It will put the dog in the bucket! It will put the dog in the bucket!...aka As usual, the universe couldn't give a fuck what I want for Christmas...

Greetings.

I want to begin today’s post with a philosophical observation and a daily affirmation.

As Renee Descartes once said, “Fuck personal responsibility.”

I happen to love me. A Lot. So I sure as shit am not gonna blame myself for that royal screwjob I suffered last night on the way to my coronation.

No way.

I blame this guy.

After all the love I’ve sent him for weeks now (check the comments in any of his recent posts) in his epic quest for a WSOP-ME seat, how does he respond? By showing up at my table while I’m trying to do my thang, and proceed to jinx the evahlovin’ FUCK out of me. Chatting the table like a demon; demanding I win, insisting I HAVE to win or it will be the meltdown of all blogger meltdowns, and rousing the rabble so effectively they proceed to raise and reraise me every hand, just about making me cry in the process. Okay maybe you guys aren’t rabble, per se, but ya know what I mean.

Dude, if your girlfriend wasn’t so relentlessly Smokin’, I’d nevah let you rail me again. Since she is so relentlessly Smokin’ as a guy I am forced by the Guy Code to forgive you. Which I do.

You’re welcome.

[Edit. Did this read like I was seriously blaming mah boy Smokkee for me being a luckless schmoebot? Hope not. Smokkee, we're good brotha, it was 2AM when I wrote this and I was just screwin' around as usual.]

There. I feel bettah already. Well, a little anyway.

So, nope. I didn’t win WWdN, despite having spent a couple of hours getting to a position where that was a strong possibility. If I had, it would have been hellaciously cool, because as I’ve mentioned a few times, I only got interested in poker through Wil’s blog, and this tournament was the first online poker game I ever played in. As some of you saw, I came in fourth, but at present I take no joy in it. I entered the final table with almost 9k more chips than my nearest competitor and was sure I knew what to do in order to win the damn thing.

But after all that - Fourth. I am having a hard time recalling the last time I felt this disappointed; like something I felt I was entitled to just slipped past with a whispered chuckle. Moron.

Yeah, I already agree – better get the fuck over myself. Life is good, and I am in no need of a ledge with attendant 20 story drop. Still sucks though.

Here’s something a little unusual about my path up the ladder:

1. I busted Wes. That’s four times and counting – almost as bliss inducing as busting Waffles – 2 times to date for that hedonistic thrill. Hoy has it in spades; the rest of the tournament becomes a post-coital haze in your head after Waffles goes bye-bye and his chips start skipping merrily towards you. BTW I busted Wes at a table that included him, Weak and Absinthe – What do you suppose the expected value of sitting there for 20 minutes is? No es bueno, that’s for sure.


2. I busted Eric. I understood your point B.D., but if you reraised me on the flop that would have been more consistent with a made flush. Pretty hard to lay down a flopped 3rd nut for a moron like me anyway. You should have known that about me by now. Chip Reese and Freddy are very disappointed; you’re making them look bad by association.


3. I busted Kat. Please forgive me darlin’. Luckaris is sorry. Well, sortof.

These are people I really spend a lot of time reading or just shootin’ the shit with in general. It was weird going through everyone you know as you move through the crowd. But I’ll take it in a pinch.

Need proof that math (no, not MATH) sucks?

Suckouts: Junk Kickings (min. 1k chips in pot) = 2:3

Timing, of course, proved to be the totality. It’s true I delivered a hellacious beat when I was dominated and managed to bust two people right there. As anyone who plays a lot of MTTs knows, you have to get lucky, win races, steal and resteal etc. I did all that, got decent cards and it still just wouldn’t come together.

I am pleased that I wasn’t tight with that big stack. I used it like God intended, as a club to beat the shit out of anyone not holding a premium hand. Down to 18, I raised and reraised with complete junk at least half the time, trusting only in position and trying to put as much pressure as I could before taking time off to build up table image again. I stupidly called a big hand with the Hammer (never did it at a final table, so that novelty is now gone – ie. Nevah Again, Retard), but quickly stole enough blinds to get right back in it.

So overall the plan was working beautifully.

Until something bad happened to my queens at the final table. Something very bad. I’m not supposed to say, but let’s just note my worthy opponent (Amy) had AJo. And I took a 7k hit that really changed table dynamics with the antes being measured in astronomical units.

Did I then tighten up and start making tilty moves? Nope. I channeled my inner Hoy and went right back to work stealing any blinds I could get my grubby hands on. Sure enough, I built back up to 26k and thought that this has to be my night: I had survived a couple of races, my big pairs all held up – with just the one exception, which I managed to overcome. I had made a couple of big laydowns, suckouted twice to great profit - what the hell else is there between an affable Robbie Benson lookalike and victory?

Well it turns out you shouldn’t pick the last 15 minutes of the tournament to get incredibly unlucky. With blinds in the Hubble Deep Field, I got Astin all-in preflop with a dominated king, only to have him pull out his wand a conjure one of his 3 outs. Nope, that's still not a bad beat story because, hey no hard feelings, despite it costing me a third of my stack. In fact, that evened up the suckout: junk crunching ratio, and karmically that’s always good I think. I don't know much about online strategy, but I do know enough about Lee Jones to know I am at the mercy of his draconian sense of justice.

So, I still felt like four-handed, I definitely had a chance. Then the previous hand with Astin essentially repeated itself. This time his river magic conjured one-of-8 outs while he had me covered. And just like Kaiser Souze, I was gone. Yeah...I'll allow you might consider that a bad beat story. But at least it was only one sentence. And at least he's a Torontonian like yours truly. If it couldn't have been me (WHY GOD?! WHY couldn't it be me!?), I was rooting for you. Which is likely why you lost in short order. Great run this week brotha. Congratulations also to HermWarfare and of course KentAllard. Way ta take the whole thing down.

It's really all good news: I made a few bucks, it was nice to be at a blogger final table again, and without a shadow of a doubt, when it was crunch time I got my money in 3 times WAY ahead. [EDIT: I thought I might be overstating this, but I just ran the numbers this morning - Yeesh!] I am trying to be decisions-oriented and feel good about the fact that those reads on my opponent were good, and that those were reasonable plays that should have held up.

But it’s weird. I just felt very dialed-in for most of that tournament, especially after I took those late gut punches. As arrogant as it is to say considering the fucking ridiculously talented people who were playing, I seriously believed I was going to win, pretty much from the time I got things going. As I write that I force myself not to delete it; it’s the truth after all, but the hubris of it just makes me smile and shake my head. What a retard.

So what am I left with? Just this:

Man’s reach must exceed his grasp, else what’s a Heaven for?

That’s John Milton with an observation that is one of my favourites, because it eloquently explains why a guy like me wastes his time playing this fucking game.

So, here’s to Fourth. And perhaps a first to follow, at some point down the road, although given the competition, who knows?.

And here’s wishing each of you success with the beast too.

Laytah.