Tilting Like the Dickens

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. OK, last night, it was the worst of times. I got put on massive "wife tilt" last night. Fight fight fight. Pick pick pick. Blah blah blah. Back and forth. It tilted the shit out of me.

My wife and I rarely fight anymore. The big ones stopped about 4 years ago when we finally worked out the kinks of living together and figured out each other's little quirks and either dealt with them, ignored them, or called each other out (in a nice way…usually).

We're both stressed beyond belief right now (All of the above is a primer for a post to come in a week or so).

What should a guy do when he's steaming? Why, log onto the junk-kicking machine, of course! I'm a glutton for punishment.

I hopped on Noble, fired up an SnG and got to "work". And by work I mean blog reading, checking the Twins score (a win? a WIN??? WTF? Wow!), dealing with the kids, thinking about the wife and muttering under my breath, cursing God for pulling that rib out of Adam back in the day.

Oh yeah, I'm also playing poker...right. So.

I click back into my SnG to see this:










click to enlarge, and check the girlie chat box.


Hammer, eh? Sweet. I looked over and the name seemed familiar. "Parx". Hmm...Parx. Where have I seen that before.

BloodyP: You know the Hammer, Parx?
Parx: Yes. And I know you, too.

(Yes! My first run-in with my A-list-blogger adoring public!)

Suddenly it hits me, I realize I'm not being blogger-adored, but merely recognized by none other than fellow blogger, Mr. Parx.

Well, shit. Now I actually have to play poker. I tuned out all of the running interference around me and slowly began to chip up. I made a couple of steals, won a few small pots, and got up to a comfortable level.

Then I misplayed Q4s terribly. I played it the way the Rondell White plays the clean-up spot. I played my 4 on a rainbow flop to the river, putting Monsieur Lemur on a flush draw. He didn’t hit his flush, but did end up pairing the board higher than I did to take down the pot. That put my stack back down to life-support. Not to mention the embarrassment of playing down a hand like that with a fellow blogger in the hizzouse…

Then came the great card-dead era. 23o begat 49o begat J2o begat 83s begat 46o. And on and on forever. I was Moses in the desert. I couldn’t find an ace or even a small pocket pair to play. Finally, with an M of about 3, I find K6o and push (shut up…I know). BB has me covered by about 250 chips and calls, as does shorty-short stack who goes all in with his last 120 chips. The flop comes down an orgasmic K6x rainbow, and I more than double up off of Ax and 99. Artful Dodger, indeed.

Finally, Mr. Parx and I took out the last donkpaca and were heads up.

It was a blast. Instead of being a push-monkey fest, we actually played poker. Raising, re-raising, and laying down out of respect for each other’s play.
Towards the endI hit a couple of big hands and had him out-chipped about 3-1. I looked down to find Q4h.

Here’s how the shit went down:
















After he pushed, I looked at the flop, and chatted: "Hmmm, I caught a piece of that."

My gut told me that I was ahead on a flop like that, and that he was probably on a big ace and wanted to represent the 9, but part of me still felt like laying it down. I didn't, and (very luckily) I was right (I narrowly escaped him hitting a wheel, though).

I ended up taking down the SnG, which was nice.

What was nicer than winning, though, was playing some actual poker and chatting with a kindred spirit, instead of fending off a donkey who had just finished watching 23 hours straight of WSOP footage and thought that pushing every hand was status quo.

Nice hand, Mr. Parx!