Donkey tales:

5/10 NL. 66 in LP. Raise it up to $40. 2 callers. Wow, people have tightened up. Flop is . Ding! Tarderino in the SB checks, BB checks, I bet $100. Tard calls. Turn is . Well that's about as safe as it gets there. Check/bet $225/call. River is . Dingleberry comes out shooting for $500. Huh? AJ? Busted spades? No way can he have a backdoor flush. Could he have 43? Beats me. I call. It's . NIHAN.

While later his uppance gets comed. 6-way straddle pot with , flop comes down . He's in the SB again and bets out $50. Two calls next to him and I make it $250 to go. He calls (duh), others fold. Turn is , safe card. He checks and I know I need to put the screws to him so I bet $500. He calls. Really like that flush draw, don't you? River's the . I've heard this song before somewhere. This time he checks to me, I ask him if there's any way he could have backdoored another flush before turning over my 76. He gets angry at the injustice of it and mucks. I'm thinking he had 88 or 99. SEND IT.

And yet the Saga of the Donkey did not end well. He's at the flailing point later on with about $675. He open-raises to $80 (he did that a lot), it gets to me in the BB. I've got QQ and make it $300. He shoves. Now of course I'm going to call and I assume he has shit, but I ask him if he wants to run it 3 times since after all it is his whole stack and I'm probably not a huge favorite. He says no (and he says it like a dickwad) and so fine, here we go. Flop is . Is that a good flop for red queens? No. Turn and river no help, I table my queens and he tables his . NIHAN again. Yeah, I sure wouldn't want to make a deal either if I had such a strong hand and was playing for my whole stack.

So it goes. Prior to that hand I was up $1100 for the session. After that and a couple others I left down a couple hundred. Can't make shit happen.

But here's one that illustrates just how fucked I've been but also how thankful I am that I got out cheap:

in EP. UTG raises to $40. I've been changing the way I play AK; in olden days I might have repopped but here I decide to flat call. We end up 4-handed to a flop of . BAM. Original raiser bets out $100, and he's got about $350 left after that. I make it $300 expecting a push or fold from him. Guy behind me folds and wait WHAT the SB make it $900. UTG folds. I know the SB quite well and KNOW that without a doubt he has a set. This is confirmed when he asks me if I want to know what he has, and I say "a set of fours" and he says yeah. He doesn't want the action/suckout but he knows his hand is good, obviously. I know that if I push he'll call and we can run it three times, but what's the point of that if I'm so far behind and his odds of filling up are about the same as mine are of hitting the flush? So I fold, he shows me the 44. Just my luck that I hit a monster flop and have to fold it, but against a different player at the table (I'm talking about you, donkey) I might not have been able to get away from it.

I finally wised up and left a winner rather than wait around for a while to see in what craptacular way I can lose all my profit.

Getting AA and KK a combined 7 times was helpful. Won with them every time but once, and the one loss was a $50 loss with the KK when the other guy made it easy for me: flop of AAJ goes check/check. Turn is another jack. He bets out $200 into the $100 pot. Uh, fold.

A couple of beauties:

53s in LP. We're playing about 5-handed for awhile, and some dude comes in raising for $40. Now I've never been known to fold a quality hand like this one so I call and see a flop of 543 with two diamonds. He bets out $60, I pop it to $160. He thinks and calls. Now what's the worst card in the deck that can show up on the turn? You guessed it, a deuce! Thanks dealer! Dude bets out a rather small $85 into the $400 pot. I get the sense that I'm not actually crushed, and even if I'm wrong (and I frequently am) I've got 4 outs to hang onto. I call. River is a brick and he comes out for $350. OK, no more easy decisions. But I'm having a damn tough time putting him on an ace or a six given the action. I'm thinking overpair and an inclination to push me off whatever I have. At times like this often my hands operate independently from my brain and I grab $350 and toss it out. My two pair is good.

I proceed to pwn that guy for the rest of the night. Later on at the main table, I open-raise to $40 with . Don't know why. Get 3 callers (one behind me, two in the blinds) and see a king-high flop with two clubs. Brain says bet, hands check. Button (our hero from before) bets out $150. Brain, thankfully, does not say check-raise and I just flat call. Weak-passive poker FTW. Turn is an ace, and my hand seems to be looking quite tasty. But since I'm all about the passive now I check and he checks behind. River completes my nuts. I'm thinking he has a flush too- that would make the most sense- and if all he has is a king he'll only pay me if he's confused, but he probably won't pay me. Go for broke time and I bet $400, just under pot size. He pays me off. No idea what he had.

Very next hand I'm stacking chips and get red aces. Raise it up, different guy becomes my huckleberry. Flop is two hearts, I bet he calls. Turn is a third heart, check/check. River is a fourth heart, I bet $100 and he pays me. Poker is so much easier when you have the nuts. That will be chapter 4 of my next instructional book.

