Collateral Storm Damage

The big storm this weekend was kind of a dud in some ways.  Yes, we did lose power for 12 hours.  Yes, there are some trees down in town and branches and leaves everywhere.  However, the really damaging stuff managed to avoid us.  The collateral damage I sustained was missing Friday night poker.  Despite living only 4 blocks from the Legion, was really uncomfortable leaving the house with the weather so sketchy.  They had a light turnout, only 24 players, so prize pool was way down (of course there were also fewer players to get past).  Also missed the Wednesday tournament at our new place, the Bayway Tavern.


Downtown Nehalem suffered from some major flooding, but I heard that there was no damage to any of the businesses.  Thank goodness.  If we had to find yet another place to have our Wednesday game that would be very tough.

So, in summary, Nehalem flooded but o.k., just North, Manazanita torn up by tornado.  Cannon Beach, in good shape.  We were lucky.

Staycation vs. Spousecation

I used to travel.  A lot.  Nearly always for business as I was District Sales Manager for a furniture company, then later as a Regional VP for Macy's, and finally as Marketing Manager for Homes and Land magazine.  The first job required nearly constant travel, at least 1/2 the time.  The second only sporadically, but fairly regularly.  The last, one week every month.  I will have to say that I never loved travelling or being away from home, but you accept that when you take the job.  Interspersed with these jobs were others that did not require any or little travel.  You can normalize your life then, doing stuff on a regular basis, taking classes, having a schedule.

Is there a trend towards doing "staycations"?  You know, when you just stay home and do stuff you would on a vacation like eating out, movies, seeing local stuff for the first time.  Personally, I am finding that staying home is like a vacation to me.  All my "stuff" is here, tv has all my favorites, I sleep in a comfortable bed, I get to play poker and see friends, fish, stay up late.  Somehow all of that seems to be interrupted when I vacation.  Not to mention the extra expense.

Another trend I see is what I am going to call the "spousecation".  This happens when one of the couple takes a trip without the other one.  It happens to me fairly often when I go to Vegas to play poker (spouse invited but does not want to go), visits to family (sometimes she is with me, sometimes not), her visit to sister in New York (don't get me started on why I don't like to travel to NY), poker trips to Eastern Washington, Pendleton, visits to Seattle ( Usually I am on board, but sometimes not). So, lots of different reasons for the spousecation.  Currently my oldest daughter is visiting friends in France and Italy by herself.  While that is o.k. with me and her family, it is a long time to be gone from teenagers at home.  Not sure I would have been up for that.  Anyway, travel is a sometimes necessary evil as I get older and find it more and more challenging.

Melting Pot

In this election year there is a great divide.  Often the discussions revolve around immigration, income inequality, gender and race bias, and taxes.  We are a country that is a giant melting pot (though describing it as a salad bowl may be more accurate) and a land of opportunity which has driven most immigration, whether it be for freedom or economic opportunity. I woke up this morning thinking about the many people I have met around the poker table.  If ever there was a microcosm of America, surely the poker table is a great example.  First of all, there is the economic oppportunity of sitting down with little and leaving with a lot.  But, it depends on many things, including skill, knowledge, and often luck.  There is also the opportunity to go broke, just like in our economy.  Sometimes you just cannot catch a break no matter how smart you are, no matter what skills you have, you are just in the wrong place at the wrong time.  However, just like in America, you have the opportunity to dust yourself off and come back to try again.  We call it a re-buy, but in our economy it can be a bankruptcy or a billion dollar business loss.

The people I have played poker with represent an amazing cross section of the country.  I have played with recent immigrants (legal and not) from many countries.  I have played with christians, jews, muslims, hindus, and probably many other religions.  It is not a topic that is often discussed.  My opinion is that there are no atheists playing poker because I often see people praying for a card.  And, unlike some prayers in church, you always mean it at the poker table!!!

I have played poker with doctors, lawyers, dentists, construction workers (lots of these guys), business owners, consultants, bookkeepers (for you Dewey), school teachers, migrant workers, drug dealers, felons, cops, farmers, chemists (Mike), jewelry designers (Dave), pot growers, bartenders, gays, lesbians, fishermen, car salesmen, students, millionaires and multi-millionaires, military and retired military, blacks, whites, browns, and any color you care to mention.  Retirees, plant workers, poker dealers, poker pros, corporate vp's and presidents have sat at my table.  We all get along and accept the other players because we realize that they are people just like us, sharing a common goal (get the other guy's money, and keep him from getting ours).  Sure, there are disagreements, sometimes kind of nasty, but not violent, and there is always the next day for paybacks!!  I don't like or respect every player at my table, but can be civil to them.  On the other hand, I have formed many lasting friendships around our common interest.

In conclusion, there is really no reason we cannot come together in this country if we share common goals.  Do I want to "spread the wealth" or inject some economic "fairness" in the poker game.  Hell no!!!  What I do want is to not play in a fixed game which favors some over others, or have the house take too much of my earnings (think taxes).  I just want the opportunity to play the game fairly, in a friendly atmosphere, and hopefully profitably.  My end result will always be in question, but at the end of the day "it is not whether you win or lose but how you play the game".

Suffering

I had a doctor's appointment this morning.  Not to worry, just a change of physicians required a visit.  While in the waiting room I bumped into one of the Cannon Beach poker regulars.  I began our conversation by asking how his game was going.  "Not so good, haven't cashed in a long time".  Now this is a very good young player who has had big wins in big tournaments.  I replied that my luck was so rotten that I constantly was losing to 2 and 3 outers.  I also observed that the game seemed to be a lot tougher than a few years ago.  He attributed it to the wealth of online information available to the "recreational" player.  I disagreed as I feel that very few of these guys spend any time studying and trying to improve their game.  So, I was called into my appointment and our talk ended.  Thinking later it seems to me that the quote about pain being inevitable but suffering being optional applies to my poker thinking.  How often I wake up in the middle of the night agonizing about some bad call or opponent lucky suck out.  My suffering is definitely optional, and often drives my blog posts.

