Let’s
hope. This post is part 1 of a two part
post where the climax has already been told.
Part 2 was entitled “I Just had an orgasm and took out @Robvegaspoker”
and can be found here. It was about the finish of June’s AVP Meet
& Greet Tournament. This is the
beginning of the story: all that led up to climax of the tournament. Since this is what led up to the climax, this
post is of course entitled “Foreplay.”
I arrived at
Golden Nugget early for the “meet and greet” part. I didn’t meet as many people as I hoped
to. Several AVP’ers and/or blog readers
of mine said they were looking forward to meeting me and I didn’t meet them
all, and the ones I did meet were mostly quick hellos during the breaks or as
they maybe busted out of the tournament and somehow recognized me. So that was disappointing. One AVP’er I did meet, very briefly, was
Sauza. Another was Wynngolfhatguy, who has
commented multiple times here on the blog.
I was sure hoping that we could get together for some poker somehow, I had
missed him completely on his visit to Vegas a year ago and knew he was in town
for this. He said hello briefly during
the tournament. We exchanged cell phone
numbers and tried to meet up a few days later, and he was playing at the MGM
one afternoon. I tried my damnest to get
whatever I was doing done in time to meet him there but by the time I made it
over there, he had left. So hopefully
next time he hits Vegas we’ll finally get a chance to really talk. Or play poker. Or both.
I did get to
meet Dap Poker (Dave) who is a prolific poster on AVP. He just moved out to Vegas so there’s no
reason we can’t get together for a longer visit sometime in the near
future. We had a nice chat before things
started. When I checked with him after a
break, he was on life support tournament wise but I understand he finished 4th
overall so that was an excellent result for him, especially since he is more of
a limit player than a NL player.
Things got
started and I must say the table I was at was a very friendly one. Turns out I was at the same table, the same
seat, for the entire tournament, and since I did cash that is quite a rare
feat. As noted in “part 2”, Vegas724,
loyal blog reader, was at my table, wearing a fantastic shirt. It is covered with graphics of playing cards,
all of them having the character of Betty Boop (or her dog) on them.
To my left
was April, who I mentioned in the previous post about this event. She is Alaskagal’s friend. I saw her chatting
with Alaskagal before the event and recognized her as someone I’ve played poker
with before and perhaps, just perhaps, had actually dealt to me as well. She is
really nice and very chatty, but only in a good way. As I mentioned in the prior post, she
admitted long after she busted out that she has dirty mind. Sadly, she was a total lady the entire time
she sat next to me. Damn. She most know about my blog. Doesn’t she know that I depend on women not
behaving like ladies for my content? Especially
when they are as cute as she is? Anyway,
early in the tournament we officially introduced ourselves to each other even
though we both kinda knew who we were.
There was a
second Aprill at the table, this one a middle aged woman who spelled her name
with two “l”s. There was much discussion
of there being two Aprils at the table, we probably had the entire population
of Aprils in the tournament right at our table.
Aprill was a lovely woman who talked about her 30 year marriage to a wonderful
man, which made us all think she’d gotten married at 12. I don’t think Aprill posts on the AVP forums
but she was familiar with the site and uses it for information. At one point late in the tournament, after
Alaskagal had joined our table, her husband came by to see how she was doing, and
she introduced him to us. “Isn’t he a
handsome man?” AG agreed saying, “Not bad, I’d do him. I’ve done worse.” She quickly added that she was kidding,
although she didn’t make clear what part she was kidding about.
A familiar
face at our table was AVP’er Razcue, who I had met last year at the GVR HORSE
tournament that was part of the AVP weekly showdown series they were running at
the time. This guy is awesome. He is physically challenged, confined to a
wheelchair. And I’ll bet he is furious
that I would use such a politically correct phrase as “physically
challenged.” He is constant making
self-deprecating jokes about his condition; he has a great attitude about it. He was constantly cracking us up.
To April’s
left was a nice lady named Maggie. I
don’t think she was all that familiar with AVP.
But when Razcue and Vegas724 noticed me taking notes about hands, they
started teasing me about stuff that was going to go into the blog. This piqued Maggie’s interest, “Oh you do a
blog? What’s it about?” I said, “Oh, it’s sort of about poker.” And then either Razcue or Vegas724 said
something like “….and women. Women in
poker. ” I didn’t like where this was
going, especially since Maggie was such a nice, proper lady. I guess she saw my discomfort, so she asked,
“Oh, you don’t like women in poker?” No,
no, I protested. “I love women in
poker!” Then I said, “well, you’ll have
to see for yourself.” So I pulled out a
card out of my pocket with the blog’s URL and handed it to her. I never heard back from her that I know of,
so I have no idea if she ever checked out the blog.