Addendum to the above:

I'm driving home and know I'm all out of scotch and could use a nightcap. So I stop at a liquor store I've never been to, and they've got a bunch of scotches behind the counter. But it's $60 for a bottle of Macallan 12 which goes for about $45 (tops), and all other bottles are similarly overpriced. I didn't go to Bristol Farms (my neighborhood store) because I've got the feeling that everyone who works there thinks I'm a drunk, and I didn't go to Ralph's because they lock it all in a cage and you have to go locate the one bagger that holds the key and I hate that. So I decide to patronize the local mom-and-pop Park/Young/Lee/Kim liquor store, and they're charging Katrina prices on their scotch. What bullshit. Go to Ralph's instead and hang around the cage until Dave the Retard Keymaster shows up to let me get a bottle, then I have to deal with the lifer working the register who's going on and on about how I'm buying "the good stuff." Yeah I know dummy, it's the good stuff. Do you think I'd buy shit? He says its so good you have to drink it straight. Once again me and night-checker at Ralph's are on the same page, and I say "yeah, I always drink it neat." He says "NO NO, you have to drink it without ice!" Good thing you work graveyard at Ralphs and aren't bartending at the Ritz-Carlton, Mixmaster.

But the scotch is good.

Playing the $225 NL tourney at the Bike with 300 other lost souls. Cruising along, win my biggest pot with ace-high, and we're down to 10 tables. Pretty sure AJ Soprano was sitting next to me too. Does he play poker? I get moved and am immediately in the BB. D'oh! Should've walked to my table a bit slower. I've got an average stack of around 7000 and change. Guy in the SB has me covered, but not by a lot. It folds to him and he fumbles around to make his standard "I don't wanna but I have to" raise. He makes it 1700 (blinds are 200/400/75), I shove with AQ. He INSTA-calls and I'm afraid, until I see that he called with AJ. This will either end with me having a solid stack during the stretch-run to the money or me swearing to myself while wandering out to the lobby. Choose your own adventure here.

So I'm swearing to myself wandering out to the lobby and go get myself into a 5/10 NL game. Before I even get to the table I note two things:

1. I don't know anyone at the table (which is unusual)

2. they all look completely rapeable, especially the guy dressed head to toe like Vanilla Ice, circa 1991.

I watch Vanilla donk off all his money and he's gone within 10 minutes. Well I was right about him. But there are a couple other complete disasters at the table too, so this should be good. My first fun time was this one:

KQ in LP. There's a limper and I make it $60. He calls. A word about our limper: I'm trying to determine what his profession is and I've got it down between gay porn star, male stripper, male escort, or cast member of Grease on Ice. I understand there would be some overlap between the three. But he's young, buffed, waxy and wearing the gheyest shirt I think I've ever seen. He must be what gay people look like in New Jersey. Anyhoo, flop comes down KQ7 with two hearts. He checks for hearts. Apparently doesn't have any. He checks to me and I bet $60, he calls. Turn is another 7, he checks again, I make it $150 this time. I assume he has a king. He calls. I see he's got about $300 and change left so it's all going in on the river. River is a king. Ding! Now he'll gladly put the rest of his money in. He shoves in front of me, I insta-call, he turns over J7s. WELL PLAYED. And there's a bonus! He had a stack of quarters that I couldn't see. Instead of $300 I just won $700. Yay me!

Next big hand doesn't involve me but it is quite a beauty. Gay Kenickie limps, amateur limps, tattooed guy (R-O-C-K on one set of fingers, R-O-L-L on the other) makes it $40, three callers (including our two limpers). A word about the amateur. This guy is Vegas-quality. Has NO idea what he's doing. Middle-aged doughy Asian guy, looks like he just moved up from the micro-stakes. Which he started playing yesterday. So it's 4 to the flop with $160 in the pot. Flop is AJ6, it checks to Tattoo who bets $85. GK calls as does the amateur. $400 in the pot. Turn is a 10. GK bets out $50, amateur makes it $100, Tattoo shoves for about $2k (but the biggest stack he's facing is about a grand). GK calls, amateur calls. Now I'm mentally playing "which one is overplaying AT?" The answer: two of them! Tattoo has AT, GK has AT, and the amateur has J6o. Yep. River's a 6. I am trying so hard to not laugh out loud.

Naturally he gets must-moved before he can donk any money back. I get one more big hand before I call it a night:

AA on the button. an IHOP-full of limpers before me and I make it $80. Not enough. SB calls, and I'm dreading now because I assume everyone will now, but I only get him and the cutoff. Still, there's $300 in the pot which makes it a bit dicey. I'm not big on playing big pots with one pair.

Flop comes down J74 with two spades. I do not have the ace of spades. SB checks and cutoff bets $100 into me after checking his cards for spades, which he apparently does not find. Smells like a jack. I don't want to keep the SB around though so I make it $300. SB reluctantly folds what I assume was QQ. Cutoff calls. He's got about $500 left so I know exactly what this hand is going to cost to play. Turn is an offsuit 10, he checks and put him in. He has to think it out which means that I'm ahead, no longer have to worry about a set or JT. He calls. River is a potentially ugly three of spades but since he was not able to locate spades when he checked his cards my hand is good. I won a big pot with AA. Take a picture, it doesn't happen every day.

Table started getting cranky and it was late so I took my winnings home. Debating now whether to play the $200 multi-rebuy donkfest to end all donkfests this afternoon.

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