♠ Wednesday, August 23, 2006
Sometimes Things Work Like They're Supposed To
I don't know how to post this without sounding like I'm bragging, and I really don't mean to be.
Gil and I went to Manistee for their no-limit tournament on Tuesday, which is either today or yesterday depending on how you look at things. It "feels" to me like it was "yesterday," since I took a four-hour nap when I got back, and "yesterday" corresponds to the fact that a different date appears at the top of this post. But really, it was less than eight hours ago, so one would be justified in thinking of that as "today."
I won. The thing is, and the thing that makes me wary of bragging about my win, is that over the course of the tournament I never really did anything that stellar. I got average cards, and my good hands held up and my bad hands got chucked. I'm tempted to say that my cards were actually even below average, but I did get a lot of cards that were good enough to open-raise with in late position, even if they weren't really great cards. I had Aces once, and took the blinds, and I had tens a couple of times, which didn't win big pots either. The only really big pot I played was a set-over-set early, where my slightly-above-average stack knocked out an average one. And I gave half of that win back shortly after that table broke, which was the biggest pot (in terms of my stack size) that I lost. In short: I didn't make any big mistakes in the tournament, but I never really had any hard decisions. And so I won $1500.
I was staked, which meant that I gave Gil $800 of that, but it was a nice win in any case.
Astute readers will recall that I went to Vegas last year with the cash from winning two of these, one of which I was staked for. Very astute readers will recall that it was at about this time last year that I went to Vegas for that dealing audition (that went badly).
Here's a Thought . . .
I'm tempted. $700 is enough for a trip out there, and Gil says he's antsy to go back. I think it's two-to-one that I could talk Harrah's poker staff into getting me a dealing audition, either there or at Imperial Palace, which is Harrah's/Caesars break-in room. I probably couldn't do it over the phone, though; they'd have to see my face to remember me. They would remember me, though; as I said yesterday I'm usually one of the most animated people at the table. The only question would be whether they'd do a favor for someone who hasn't been there for three months.
There are two big downsides to that plan. First, I'd have no idea whether it would actually work. At least when I went out for the last trip, I had a "first interview" scheduled. This trip, I'd be trading on my natural ebullience and charm, and that's it. Second, the plan might succeed. If it did, I'd have to borrow enough money to actually move back to Vegas. But more, even dealing poker is still a job, with all of its pitfalls to me. Right now I think I could put up with it for a fair while. But maybe that's still only six months.
These concerns are aside from the fact that doing this seems to be a pretty dumb plan on the face of it. In fact, I've only thought of it since I started this blog entry. But it's the first plan, qua plan, that's really been interesting to me at all since I got back to Michigan. (I've been putting a lot of Latin into my posts lately. I wonder why?)
I hesitate to post this before I bounce the idea off somebody, probably Gil. It really seems, on the face of it, to be a pretty dumb idea. But, if it doesn't work, I think I'm no worse off.
Writers often talk about how books end up not always going where they expect. J.K.Rowling has said that in the final Harry Potter book, in progress, a couple of characters she thought would die turn out to live, and at least one character she planned to have live, dies. This post has done the same thing. There was a whole other idea I wanted to lead my tournament win into, but now I want to skip that and mull this over.
I'll post this even though it's fundamentally incomplete. If I do this, the plans will probably be made in the next day or two. Perhaps in that time my Email box will overflow with comments about how dumb a plan this is, and I'll talk myself out of it. Perhaps the exact opposite will happen. In any case, I need to think about this.
