I was a little late getting to the poker tourney today. It was the last day of the sale on pints of Ben and Jerry's at Walgreens and I decided to stop off and pick up a couple. I've never had Ben and Jerry's in my life and the idea of 'Phish Food' as a flavor sort of intrigued me. I don't like their hippie politics, of course, but I figured since it was on sale, I could unbend enough to pick up some. I came back to drop it off at home and zipped off to the tourney, arriving around 10 minutes late. Things are always a bit slow to start though and I was able to get settled in without much trouble.

I think I've mentioned this before, but I'm not even sure why I play in the poker tournament exactly. I'm not very good at the game, that's for certain. I don't spend my time calculating pot odds and I usually grow frustrated at some point at which I begin throwing chips around in random pots. The best I had ever managed before was to place 5th and I always considered that to have been a fluke. I did passably well through the early part of the game. It was an incredibly aggressive table to start with and people were being knocked out left and right. I made it through the first table merge and then to the final table itself. I informed everyone that my goal was to fold my way to 3rd place if I could manage it. All I wanted was a piece of the money. I actually ended up knocking out the 4th person and was so happy about making it, I didn't care how the rest of the game finished. I even offered to just cut to the chase and flip a coin or have high card take it. I called someone's all-in knowing I was probably beat. I then proceeded to suck out in the form of runner-runner quads.

This is from a camera phone so the quality isn't the best:



That left just me and the chip leader. I again offered a coin flip which he, of course, turned down. He had a massive chip lead and I was more than happy to just have the game end at that point. I went all-in on a draw and sucked out again, amassing a chip lead. Just when it seemed that I had an improbable win on my hands, he managed to get lucky on the river on an all-in and that was more or less all she wrote.

Considering that all I wanted was third and frankly, I shouldn't even have gotten that far, I'm happy with the outcome. I'm $180 richer and that money will offset my poker tournament losses for at least a couple years.

After the poker game I stuck around and played a few other things. It would have been a far more enjoyable day if the basement we were in didn't have a humidity level high enough that I was expecting rain at any moment. It was like a sauna down there. I ended up not being able to handle the temperature and headed upstairs where it was cooler, and wandered around the back yard for a bit. It was just impossible to stay in the basement for any real length of time and some of us heat refugees gathered to play Bohnanza and then Volcano using Ice House pieces.

Overall, it was a pretty good day. There were problems and issues, but winning money compensates for a lot of things.

150 mgs of codeine in one go last night and neither nausea nor complete pain relief. That's hardly a good sign.

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The day just keeps getting worse. I keep popping more and more pills and I'm not hitting either nausea or complete pain relief. I have no clue what in the world is going on. I'm trying to decide if I should just really pop an obscene amount and see if that tips the scale. Of course, if I did that I'd probably spend the next few hours retching and flat on my back.

Brian invited me up to his place to play cards tonight but there's just no way in hell that's going to happen. The way things are going, I'm not sure I'll be functional tomorrow either. It's Evil Steve's game day and poker tournament and I had been planning to go.

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Yay! Finally caught up. I'm not sure how many pills it took in total but I'm finally feeling good. Pain is gone and I'm all mellow. It's too bad there's no easy way to just shortcut to this end. I'm not sure how long it's going to last though.

Yesterday went pretty spiffy. All in all, it went much better than I had expected. It was time for another Game and Poker day at the Stronghold and I decided to go to make my customary donation to charity in the form of the poker tournament. I dunno why I even bother really. I'm hardly a very good player and I quickly get frustrated with the whole thing. On the plus side, that usually means I start doing stupid stuff and end up washing out pretty early.

What ended up really being nice about the whole day is I popped some steroids before heading over and they, along with 4 or so codeines and a handful of ibuprofen throughout the day, managed to keep me feeling pretty good. Normally I'm only good for 5-6 hours before things start to turn south on me but I ended up there until past 1am.

