection would win. So that became the goal of the night, ignore my changes of mind and go with the first selection before any thought could cloud the non-judgement. Worked ok, as good as any other system I guess.

I’ve got the itch to get back into the poker playing arena, and this weekend is looking good for some action, wherever that may be. I have also used some of the advertising dollars from here to reload the two home games I play at with some more copags as the last lot of KEM’s seemed to be pretty crappy. I remember the first deck of KEM cards I bought, they were AU$60. Now, you can grad a deck for about $20, and two copag decks for $25 which is the preference.

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