rmd | my weekend!

My weekend, hidden behind a cut.

Okay, so, Friday, claudia and i went to NYC to see "SPAMALOT!" and it was fabulous. I don't think I've laughed that hard at a piece of live theater. And the funniest parts were new material -- it's not just a retread of the movie. (As opposed to, for instance, the theatrical production of "Donnie Darko", which was trying to be very close to the movie.) The Lady of the Lake appears and her character has been fleshed out as the female lead. Heck, even the playbill of this show is funny.

Saturday, we'd been thinking of hitting MoMA, but ended up just walking around through the city and around in Central Park, heading up through the Literary Walk and coming out by Strawberry Fields. It was nice meandering and we met some nice dogs (one of the world's happiest pit-bulls, in fact, who i declared to be quite a vicious specimen as he lapped at my hand and wriggled). We took the subway down to Greenwich Villiage and poked around in some bookstores and had some soup in a nearby coffee shop and then went to a 5pm show of "Slag Heap" at the Cherry Lane Theater.

"Slag Heap" is set in Thatcher-ite England (Manchester and London), and is about several male and female prostitutes. It was thought provoking in that I'm still thinking about it. Interesting, though. Kind of brutal in parts as well as funny in parts. (from a scene where our male
lead explains some 3-way sex he was involved in the previous night: "imagine I'm this potato...")

After that, we headed out of town and drove through the heavy rain to Foxwoods. I was planning on playing in one of the New England Poker Championship tournament events, the $500 No-Limit Hold Em event. (the userpic on this entry is a picture I took of my starting stack). Buy-in was $500 to the prize pool plus a $65 entry fee. There were something like 900 entrants, including a couple of hundred alternates who'd be brought in to replace people who busted out in the first round.

(Poker tournaments start off with low stakes and then the stakes go up every round. Each round lasts a certain amount of time. This tournament had 50 minute rounds which is a nice long time, although the starting stakes were kind of high for the chip stack (blinds at $25 and $50 instead of the $25 and $25 often found in tournaments). The starting stack was $1500 in "tournament chips", which have no cash value. You can't stop playing at some point in the tournament and go cash them in like you can in a regular game. If you look at the pic, it's 2 $500 tournament chips, 4 $100 tournament chips, and 4 $25 tournament chips.)

I actually played 5 hands (this doesn't count any hand where I folded without voluntarily putting money in the pot). First hand, I had a pair of tens and the flop came A-x-A (i forget what the x was). I was first to bet and stole the pot.

Next hand I actually play, I'm slightly above starting chipcount at about 1600. I have KK in late position (the black kings, iirc). I make it 300 to go and the guy to the left of me pushes. He has me covered. He'd been very aggressive with some all-in bets before, so I figured he could've had anything from AK to AJ or pairs down to about 10's. A guy in early position calls for about 1100.

I call. Turns out the first caller had QQ, but the initial raiser has all my outs -- he's got the red kings.

Q comes on the flop and there's no chance for me to improve since the other guy has the other two kings, so I'm down to about 450. *sigh*

I'm now fairly short-stacked (meaning I have fewer than 10BB (BigBlinds) at the current level), and the round is most of the way through, so I make a few attempts to steal some blinds with marginal hands (suited ace-rag which i got a few times). one works, one doesn't, and I get chipped down a bit. I'm down to about 400 when I have AcKc UTG.

I think I raised about 150, one caller. Flop was J-x-A, and I pushed. He called with JJ. No improvement and I was out.

That KK vs KK vs QQ hand crippled me, but statistically, I'd put my money in there every time holding kings to someone's all-in bet with another caller. Particularly early in the tournament where the equity of my chip stack is almost exactly the same as my actual cash buy-in.

So, I was out before the end of the first round (second out at my table), which means I made some alternate happy, but I'd rather have gone out early with good hands than play for 5 hours and go out without making the money, really.

Claudia was out waiting for a seat at a regular poker game when I busted out, and I joined her on the waiting list. The place was a *MADHOUSE*, with incredibly long wait times, and it took us a couple of hours to get seated, even though they were opening up new tables as dealers were freed up from the poker tournament. Once I got seated in a game (claudia's table, in fact, although she took a seat change later), I spent the rest of the day playing poker in regular games (where you can get up and walk away with your winnings, rather than a touranment structure).

Things were a little wacky there for a while. Another player at my table and I started making live straddle bets. And both of us were sober! (this is often a "wild player" activity where you make a raise 'blind' and then essentially buy the opportunity to act last before the flop.)

Claudia headed back to the hotel room to take a nap, and I played for a while longer, and I called her to see how she was doing when I was done. And then suddenly both of us were completely out of deal due to a long day playing and low blood sugar. Most of the restaurants that did take-out were closed, and room service wasn't open for anything but pizza (which Claudia didn't want), so I managed to muster enough deal to get us take-out from the Hard Rock (they were open). I brought the food back to the hotel room and we sat around eating burgers in bed.

Monday morning, Claudia and I got up in the morning and drove back to Somerville where Claudia went to work and I discovered my machine had been fucked with, and I've been working on un-fucking it since.