We played at a new place Saturday (Tasha's birthday!) while our preferred place is still under relocation/remodelling.
Lesson:
If you're in a hand, stay with it until you're beat. I held a K-middle card and flopped to a pair of Kings, with nothing but low cards surrounding the King on the table. But the guy on my right kept raising and I finally bailed out before the river. Behold: he held pocket Queens and won with that pair. Now, hindsight is 20/20 etc. etc. but I have a feeling that hands where I bet somewhat heavily and lose my nerve before the showdown is why I'm getting so much practice in short-stack play.
Fact is, instead of paying attention to the cards I was counting the butcher's bill. I think this is an example where a better understanding of pot odds would have served me well. Guess I need to practice that.
Speaking of short-stack play, my final hand was a good example, I think, of doing the right thing and losing anyway. From behind the short stack (and considerably shorter than anyone else at the table,) I held a Q-middle card. I flopped to a pair of Queens, and immediately went all in.
The guy who followed me in had a huge stack and a 5-K in the pocket...he had flopped to a pair of 5's.
Now, I admit that the look of dread when he saw my Queen was immensely gratifying to me.
And the King that appeared on the River was immensely gratifying to him. Aaaaah, if only if only.
Best hand of the night was another short-stack play. Got dealt an AK off-suit and stuck around through the flop, then saw a huge scare card (I think it was a good straight draw) on the turn which nobody bet on, and went all-in. Two guys followed me and I immediately blurted out, "I lose." But they didn't have anything either - I won with an Ace high! Woo-hoo! Takin' chips!
So - been awhile.
I just had to pass on this hilarious quote from a head-scratcher the AJC is doing about the courthouse shootings:
Like Ashley Smith, who turned Nichols in, [AJC reporter Don] O'Briant [, who was carjacked by Nichols and clanged into a Dumpster running away from him,] was soon regarded as a hero. People wanted to touch him. He thinks it's because he's an ordinary person who survived something awful. "Maybe people hope there's some magic that wears off."
Quick show of hands: who in Atlanta regards Don O'Briant as any kind of hero?
(crickets)
That sentence should end:
...was soon regarded in his own fevered and grasping imagination as a hero.
If there's a more hilarious example of scribbling class narcissism this year, I'll be very surprised. Look, a treasured colleague of mine was also victimized by Nichols. I don't regard her as a hero (at least not for that) but I did want to see her as soon as possible and let her know how glad I was that she was ok. I hope she knows that I would provide her the valuable service of laughing in her face if she started talking about what a hero she was. I have a feeling the writer of this piece simply lacked the collegial courage to do the same for O'Briant.
Of course, the day after the incident O'Briant was already talking about a book deal. This adds special poignance to the following:
Lately, he has been writing a letter to his adult children.
Gawd. Think he'll send it to them before or after he ships it off to Scribners?
Missed half a dose of my steroidal yesterday. It's to treat an inflammation of my eardrum, aquired when I suffered, antibiotic-less, through a sinus infection in February. I've had prednisone before, for rosacea, and didn't read the packet insert that time. So imagine my surprise when I went stark raving mad upon stopping the med! That won't happen this time, though. I thought I had lost my dose pack, but it turns out I had merely misplaced it. So I'm back on track. I hope.
Street scenes today: A man driving his van while eating a styrofoam plate of eggs and sausage, plate in one hand and fork in the other.
A delivery van with a flat of tomatoes on the top, apparently unbeknownst to the driver. Hee!
I've gotten thoroughly acclimated to riding MARTA and even enjoying it. I've now finished two plays on MARTA as well as several Game Boy games. (When, oh when will Super Metroid hit the GBA?) Maybe I'll start my next play soon.