Losing Sucks

“You must never be satisfied with losing. You must get angry, terribly angry, about losing. But the mark of the good loser is that he takes his anger out on himself and not his victorious opponents or on his teammates.” - Richard M. Nixon

According to Richard Nixon I'm a good loser because I am very angry with myself.  This is a story about losing, in case you haven't noodled that out already, but it's also a story of foreshadowing.  Bad things happened before I ever lost a hand.

For starters I missed my bus.  There's a bus that goes to Foxwoods from Boston that costs $28.  Foxwoods will give you $30 in food and play coupons if you take the bus, so I thought why not?  Except I got there at 7:12am and the bus was leaving at 7:15.  The bus guy processed me as quickly as possible but I missed the bus by like one minute and the next bus wasn't leaving until 11am!  The same time the tourney was starting!  This is a bad sign, I thought.  But I don't really believe in signs, so I focused on what to do.  Hmmm.....

I called and woke up the unemployed Gary and told him about my problem.  He lives about an hour from Foxwoods and I knew I could get a train from South Station (where I was stranded) to a stop near him.  He and Tootsie figured out which train I should take and I'd be in his neck of the woods by 9:30am and in Foxwoods by 10:30am - plenty of time to make the tourney!  Yay!  Gary to the rescue.

Now normally I get a bit dolled up when I play poker, but this time I was underdressed.  Jeans, tank top and my faded black red sox hat.  I asked Gary what he thought of the new look.

"Oh you mead the hobo look?  You hit that nail on the head!"

"What??? You think I look like a bum" (not the look I was going for)

"Was hobo too much?  I'm officially sorry."

Another bad sign!  Missed the bus, and apparently I look like a hobo.  I should've just gone home and napped.  And fwiw I didn't look like a bum.  It was an 11am tourney - was I supposed to be in heels? 

I had Gary take a picture before the tourney started .Granted, after I saw this picture, I agree it's not my best look.

Hobo in a poker uniform

Long time readers know I always play tournaments in a low cut top poker uniform.  Why?  Because it 100% makes a difference.  Maybe not at the beginning of the tourney, but after a while it does.  Men can only think with one head at a time. 

This was a bounty tourney so every time you knocked someone out of the tourney you'd get $50.  By the first break I knocked two peeps out, which means I had 50% of my buy in back!  Woot!

I took out 2 short stacks at once when my KK ran into JJ and 10-10.  10-10 raised, JJ reraised and Mama reraised that.  Flop was 9 high and I jammed all in.  They both called me and out they went. 

And then I got so many bad beats I can't even tell you!  BTW I thought this tournament was going to have more players than it did.  All told there were 49 peeps and the prize pool was for the final 5.  Regardless of that though, I needed to make it to the final table.  If I reached the final table I'd get a something from Hoy.  Remember last time I got my blog linkage?  As I was playing I was contemplating what I'd ask request.  I was on track to make the final table even though I'd already had a few really bad beats.  AA lost vs. J-10...grrrrrr I jammed in TWICE and got called and lost to flushes made on the river.  TWICE. 

Anyway, fast forward a couple of hours and there are twelve of us left.  Final table is fore front as my goal.  I know what I want from Hoy and I'm gonna get it.  Except um, I'm kinda short stacked.  I get A-K of spades and raise to 6 times the BB.  BB is the kid to my left who seems like a total aggro playah.  He calls my big raise.  Flop is A-7-J rainbow.  He bets 3K.  I have 11K left so I hope for the best with tptk and jam all in.  He instacalls and says "I only have a 7".  Nice!  He flips over 7-9 spades.  My AK is spades too so I'm looking good.  7 on the river for trips and I'm was knocked out.  Total shock.  I can kind of understand that he had alot of chips in the pot so he was almost pot committed and I can also understand that he wanted the $50 bounty.  Normally I want this kind of action, but shit happens.

So I get knocked out and to decompress I put $20 into a video poker thingy.  After less than $10 minutes I hit a Royal Flush!  Woot.  I cashed out a few hands later up $200 from video poker.  Who knew? 

Tourney -200

Bounties +100

Video poker +200

I'm up $100 even though I didn't cash in the tourney.  After lunch courtesy of Gary, I hit the cash games.

To be continued........(and the ending isn't happy)

Play smart.

Josie