Let me tell you why I suck as a salesman, err, poker player

God love Tommy Boy and God how I miss Senor Farley.

Enough reminiscing.  Time for self-loathing.

As a one-time and part-time poker blogger, I have played in past iterations of what is called the Big Blogger Tournament.  Basically it’s an excuse to donate rake to the destitute boys over at Full Tilt Poker.  In theory, it’s a series of weekly events where poker bloggers donk it up and, well, donate rake to Full Tilt.  It’s a good time and it’s quite the fraternity.  If fraternities were made up of people who don’t know each other from cities all across the world and exist solely to bitch about bad beats.  Screw Phi Psi.  That’s MY kind of fraternity.

But I digress.  This is BBT4 with ultimately some fine prizes up for grabs.  I have played in three tournaments.  I have three points.  Kids, in case you’re following at home, that’s bad.  That means I have played three times and basically could have had Mr. Ed or Mr. Bill or any other TV character that nobody under 45 except for myself has ever heard of (toonces anyone?).  Lord, I suck.

But last night, I had hope.  My biggest downfall is that I have the poker equivelent of a glass jaw.  I can punch with the best of them, but I CANNOT take a hit.  So last night, I made an ill-timed move and got knocked down to WELL under half of what we started with.  Ordinarily, I would have made some idiotic move and been out in a matter of moments.  But last night, I battled.  I played my position.  I pushed when need-be.  Took down some orphan pots.  And got back up to over starting stack.  Of course, I went out somewhere around 40 out of 80-some…but it was a proverbial moral victory.

Alas.  My reinvention lasted less than 24 hours.  Tonight, I was making moves, getting hands and generally falling right into the groove.  I had never dipped much below starting and about 20 minutes in, I was about 33% above where we started.  I looked down at Ah5h and was grateful to get a minimal raise and saw the flop with several others.  The flop was J-x-9 with two hearts.  The guy to my right bet about 200.  I briefly considered raising to see if I could just take the pot, but that would have been foolish.  So I called to keep the pot small, maybe keep some dead money in the hand and hope for my flush.

The next card was an ace.  Obviously I now had top pair, but crappy kicker.  I didn’t think the kicker would come into play because I doubted my nemesis had an ace.  I was thinking more K-J or possibly even a straight draw.  I didn’t think that when he led out with a 600 or so bet.  That story didn’t make sense.  I now figured he had trips or two pair.  Somehow I talked myself into him having that K-J even though it made NO sense.  So what did I do? Call to see the river?  Nope.  I re-raised.  Why?  I have no idea.  He pushed.  I then knew I was staring at least at two pair.  It would put me all-in to call.  With one lousy card to come.  Of course I called.  River was a brick.  He had J-9.  And a promising start was now directly in a trough-style urinal.

I could have just called to see the river.  I could have folded to his re-raise and still had about half a starting stack.  But I didn’t.  I didn’t want half a starting stack.  I took a punch and dove for the canvas.  As usual.  Not unlike the aforementioned Farley.  Except nobody is laughing.  Well, except the guy who is stacking my chips saying, “donkey.”

Lessons learned:

1) I suck.

2) I can’t play flush-draws worth a damn

3) I am still petrified of trying to play with a short-stack

4) I am going to find the Chris Farley Chippendales video on youtube to make me feel better.