Bad beat stories. 

Every poker player has a million of ‘em, and
one is more boring than the next. Nobody wants to hear them.

Apparently two enterprising young women once opened a booth
at The Rio and charged five dollars to players leaving the tournament to listen
to their bad beat stories. (If a player wanted them both to listen, it cost
$10!) And apparently, they did some brisk business! 

That’s how tedious these
stories are. You have to pay someone to listen to them. Fortunately for me, I
get you guys… for free!

I’ll be humanely quick. The Planet Hollywood tourney was
going great. After 12 rounds, (about six hours) there were 150 people left from
the 500 people who started. I had a slightly-below average stack of about 42K. Big
blinds are 2000. First to act, I look down at AA. Finally, a decent hand. I
raise to 6200 and get one caller. Flop comes 3, 6, 8 with no flush draws. Great,
right? I bet 7500 and the villain raises me all-in. I snap call, and he turns
over two tens. Awesome, right? I’m going to double up to just under 100,000
chips to be one of the chip leaders in the tourney.

And then…

Ten on the turn.

4 on the river.

We done.

If a heart could eat itself…

There. That’s my bad beat story. It’s a pretty bad one. But
at least I told it quick. You can all be thankful for small mercies.

Dinner last night at Joe’s Stone Crabs with Jim Hess and two of his buddies from LA was indescribably good. And then I played Blackjack at Caesars for two hours, probably had more fun than I’ve ever had at a blackjack table, drank a lot, laughed a lot, and made six new really close friends whose names I never got, and ended up winning five dollars.

And on today’s menu… breakfast, workout, pool time, more tourneys. Time sleeps for no man.