The other spiffy thing is that Pat and sunfirejade showed up unexpectedly. They don't always make the local events since at a hour commute each way it's not exactly local for them. Pat's a good guy and oftentimes snarky sarcastic bastards. I probbaly find that sort of thing appealing since I can readily relate to it. As for sunfirejade, she's just a sweetie all around. She got more than a weeee bit sloshed at one point and lets just say that evervescent dosen't even begin to sum it up. She was practically running over the top with good cheer. That and she said several very complementary things about me which you have to laud her impeccable judgement and good taste for. It was a little unnerving though. I don't usually have people waxing positive about me. Well, not unless they're going to follow it up by wanting to borrow money or something.

I ended up exiting the poker tournament fairly early, bluffing my way into Hades. I did get to try a buncha new games, the only one I really enjoyed being Freya's Folly. The board reminded me immediately og Dig Dug and I spent several enjoyable moments singing/humming the theme song. Apparently Eileen has never played Dig Dug before and was not amused by the fact that the next 2-3 people who came by to look at the board made the exact same comment. I can only assume she had a deprived childhood when it came to video arcades.

All in all, the socializing was much more interesting than the gaming overall. Just about everyone was there so we often just had a big yak-fest going. Oh, maigrey won the poker tourney in the end. It had been her first time playing there to boot. The funny thing was that right after she told me she had won, I stumbled into other people bitching about her in another room. I guess not everyone loves a winner.

So 'today' was the poker and game day at the Stronghold. I'm sure I've mentioned it before, but around 4 times a year Stephen (The Evil One) holds a poker tournament and gameday at his place in somerset. He's got a huge basement setup and there's usually around 50 or so people who show up. I hitched a ride with Matt and Joyce this time around and Randy met us over there.

My history with the poker tournament has been interesting overall. I'm nowhere near a very good player, but I tend to do pretty well in the opening rounds. The very first time I played I made it over the hump and the second I made it to the final table. I would like to be able to say that I improved upon things this time around but I ended up washing out. Ironicly, I'm pretty sure it was the same hand that frakked me in the first tourney that got me this time, a pair of queens. It stuck in my head because I remember Randy was roaming around as I was dealt them, thinking it might thus be lucky, and being disapointed that it wasn't. Well, this time around the same thing happened. Someone caught an Ace on the river and the collasal flushing sound was my chip stack. Add a bad beat on the very next hand and that was pretty much all she wrote.

It's interesting, but the place I always go wrong is with big stack poker. I often have a chip lead or close to it and I never seem to be able to use it effectively. I also seem to lack any ability to bet effectively in general, sort of making it up as I go along. Sometimes I think it might be worthwhile to actually pick up a book and educate myself on the whole process, but upon further reflection it never seems all that worthwhile for 3-4 events a year. Besides, I only lose $20 each time and there's hardly any guarentee that simply betting smarter would make me all that more likely to win.

After washing out, I played a few board and card games, mostly with Matt, Joyce, Eileen and June to start with, and later Pat and Karen (sunfirejade) when they arrived. We ran through a game of Betrayal at House on the Hill where I carried my team to victory (MVP! MVP!). I took my pulsating spear and went around thrusting it at everything in sight. I'm certain everyone was in awe at my prowess. After that it was a game of that red/green sheep word game whose name I can't recall (I just remembered it. Attribute) but Lori isn't allowed to ever play with us again. If you're curious why, take a look at the recap for the last day of this year's dexcon. I ended up pulling out a surprise victory there too.

One of the highlights was a game we tried next called Pow Wow. It reminded me a lot of that card game where you stick a card to your forehead at least in how it looks. Basically, every player wears a headband on which you put a feather with a number on it. The goal is to look at everyone else's card and try to bid on what you think the total number of all the feathers is. There are negative numbers as well as a few special feathers like doublers or ones that make the highest value feather zero. Since you can't see your own feather, you have limited information. You have to either bid a higher number than the person who went previously or challenge the bid if you think the actual total of all the feathers is lower. If you're wrong, either in your bid or in your challenge, you get a buzzard token that you have to stick to the velcro strip of your headband. 4 buzzards and you're out. It seems perfectly made to be a drinking game of some sort and I'm sure we looked pretty ridiculous with the headbands and feathers. I know Eileen snapped a few photos of us during the game.

