Tuesday, December 19, 2006

A Kick in the Ass on the Way Out the Door

I'll be in Maryland where I grew up for 11 days starting tomorrow. Thankfully our dear friend Liz loves cats and has graciously offered to keep an eye on the house and Gus and Rio, so don't report us to the SPCA. Thanks Liz!

Since I've been working pretty hard the past month or two I've been ready for a vacation. Also I'd worked every day for 15 days straight between December 2nd and December 16th. So after a few hours on the morning of the 16th I mentally checked out. We had a Christmas party at our house that night and I spent all day Sunday glued to the couch watching football. I'd planned to get back to work on Monday, but instead Jen and I spent the day shopping, eating out and at the movies.

After spending the morning screwing around writing e-mails and generally wasting time I had to do some work to clear a $1,500 bonus before I left town. Things started out nicely as I found myself ahead $300 after 45 minutes. The terrible strain of this herculean effort required me to take a 2 hour lunch break.

I manged to haul myself back to my office at which point I experienced the second worst run of tournament finishes in my online career. The worst run I ever had was over 2 years ago when I had 23 straight SNG's in which I finished out of the money. If you assume that at worst I'm a player who makes the money 40% of the time then I can expect a stretch like that once every 126,625 tournaments. Of course after about 12 or 15 bricks in a row no one is playing their best so the chances of 23 misses in a row are a little better than that. Today I had a stretch that wasn't quite as bad, but still sucked. I had 12 misses in a row, then a 3rd and then 5 more misses.

The worst one was the 10th one in that stretch. Playing 4 handed with blinds of 100/200 and a 25 chip ante I had about 2,200 chips and was first to act. The player in the big blind had about 2,000 and the other two players each had just over 4,500. I raised to 600 with AK of spades and got called by the big blind. The flop came down 8 9 Q with 2 spades. While I didn't have a pair I was still in pretty good shape with two overcards and a flush draw and I knew I wouldn't be folding. In fact, I thought to myself "I hope this guy bluffs into me with a hand like AJ, that would be perfect." Sure enough, my opponent bet 700, I put in the rest of my chips and he called me with A10. "Ah ha!" I thought. Unless he manages to hit a J or a 10, THAT ISN'T A SPADE, I win and even if he does I can still hit a spade to win for sure. As you might have guessed a 10 came on the turn, I failed to hit a spade, or a J or a K on the river and I lost the pot.

But, that is not the end of the story. I still had 135 chips left. I went all in on the next two pots and split them both. Then I won a few pots and all of a sudden I was up to 1500 and back in it. The blinds had gone up to 200/400 and I found myself in the big blind with A4 of hearts. The player on the button inexplicably just called 400 as did the small blind who only had about 1500 total. I moved all in and the first player folded. The player in the small blind who was the same one who nailed me with the A10 earlier and had squandered some of my chips called me with Q8. The flop came down 3 4 J with 2 hearts. "Ha ha!" I thought. "This is just like before when I had WAY the best hand AND a flush draw covering some of my opponents outs. There's no way I can get totally screwed AGAIN after LOSING 9 STRAIGHT TOURNAMENTS." When the off suit Q came on the river and I lost the pot and my 10th straight tournament I was not happy.

Perhaps even more remarkable was the journey of the green dry erase marker that I grabbed off my desk at that moment. While a lengthy stream of F-bombs and other profanities came spewing forth at high volume from my very core, I threw the marker into the middle of the room with all my might. It glanced off a piece of furniture which cracked the marker and removed the cap. The now capless, split marker then managed to fly at a direct 90 degree angle to the direction in which I threw it where it came upon the intersection of a dresser and the wall. The dresser and the wall are also at 90 degrees to each other mind you. Yet somehow this single marker managed to make THREE concentric arcs of dots of ink on the dresser each at least 2 feet long AND a solid line of ink that was also in an arc shape on the wall. Talk about a magic marker!

Anyway I managed to lose about $600 on the day which wasn't how I wanted to go out on my last work day before my vacation, but I've certainly had worse days. I don't expect to write any posts while I'm in MD, but I have grandiose plans to work myself until I'm totally dead in January so that should lead to some interesting posts. Until then, have a merry Christmas and a Happy new year!

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