Greetings, to my new ‘friends’ at CardsChat. I just started blogging here last month, and have been politely asked to make all of my posts here ‘unique’ by the owner of the site. Meaning, no more copy/pasting from the site I’ve been blogging on for 6 years now. What does this mean? It means having to dedicate twice the normal amount of brain-power as usual to bring my (hopefully) interesting news about myself and the poker world I frolic in to your desktop. I think I am up to the task.
When I last left off here, I was in South Florida at a dog track named Palm Beach Kennel Club, where I’d made it back for Day 2…on my birthday. And of course, the one thing I was hoping for, as the clock turned to 47 on my life, was to make the Final Table and bring some ‘real’ money home to my wife and 2 (almost) year old daughter, Carley Grace. Well…it didn’t happen. Things just didn’t break my way…but I didn’t manage to make the money (72 players) and then hang around long enough to climb the pay ladder a couple more spots, busting out 38th for $3652. I gave the dealers $152, kept $3500, and on my two buy ins of $1675 got out of there with a profit of $150. Awesome!
NASTY TABLE MANNERS IS NOT A PLUS IN POKER!
I had some good players at my table that day, including newbie beast Nate Kogel, who kind of buried himself, his final ‘move’ being the one where he tried to 5-bet bluff a guy (a guy who would finish 3rd overall) with 4-8…the other guy just happened to have aces. Yeah, probably not ever folding there!! But the real excitement from my table centered around that fat, self-centered peckerhead who thinks the poker world revolves around him and his stupid scooter.
All the players went on break, and I was lingering at the table, talking to a dealer and getting a count of my stack to send out a Twitter update for my 18 backer/investors…when I suddenly hear the floor man ask in a loud voice “Where the hell did all these bones come from over here?” He was alluding to the pile of chicken bones that Fatboy had left under his ‘player area’ in the 7-8-9 seat area. Yeah…he pretty much takes up the space of three players, when he refuses to get out of his stupid scooter and moors that thing alongside the table, which always causes the players to his immediate left and right to go on life tilt. Hell, maybe that is part of his strategy, get players tilted so they’ll give away their chips to escape his wrath. I know I’ve done it before in cheapo nightly events. Just to bust, and rebuy and get a better seat/table assignment, I’ve gotten it in bad, not caring about the outcome…almost hoping to lose.
So a clean-up crew was summoned to the area, and the remains of the sacrificial chicken were removed from the playing area. He returned in the midst of this operation, and I shit-you-not, asked the person cleaning up the floor if there was any chicken on his scooter! In case I haven’t mentioned it, this guy is NOT handicapped! He has two legs that work fine. Anyway….moving on.
CASH GAME WITH ZOMBIES IN THE LAND OF THE MUTANTS
I busted. Then I went and played cash game and spent my time losing one $500 buy in after another in a 2/5 game to some of the worst players I’ve ever encountered in my life. I would have left, but my friend, roommate and 50% ‘horse’ was still in the main. About the time I was in for my 6th effing buy in ($3000) I look up to see that they are down to 18…so at least I can rationale what I’m losing on the table by knowing I’m about to get at least twice that back from my horse. But it didn’t make the way I was losing any easier to take. Worse yet, the shitty players would get up to $1500 or more, and they’d leave. Bastards! The whole concept of ‘don’t get mad at bad players, because they always give it back’ was out the window, because the one SMART move/play they made the whole time was getting up and leaving before I COULD get it back from them. So if THAT isn’t tilting, I don’t know what is. Well it started to turn a little bit…in this stupid 2/5 game with a max $500 buy in…as my hands were holding finally. I got down to just negative 4 buy ins…then won one of the biggest cash game pots in the cash game history of Senor Monkey.
To say the table was aggressive would be like saying the Titanic developed a little hole in its side. I can’t remember how the betting went pre-flop, but when the dust settled, it cost me $75 to see a flop with pocket 7’s, with 7 players seeing the flop! And…obviously you know a good flop is coming or I wouldn’t be telling you this story. BOOM! 7-3-3. Lots of betting on the flop, Monkey just calling. Turn 3. Oh no…there is that tricky card that could ruin my perfect board. One more three hits and I put my head through a wall. More betting. Lots of it. It all gets in from 4 people, myself included. The river is a jack. Uh oh. The one thing I was fading, was really….ANY face card! And there it was. And the one thing that sucks in cash game…is it takes an eternity sometimes for the other players to turn over their cards. HURRY THE F*** UP!!! Okay. Pocket kings. Beat that. Pocket queens. Beat that. And pocket tens. No good! Monkey wins, wins it all. About $1900! And was now very close to even.
BIG HAND WON, BAD TIMES UPSTAIRS…
While winning that hand was certainly a relief, and the massage I was getting at the same time was much more enjoyable at $2 a minute then it would have otherwise been…my joy was short-lived. Because I looked down at my cell phone and saw a text from my friend, Claudia Crawford. “I’m out. Fucking KK again. Guy check raises me all in on the flop after I flopped a set, he had a flush draw…and fucking hit that shit. Out 15th. $12,500. Sorry.” Unreal. And the guy who sucked out the flush? He would go on to win the Main Event there for the $202,000 that I was fantasizing having a half of. And Claudia certainly is more than capable of beating that remaining field. Had that hand held? I am pretty positive she would have brought us at the least, a Top Five finish. But…as we all know (or most of us anyway) that’s poker. Sucks. So…being a good team player, once she made it downstairs, I cashed out of my 2/5 game and we left together…going to IHOP to both cheat very badly on our diets, and retreating to our hotel room to decompress.
We both played the Turbo event the next day, arriving about an hour late, and both lasting about one orbit. It was stupid. The only highlight to that tourney, was that there was some smoking hot off-duty stripper from the very classy ‘Rachel’s’ playing at the table behind me. She is from London originally, but lives here and works as a stripper, while playing a little poker. How did I get this photo?
Well, seated in the 2-seat at her table was a friend of mind, who also happens to be a proud lesbian…Nancy Birnbaum. And she was only to eager to fire me over her photo, knowing how much I would enjoy it. No word on how long she lasted, or what her name was. But I just saw a recent list of the 50 Hottest Female Poker players in the world, and there were some major misclicks on that list, and some glaring omissions, including this hottie. And I don’t care how much she plays! Get her on that damn list! Here…for your enjoyment, is that list. Notice #21… my friend and roommate, Miss Claudia ‘The Claw’ Crawford.
Appearing at #42, Miss Elisabeth Hille…my little friend who, on national TV, snapped off my KK with her 10’s…making quads, and putting to an end, my dreams of a 6-figure score in the WSOP Main Event in 2012. She is, actually, a little hottie, and we have since become Facebook friends. Their #1 hottie, Liv Boeree? It’s kind of funny, she used to date my good friend Allie Prescott for about a year and a half…and she rarely got herself ‘fixed up’ like a lady, preferring to go it ‘rough’ which I thought was actually kind of cool. But seeing her at #1? Well…let’s just say, God bless makeup artists and stylists! Then, on that list, you have a couple of gals I’ve never even heard of. Would LIKE to…but just simply haven’t? And if they were to roll up to the poker table in those bathing suits? Suffice to say…they’d get a lot of guys folding to their 3-barrel bluffs! Not that I think I’d be on it or anything…but when are they…whoever THEY is…going to come out with a 50 Hottest Male Poker Players!??? The gender inequity in poker needs to stop NOW!!!! (I kid, sort of!)
Hope you all have had a nice February! Next March…aka, the boringest (maybe not a word-I don’t care) month on the calendar!
MONKEY