We also had a chance to runthrough Cutthroat Caverns, one of the games I picked up at Gencon by the Smirk and Dagger guys. I pretty much knew I was going to like this one and I wasn't wrong. It has a good level of interaction and player screwage that I require out of my games. I ended up getting corpsed on the second to last encounter and most of my intrepid adventurers joined me by the end. I'm looking forward to giving it anothergo sometime soon. With the sheer variety of encounter cards, it seems like repetition won't be a problem.

Up to that point, everything at the poker/game day had been perfect pretty much. It had been a lot of fun and other than being a bit tired, everything was going spiffy. That sort of took a u-turn when we ended up playing one last game in which Alex joined us. I dunno. There's just something about the guy and rubs me the wrong way. Everytime I'm around him for more than a few minutes, I have this urge to punch him in the face. Or, as I was telling Joyce in the car ride back home, I sort of get this obsession about sticking a knife in him and seeing if candy falls out. I mean, you never know, right? And dude, free candy.

By the end of the game I was starting to get a bit cranky so it was just as well that Matt and Joyce wanted to get going. The car ride home ended up taking a bit longer than expected due to unplanned exploration of side roads and sometime along the way my tiredness multiplied into dizziness and nausea. That's the way it usually works out for me. If I don't get enough sleep, I get nauseous after a while. Add that to the amount of codeine I was popping to keep the pain under control and it becomes an additive sort of thing. I was able to make it home alright but ended up stagger-puking as I wandered to the front door. Not exactly a spiffy ending to the night, but a nap and shower seems to have put me aright. I'm going to head back to bed right now so that I don't get a repeat of this tommorrow.

This saturday is the Poker Tournament and Gameday at the Stronghold once more. I ended up missing the last one and the chance I'll make this one is a bit shaky too. It would be great to actually place in one of these events but I've been improving with each showing. The first time around I simply made it past the hump and ended up getting 5th or 6th the second. The sad thing is that I know that it's not skill that has gotten me there. I've had good cards for the most part and that's enough to counteract any real defecits in skill up to a point. The prizepool should be up around $400 for first place and that would certainly come in handy.

I can't quite bring myself to make that treasure token order yet. It's a lot of money all around and I keep imagining that I drop the $500 only to find that I get crap in every pack. I gave the new randomizer a try and came up with abysmal results. If I pick up some cash in the tourney, however, it'll be like found money and it won't matter how much the distribution sucks.

In a week or so, chelldg will be making her way to the state along with her mother in law and we'll be spending some time down in Atlantic City. There's another possible source of found money and all it takes is actually winning money from the casinos. Just because it's never worked out for me before, is surely no reason to doubt that this time I'll hit the jackpot. I have some few concerns about various me-related issues concerning the trip, but I figure I can just play it by ear. Hopefully the meds will keep me going and if there are any real problems, I can always pop home for a time.

Oh, this sunday should also be the start of the new DnD campaign. It looks like I won't get the chance to run an undead brothel, but having a character that's insane is almost as good. Well, not really, but what can you do?

I have no clue why I'm up. Considering the amount of sleep I've gotten the past couple nights I should be unconscious in my bed making a rather impressive drool spot. Instead I fell asleep around 10ish and was up again like a jack-in-the-box by 2am. Since I was up and tired of reading, I figured I'd get around to recapping the poker tourney and saturday's gameday at the stronghold. First and foremost, I didn't win. I'll pause for the shock and gasps of disbelief to pass. The first time I played in the tourney I made it over the hump, not being among the first half of participants to get the boot. This time around my goals were pretty similar in scope and I ended up far surpassing them.

