Updates: Life and Poker

 

Life: Cars, work and baseball

The past ten days or so have been a real whirlwind for me. On Monday of last week, my son was involved in a three-car fender bender. It appears that he only suffered a mild concussion, as evidenced by his text: "Got In a car crash bloody knuckles maybe concussion idk in maybe with seeing convenient. Mo airbag. Double rear ended. Lest head ended."

My daughter got to the accident site to pick up my son and take him to a local convenient care medical office. They were told that a trip to the emergency room would not be necessary as long as things got better and not worse.

Of course, then there is the matter of the auto insurance. All three drivers are covered under State Farm policies, so this should have made things relatively easy. However, they did not call the police to the accident scene and, not surprising, one driver did not report the accident to the insurance company and another driver's story is quite different than my son's. The other driver's story would allow her to skate without having anything go against her insurance policy. Hmmm ... the plot thickens.

I had an interesting experience with my own car. I was quite shocked to see the passenger side outside mirror hanging down. I had just gotten back from a grocery store and wondered if someone had done it by slipping on ice and hitting the car or just done it to be nasty. I told my wife what happened and her response was "Was it the passenger side?" Hmmm ...

So, it turns out that my wife was pulling my car out of the garage/driveway and hit our garbage can. The mirror was probably 90% off and then finally fell down on the way back from the grocery store. A few days ago, I bought some black duct tape and taped the mirror back up until I have time to get it taken care of properly. Last night, I was in a big hurry to meet my wife at a restaurant. As I zoomed out of the driveway much faster than usual ... you guessed it, I hit the same garbage can, tearing off the mirror I had just taped up! Some days ...

Work would be fine except for two people who frequently seem to have issues with each other, forcing me to use time I need for other things and making me wonder why I chose to be in charge of my area for another three years. I believe the term "dumbshit" may apply to me. I will repeat that claim over the next few weeks as I have to have annual evaluations completed for eight members of my staff by the end of the month. Good times.

I recently wrote about the futures of Chicago sports teams. I, like many others across Illinois, are looking forward to the start of the 2015 Major League Baseball season. So far I have purchased tickets to two games: White Sox at Cubs on July 12 and Cubs at White Sox on August 16. I will be wearing my White Sox gear for both games while the King of Komps (thundering36) will be wearing Cubbie blue. I had the opportunity to purchase opening day tickets for the White Sox, but I have been to several home openers and, frankly, they often kind of suck due to the weather and traffic.

Poker

I recently published a short post on the upcoming 2015 World Series of Poker on the blog operated by Tony Bigcharles. The post mentions the several inexpensive tournaments being offered at the WSOP. At this point, however, I have no plans to travel to Las Vegas during the WSOP or the rest of the summer. I am pretty sure that I will find my way to Las Vegas sometime in June or July, but with no good way to get free or dirt cheap rooms for the time being at the Caesar's properties, I will need to plan things more carefully. I actually had to suffer the indignity of paying a few resort fees this past December.

This past Tuesday I played in my weekly home game. I have gotten to know how the regulars play now, which is certainly an advantage. One guy spews and reloads, spews and reloads, ... I like playing with him! Catch a few cards and call down light = profits.

I got into a big hand with the host, David. David is a solid player and a nice guy, but this is poker, you know. I had just kidded him while he was on a heater, which included winning a nice pot vs me. Several times over the past couple of years, I have gotten monster hands against him. I just reminded David how I am used to crushing his soul. Two hands later, it happened: the monster hand of the night.

I had a stack of about $220. David covered me and had a little extra. Blinds were $.50/$1. I was on the button and looked down to see pocket Aces. A couple of people limped in (might have been a raise to $3 - don't remember) and David raised to $12. How much should I  raise? I decided to raise to $30. The others folded and David carefully considered what to do. With our past and knowing that this kind of a bluff was not usually a lightning36 move, I thought he might fold. He clearly had to put me on a premium pair or A-K. However, he was on a major heater. Surprisingly, he raised to $100. I decided not to monkey shove because David has the discipline to make a tough fold. I looked at him and he was staring at me. I then said "That good, David?" I then decided that I didn't want to Hollywood too much -- a dead giveaway when followed by a shove -- and pushed out my chips and said "all in." David took a few moments to think and decided to call. He said "I have Kings." I replied that I had Rockets. We decided to run it twice and I won both hands, raking in a nice ~$445 pot.

I felt bad for David, but we have all been there. I did suppress the desire to say "sorry." I didn't think that would help any. To David's credit, he took it like a man. I'd probably wouldn't want to know what his mind was thinking, though! A short time later I cashed out for a little over $400 -- a $300+ profit. Not bad for a $.50/$1 home game. I had a nice drive home. The sock drawer became a little more crowded.