Hammered

Last night I took an unsanctioned leap off the wagon. In other words, I got hammered for no good reason, other than I felt like it.

(Maybe this abstinence thing is going to be harder than I thought....)

The agreement I have with the PhantomWife is to keep booze out of the house while we're trying to become parents, and to cut it way back regardless. What's odd is on Tuesday I was very depressed, and didn't backslide. Yesterday, I was exhausted after work, and I had one of those "what the hell" moments as I passed the liquor store. In the spirit of Screw You Jim Leach I steered away from my normal drink (bourbon, produced domestically, of course) and bought a bottle of Myers Rum. Product of Jamaica, where Poker - and fun in general - are still legal and relatively safe.

It was delicious.

And the PhantomWife was justifiably ticked off. I violated the hell out of our agreement.

She's not mad at me today because I've taken care of some of the coordination of our upcoming fertility procedures that she's been too busy to handle (getting different doctors' offices onto the same page is a pain in the ass -- if PhantomWife and I weren't professional project managers I don't know how we'd be getting through this) but I can't - and shouldn't have to - keep trading good deeds for redemption.

Anyway, for whatever it's worth, it was another "up" night at the tables, but only because I finished strong.

Bankroll status: 2.9M PSD

I left my last table with something like 300,000 PSD. Considering I only netted about 100,000 for the evening, it's easy to see that I was playing some really donkish poker early in the night. I wasn't concentrating early on, and I made some very bad decisions until I started remembering my drunken poker skills or just started getting lucky

Whichever it was, at one point I take down a big pot with pocket aces, and some guy new to the table types "another aces player" to which I responded "HA!"

But it was another Evil Denmother and her Degenerate Cubscouts table, and I had already noticed that I wasn't getting much action, so....

Even though I think the whole "play the hammer" schtick is pretty damned stupid, in early position a few hands later I picked up 2/7 off and went with it.

Pushed out 2400 into an unraised pot.

Got something like four callers, including Didn'GetTheMemoMan.

Flop is KQ8 rainbow. I fire out a pot-sized bet. Get one caller, IIRC.

Turn is a blank, but now two suited cards are on the board. I bet pot again. DGTMM and one other person folds.

Last Caller (one of the Degenerate Cub Scouts) thinks a while, folds. I flip the Hammer over.

"Aces player my ***", I type.

Last Caller is a very nice lady who from this point forward will be known as "DeathToPoochie" because she has vowed to relieve me of my bankroll.

I'm a baaaad doggie.

And that, children, is how I started last night's rush.

Note to self: Steal more pots. And watch out for DeathToPoochie.