Shifting gears somewhat, I am definitely unhappy with Pokerstars.  Recently logging on and planning to play a little Omaha hi-low limit poker I was disappointed to find that they had removed all of those games, replacing them with only high limit no limit omaha high.  Also, they removed all slower speed SNG tournaments so only turbo and hyper remain with much higher buy-ins. Evidently they were tired of us guys enjoying ourselves and instead are looking to burn through our play money faster.  Turning to WSOP website, that is a joke too.  With a 48% preflop fold statistic I am super tight, with most players folding preflop 20% of the time on average.  Unreal.  This is not poker.
What is a guy to do in this sparse live game environment.  Looks like I am heading back to Americas Card Room.    

Fishing and Poker

It should come to no surprise to anyone that lots of poker players also fish.  I have been listening to their stories for years.  Lately, I decided to join them.  A friend who is a fishing expert took me under his wing recently, loaning me tackle, showing me the hot spots and when to get your line in the water, even cleaning our catch!!  I am indebted to him, cause you know how it goes.....give a man a fish, etc. My first outing, 1 nice coho salmon, 2nd outing, 2 nice salmon 1 jack and 1 chinook,  3rd outing, nada.....raining and blowing wind, miserable, lasted 3 hours before giving up.  After we left got reports that it was "the best run of the year" for an hour and a half with everyone catching multiple fish, even one guy using bass lures!!!! Oh well.

So, my salmon fishing may be done this year as we are leaving town for a bit and the run will soon end.  Steelhead fishing coming up.

  Back to poker.  Not a lot of luck this week.  Wheeler ended early when my flush draw failed against pocket kings.  Cannon Beach was worse with my pre-flop raise AJ, several callers, flop of 2/3/3, and one caller of my shove....really expected to see an A/3 suited, but no, worse, pocket 2's.  No poker for me for a week or so, leaving tomorrow for Dallas and St. Louis family visits. 

Back in The Saddle-

Finally decided to get back on the poker horse.  It has been too long.  My last tournament was 2 months ago.  So, driving to Wheeler last night I was eager to play and to see my poker buddies, as well as to enjoy a tall glass of Old Chubb beer.  The turnout was fairly light, around 21 players, 3 short tables.  I drew seat 1 on table 2 (which combines to 21 as in number of players, and also adds up to 3 tables) coincidentally if you are into numbers meanings).  Looking around at the players I was kind of going rut-row.  There were all of the usual suspects plus some players on known heaters.  All in all a pretty tough table.  Scott was dealing, and what a string of cards he put out!  I had A/A early, winning a large pot from K/K.  Got A/A again which I folded after the flop with 4 callers on a coordinated flushy board and a big bet with caller in front of me.  Good fold as a straight was hit on the turn.  During the course of the evening Scott dealt A/A a total of 8 times.  Unreal.  When we formed the final table, A/A was dealt back-to-back the first two hands!!!  Aces did not lose once all night (except for my early hero fold).  There was even a set over set aces and 5's hand to add to the excitement.

Never having a huge stack, I nonetheless managed to get hot late in the tournament, knocking 3 players out on separate occasions.  One of the luckiest hands was shoving from my small blind in a multi-way pot with 6/7 off on a flop of 5/8/x all spades (I had zero spades).  Two callers and I rivered a 9 to more than triple up.  Getting down to 3 players, we were all very close in chip count, so I suggested a chop.  The one lady in the tournament agreed, but the other player (1st time I have played with him) did not want to.  Shortly afterward, she raised with A/9 suited, I shoved with A/Q, she called and failed to find her flush or 9.  Down to 2, we agreed to chop even though I was now about double his stack.  Felt good to play again, and even better to win!!!

Side note:  sickest hand of the night, lucky player raises with 10/J, short stack dealer shoves with A/K, biggest stack over shoves with Q/Q.  Mr. Lucky (strawberry Sasquatch....no names) calls for all of his chips.  King on the flop, Q on the turn, and......you know it, 9 on the river for the straight. Dealer down, big stack crippled.

Long Time No Post

Wow.  It has been a long time since I have posted.  Hope my few followers have not given up on me.  Such a busy and sad summer for me.  In June, I traveled to Phoenix to help my mother for a couple of weeks after her stroke.  I recounted my poker adventures on that trip.  So, in August spending another week in Seattle helping family with their transition to new house, and then getting a call that mother had suffered another stroke.  Back to Phoenix for another week.  This time the stroke affected her speech and ability to form thoughts.  She is a strong willed woman, and certainly did not want to live with both the physical problems and mental problems now existing.  Her vow if she ever got really sick was to "stop eating and drinking till she died".  So, that is exactly what she did.  Her plan was to go in 5 days, maybe she had read that somewhere.  Unfortunately she was in excellent health and it took her twice as long.  She passed away last Saturday with my sister and brother-in-law by her bed.  We cared for her that last week with hospice care in her old home, now my sister's.  My younger brother was with her for several days before I got there and was also able to say goodbye.  Betty was 89 years old and lived a good life.

So, my poker game has been held in suspension.  Really did want to play last night, but just not feeling up to it yet.  Think I will grieve for a while longer.

Picture from last January's visit.  She loved to work puzzles and play bridge.  Now some of the other players at her retirement community will have a chance to win 1st place.  I got all my card smarts from her.