The Rise And Fall At Garage Mahal
Tuesday, May 31, 2005
Last night was the $100 buy-in at my buddies house, also known as The Garage Mahal. He's converted his garage into a 2 table joint that can fit 22 players and has a sweet tv, fridge, and heating and air. It's good stuff. We had 21 sign up and were rolling around 5pm with 10k in chips and blinds going up every 20 minutes. While I don't like blinds going up so fast - often making it a crapshoot - I recognize that none of us want to be playing until 5am.
Times were tough early on and I found myself below 5k after some semi bluffs didn't pan out. In 2 seperate hands I had open ended straight draws with big flush draws, neither of which panned out. Both times my strong bets on the river were reluctantly called by top pair, weak kicker.
Down to 3k, and starting to worry just a bit, I look down at rockets in the big blind. With an early raise, a reraise, and one caller, I push my remaining stack all-in and wait to see what happens. To my surprise only the original raiser calls with about the same chips as I had (I think I had a few hundred more when it was counted out). He flips over 10's in the hole and, as I flip over my rockets, mumbles about constantly running into Aces to get knocked out of tourneys. No help for him on the board and my rockets put me back over the original 10k and back into contention.
Unfortunately I didn't see another good hand until my final one. From 6:30pm - 8:30pm my best hand was K 2 suited. With it down to 13 players and the blinds and antes really starting to wear me down, I found myself back under 3k. While in the big blind, I again wake up with a decent had with 10's in the hole. With one limp and one raise I decided to push my stack again and hope for the best. Interestingly, the orginal limper immediately calls all-in for another 12k. I immediately put him on Q's or K's, but after the other guy folded he quickly flipped over rockets. No help for me and just like that I'm out. So my rockets take down 10's in the hole, then my 10's get taken down by rockets in the hole. Though I was hoping for a suck out, justice was served in both cases so I can't complain. I was out and not long after they were down to the final table.
Our host, The Asian Equation, ended up the Cinderella Story by taking it down after being down to his final 1500. After losing his big hand with rockets vs. a set of Q's - taking him to his low of 1.5k - he proceeded to wax the field and take down first place. With his strong hands holding up and his draws always coming, it was clearly his night. Of course, not one to miss an opportunity to act like a dumbass, he immediately started with, "I am da gweatest poka prayer in da wurld. I think I rill write a book." What a donkey.
On to bigger and better things. Scratch that...on to other things. As I mentioned at the end of my previous post, Saturday night brought with it a chance to get out on the town with friends. Like most drinking nights, we hit The Speak Easy with plans on going out later, but we ended up trashed and going no where else. The SoCo was flowing by 11pm which pretty much sealed my fate. At some point after I think Jager made its arrival which didn't help things (or did it?). No doubt Al would have been proud. At some point - I believe late in the night - I think I got a hold of my buddy Alx's picture phone and snapped the following pic of my other buddy MTW. Either that or Alx took it...I'm not really sure. I don't recall the purpose of the pic, but Alx emailed it to my work address today and I liked it. Note the cornhole game in progress in the background. The patio at The Speak Easy now makes it available to play for free and is even selling cornhole sets to those interested. Pretty cool. Here's what MTW thinks about something or other...
Yeah it's blurry, but so were we.
Gonna finish this up with a couple of random thoughts. We'll see where this goes. Has anyone else seen the reality show Deadliest Catch on the Discovery Channel? I got a chance to see a couple episodes in the last couple of weeks and I'm just amazed at some of the things that have happened. Now I know working on a crab boat is one of the most dangerous jobs in the world, but you just don't expect to see things actually happening while watching the episode.
Before I go further let me give the quick skinny so you'll know what I'm talking about. The show basically follows along with +/- 6 boats and awards the crew who hauls in the most crabs with a load of cash for winning. I think it was a cool million for the winner. On what I believe was the first episode of the season, one of the boats sinks and 5 out of the 6 crew members die. Only hours later, another boat loses a crew member after a huge wave sends him overboard. The crew members are able to locate their fallen friend and nearly lift him back in the boat, but he was unconscious and the (hate to use this word) dead weight was too much and they lost him for good. 6 people dead on the first day of filming. Unbelievable.
Now I don't know about you, but most reality shows try and avoid the whole death gig. While it's probably incredible for ratings, it's not a good schtick to be pegged with. Unless I've missed something, I don't recall anyone ever dying on a reality show, though I seem to remember someone who may have died of AIDS on one of the early The Real World episodes. Anyway, I just found this show fascinating and wondered if anyone else had seen it. If not, check it out on Discovery.
Gonna finish this up with a question on poker. Please feel free to leave a long comment if you want cause I really do wonder what other folks think on this subject. Or if you answer on your blog, let me know so I can read it. I don't expect to get many answers with most people heading to Vegas post haste, but I'll fish anyway.
Do you think the poker boom we are seeing in this day and age is good or bad for the legalization of poker in states where it is currently illegal?
Thanks everyone...and if you are NOT reading this...have fun in Vegas ya bastards!
posted by TripJax @ 11:52 PM,
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