Ace In The Hole

If you like to gamble, I tell you I'm your man,
You win some, lose some, all the same to me,
The pleasure is to play, makes no difference what you say,
I don't share your greed, the only card I need is

The Ace Of Spades

--Motorhead, "Ace of Spades"

Today didn't look like a good day at all. Honestly, I thought today would have turned out to be my undoing for the coming week. With the way things went, it honestly felt like it had nowhere to go but down.

Last night's malfunction in the booth seemed to foreshadow today. At first... Today, I walked into the Avenue to fix the cause of that major bummer of a crash: Whoever installed the video card didn't put the screw in to bolt the sucker to the case. Thing was sliding around, loose as a goose in there! It got to the point where I had to open the case and hold the card still while I changed cables, not to mention having to lift it up a bit to compensate for a little sag.

With that done in exactly one minute, I settled in to what I thought would be a long defragmentation session: Pinball, peppered with visits back to the booth to check on the progress. To my surprise, defraging the drive took only about five additional minutes, because XP decided that neither drive was fragmented at all.

To top things off, Liza came in. My heart returned to its vise, and I did anything I could to avoid contact with her after our initial chat. I hate being lovestruck.

So poker time rolls around, and of course, Justin forgets to tell me. So, I go up late, and end up being the first to go out. Wonderful, I thought. What a spectacular end to a day that should be declared a natural disaster already. Once again, I returned to my little booth world, making a trip back up to the office to check on things. That's when I got the urge to just play a boatload of pinball.

So, I did. When I finally went back to the booth some time later to check my Yahoo, I discovered that Justin tried to tell me about a second game already in progress. Hustling back upstairs, I settled down in my chair and took some big pots, massing up a good stash of about $45 in $0.25 chips. To give you some perspective, you get $10 worth of them, so it makes a tight, high-action game. And of course, we don't play for cash, so it's all legit.

When Nino got knocked out, he gave his remaining chips to me. "Here's an extra $2 for luck," he said. Well, the blessings of Nino were certainly with me tonight.

Somehow, I managed to survive. Quint knocked out Scuba Steve, and I took Justin down to bring about the final showdown. One hand, my stack versus his. Here's the setup:
All-in time for me, and I'm sitting on an A9s versus a Ks3d. Early position belongs to me, so I'm feeling somewhat good. That's a nice looking stack, isn't it? There's probably about $93 in that pot right there (Quint still has $7 in chips). Justin is ready to flop down three, so he burns one and out they come:

OH! Quint scores a two pair situation, Kings and Deuces! His reaction?

Yep, he's a happy boy. Since I'm taking the pictures, there's no shot of my heart sinking. And things were about to get even worse for the Good Side of The Force, and Quint Vader would bring his Dark Side powers into play on the turn to imporve his already dominating standing:

Oh damn. A trip! Quint's moved up from KK22 to KK33 with his pocket three, and there I am with 22 A high. I need an Ace on the river, and Quint is almost frozen with elation...

He can feel it. He can taste it. He can smell victory in the air. All that remains is the River, and poker destiny for both myself and my foe....

Wait for it...

Wait for it...

Nope, can't show you yet...

Almost there...

Wait for it...

NOW!

Quint can't believe what he sees:

HOLY SHIT! AN ACE!

Justin, the dealer, can't believe it either!

Having successfully spiked the River, I raise my arms in triumph, not only over a deck of cards (which I now have, with the warring hands turned up, as well as the board), but also what could have ended up a totally shitty day!

In the end, the Good Side triumphed, and I came out on top of an otherwise bottom day. Hopefully someday, a picture like this of me will be with a WSOP bracelet instead of just a nice stack of p lay chips. And the Ace of Spaces turned rightside up. LOL