I waited for three days. Three days and none of the Up For Poker crew managed to type a single word about Friday night. We all have our excuses, I suppose. I spent 36 hours testing myself to see if I have what it takes to survive a four-day Vegas bender (jury out, but the foreman gave me the stink-eye on the way to the deliberation room, so it doesn't look good). CJ was on the road home to Loosey-Ana. G-Rob had to do his hair.
So, what happened?
"There's no way I'm getting away from that hand."
G-Rob had the look on his face. If you've not seen it, it is the TV anchor version of "I usually play such trash hands, it is inconceivable that I lose when I flop perfect with a real hand." That is, he'd actually woken up with a hand and got beaten by a better hand. It wasn't his fault. I would never imply that. I also wouldn't admit to doing a little dance when G-Rob busted out of the 17-person $50 freeze-out first.
So, that's what happened. It's less important that I went on to bust out in third (ignoring the fact I should've won had it not been for a AT vs. Hammer suck-out three-handed against The Luckbox). It's less important that Wolverine and CJ got heads up and The Luckbox sucked out again for the win.
Other fun, but less important things:
* The Mark busted out right after G-Rob while making a move on a QQQ flop. The Luckbox looked him up with AK.
* I managed to not get seated with Cigar Girl, and that likely had a lot to do with my success.
* Shep Tiltstein literally tilted too hard in a plastic chair. Someone has a picture somewhere... [Ed. note: Picture added.]
* I actually won a race against The Big Pirate when my 99 held up against his AK.
No, none of that is important. What is important is that, with G-Rob and The Mark being the first two out, trays of Southern Comfort started making the rounds every time someone busted out. Remember, there were 17 players.
Among the late-evening issues this caused:
* SoCo, when spilled by an errant Otisian deal, can make chips sticky
* Bumping the stakes up to $2/$5 NL and my not having a firm grasp on the rules of the much-fabled Pinizzle. When holding JTx on a flop of 789, it is a bad idea to push in your entire stack. Why? Cause it ain't the nuts. It's not even close to the nuts. Even your opponent (who has you crushed with a holding of QJT) doesn't have the nuts. SoCo-addled neurons don't know that. It makes it worse when you wrongly accuse yourr opponent of sucking out when he was ahead preflop, post-flop, and at the river.
* At some point around 3am, I was in bed with The Mark. I'm not sure exactly why, or that I want to know exactly why. Let's just forget I brought it up.
Regardless, I'm not sure I have much of the young man left in me. I turned 32 yesterday and I feel double that. I am either not conditioned for this kind of behavior anymore or I'm too old for it.
I guess we'll see here in a couple days, eh?