A late
arrival was Jason, who manages the IT department at AVP. I’d met him a few times, once at the new AVP
offices, and just the week before at the AVP mixed games Meet & Greet over
at T.I. I was hoping he was one of those
new hires who didn’t know anything about poker but dammit, he is a tough
player. I gave Jason a hard time about all
the emails I was getting—right at the table—about various upgrades and bug
fixes that were taking place during the tournament.
Early in the
tournament, my boss, I noticed Jon Friedberg,
the big boss at AVP (and thus, my boss) come rushing over to our table. As I hadn’t seen him up to this point, I
assumed he was rushing over to greet his star employee. Of course I mean me. But no, he didn’t even notice me. He was coming over to give April a hug. OK, I can see that. Did I mention April was cute? I had to tease Jon about this, so I said,
“What no hug for me?” He gave me a pat
on the back.
So the
tournament started and I managed to go the entire first level without playing a
hand. On the second level, I was dealt
pocket 9’s and raised. Only Aprill
called. The flop wasn’t bad, 9-10-9. That was the second time within in a week I
had gotten quads in a tournament, the first time was mentioned briefly in this
post here (and like this current post, I do
need to go back to that tournament and tell the whole story). We both checked the flop. She bet $1300 on the turn (don’t remember
what it was) and I just called. She
checked the river so I had to bet, this time $2,000. She did call me, so I turned over my hand and
said, “I just flopped quads.” She was
very pleasant about it, even congratulating me.
A level or so
later Jason raised and another player went all in for less. I called with pocket 7’s. We ended up checking it down. He showed King-Queen and the board had helped
neither one of us. It hadn’t helped the
all-in guy either, who I think had a weak Ace.
So my 7’s were good and I got some chips there.
Razcue made a
preflop raise to $1800 and I called with pocket 4’s (I had already limped in). Flop was King-Jack-4. I bet $3K and he called. Blank on the turn and I bet $5K, this time he
folded. During the break, which took
place one hand after he had busted out, I went over to him to tell him I had
the set there. He appreciated me telling
him. He joked, “Thank you, now I don’t
have to wait to read until it’s on your blog to find out.”
There was a
guy sitting next to Jason who I think had just recently moved to our
table. In early position, and with no
one in the pot, he mucked his cards and they were exposed accidentally. He had folded pocket deuces. Everyone started giving him a hard time for
being too tight and folding there (considering the blind levels and his stack,
it wasn’t really a bad play). I’m sure
most of the kidding was friendly joking around, but he seemed to take it quite
badly and didn’t say another word the rest of the tournament—which for him
didn’t last too long. He busted out soon
after, and when he was gone, Jason said that he was sure the guy had been
shaken by the teasing he had gotten and it wrecked his confidence. Sad.
With the
blinds at 300/600 I had a setback.
Folded to me in the small blind, I raised to $1600 with Ace-4. The big blind (not April, she had busted by
this time) called. Flop missed me and I
put out $3900 hoping for the steal.
Nope, he called. We both checked
the turn. A Jack hit the turn and we
both checked again. He showed a
Jack. Until then he had nothing. Why did he call my flop bet (there were no
draws)? Guess he knew that Jack was
coming.
There was
another hand when I put out a big raise with Jack-10 hearts. A guy with a big stack who had just moved to
the table had limped and then called.
The flop missed me and he led out with a pot sized bet and I had to
fold.
A few smaller
loses and I just couldn’t keep up with blinds and the antes, I started getting
desperate for chips.
How
desperate? Desperate enough to limp with
Ace-Ace. Yeah, I didn’t really have
enough chips to raise anything but an all-in, which I was afraid wouldn’t get
called. So I limped and two others
limped with me. No one raised,
unfortunately. I just shoved the flop
(whatever it was) and no one called. So,
while it didn’t hurt me, it didn’t really pan out the way I had hoped.
Not long
after, down to two tables, they moved the big tournament chip leader to my
immediate right. That was
Alaskagal. And you already know what
happened then. If you don’t know, or
don’t remember, you can pick up the story here and read how I gave a woman an orgasm right in the middle of a poker tournament.
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