As tired as I was at 5PM, I’m really glad I stuck around. I got to hang out with folks, drank some beer, played some cards, and had a great time. I still feel like the new kid at school some times, but tonight was not one of those times.
“He picked up his backpack and followed me into the bedroom, opening the bag as soon as I shut the door. He knew what I wanted: he had $250,000 in cash and another $500,000 in Bellagio chips. As I had explained to him when we met earlier, I couldn’t extend him credit his first time at the game, so by bringing $750,000 he would be able to buy in 15 times that night.”
“The GPS guided me to a part of town that I had never seen before, and my heart sank. It looked abandoned and seedy. Run down warehouses, not that well lit, and the kind of place where in the US, I would stay away from after dark and even during the day. I made up my mind that I would drive by the address and then just turn around and drive home.”
Luckily for me, I ended up winning the hand. Chris C and Mike both had Jack Ace, but I ended up taking the pot with two pair. In hindsight, this seems like it was a risky move on my part. I was a bit blinded by full house opportunities, but an Ace or a two could have easily resulted in a loss for me.
With our office holiday party this week (Friday), we have a lot of folks back in town. This usually means an evening of Texas Hold-Em poker in the large conference room, with the much sought after Lord and Master Stein up for grabs. I wasn’t around for the last game, but Chris won it (beating out AJ, who took second).
We had our company’s quarterly meeting today, and since we had a lot of out of towners actually in town… we scheduled another Texas Holdem game after work. I walked into the conference room a little past 6PM, and saw we had a few beverages lined up along the wall. Guess we had some leftovers from our last holiday party….
Jay Caspian Kang writes an incredibly open and stark account of the gambling life in his essay entitled The High Is Always the Pain and the Pain Is Always the High. He talks about his gambling friends, poker celebrities like Mike Matusow and Phil Hellmuth, and what it feels like to lose $18,000 in 36 hours. Playing poker, after all,…
After buying the game about a month or two ago, Poker Night at the Inventory was released yesterday. It’s your basic poker game, but with a twist. Your opponents are characters from other video games: Max from Sam and Max, The Heavy from Team Fortress 2, Strong Bad from Homestar Runner, and Tycho from Penny Arcade. I’m less familiar with…
Last night, several folks got together post-work for some poker and drinks. We had 11 people total, which was a decent turnout and had us split into two groups. Can it really be nearly a year since I last played poker with my coworkers? That can’t be right. Good lord. About halfway through the evening, Chris C procures some Tequila…
Though we had a ton of folks signed up for last night’s game, a lot of last-minute changes took place… and we wound up with only six people to play. But to my surprise, among that six were Deb and Rey (who wandered in just as we started, and decided to sit in). At the start of the evening, about…