Basically, it was a damn good poker day for me and possibly the best I've ever had. True, that might not be saying much based on my usual skill of play, but everything was going right. I was playing pretty tight to start and it was working out. I was consistantly getting dealt pretty good cards often enough that I was able to amass quite a chip advantage at the opening table. By the time that we hit the first table merge from 4 to 3, I had become the big stack. This was actually a bit disturbing to me since where my poker skills are most deficient, is how to use a chip lead to my advantage. I just can't seem to get the whole bullying thing right, and whenever I try I get my ass handed to me.

When three tables merged into two, I still had the chip chip lead at my table. What was most satisfying is that I think with the exception of only 2 or 3 hands, I was _always_ ahead in the odds when the big bets or moves were made and it went to showdown. I had no skill in reading people really and didn't much try, but playing conservatively and acting at the right times meant that I made very few mistakes and the odds were on my side. If it weren't for a bad beat handed to me right before the final table formed up, I would have been in fantastic position. As it was, I still went in and out of the 8 people at the final table, I probaly was 3rd or 4th in chips. The problem was that the chip leader there had a _huge_ stack. He was holding at least 40% of the table's chips and the scary thing was that he was a crap player. He was aggressive to the point of insanity and it was only the fact that he had gotten lucky that he had made it that far. At one point, two smaller stacked players managed to double up on him one after another. I joked that I called next for getting a piece of that. The very next hand I got dealt a pair of eights and made my move. There was a pair and overcards on the flop and the turn but I just _knew_ he was betting with nothing. It was the only crystal clear read I got all damn day. I moved all in, and the moron followed me in with nothing. All he had were two live overcards with no straight or flush possibility. According to the odds calculator, he had around a 10% chance tops. I had his ass. Poof. The river hosed me. Cripled to all hell, I was left with enough to pay big blind once and that was the very next hand. I managed to survive for another few hands winning an all-in but that was more or less the end. I ended up going out in 5th place, just 2 shy of hitting the money.

Feh. I guess I shouldn't be upset about it. 5th out of a field of 40, a lot of which play poker regularly and a few who have even gone to the WSoP to play isn't bad at all. I'm just pissed because I could have done so much better. If I had won that hand I would have had the dominant stack and frankly, I could have just folded and let the blinds take a few more people out until I placed in the money.

After washing out, I went to play in a cash game and did pretty darn well. I was on my way to showing a profit for the day when I got tangled in a big pot where someone had gone all in. I was way behind by the time the river came around and only an 8 could save me. The dealer picks up the deck, burns a card, and deals an 8. Cheering. Whooping. Jubilation. I start picking up my winnings and the dealer goes 'Ummm, whoops. I think I dealt from the wrong deck for that last card.' ARGH!! WTF?!?! I drop the chips, dealer picks up the right deck, burns a card, and deals out a 7. There are times I really hate this fucking game to death. All in all, I ended up breaking even at the cash game which given how things were going, was probaly a mercy.

Lets see, what else happened. I tried playing one of those FPS games on a huge projection screen with a few other guys. We battling south americans or something. Became motion sick. Lay down on the middle of the floor for a while. Ended up going to the bathroom and puking until I felt better.

Played a couple huge games of Are You A Werewolf to close out the night where I ran into the most unbelievable senario I've ever seen. First night, everyone is told to go to sleep. The moderator tells the werewolves to wake up, they pick their victim, and everyone goes back to sleep before waking up in the morning. The moderator does his thing and says that a poor victim was eaten during the night. The victim just happened to be a werewolf too. I think 'WTF?!' was pretty much on everyone's lips or minds when that happened. It turns out that one of the werewolves had gotten distracted by another aspect of the game and failed to 'wake up' when the werewolves were called. The other werewolves then just happened to pick him as their first victim out of 20+ possibilities. It ended up being the stupidest batch of werewolves I had ever seen. By the time all four were exterminated, there were still something like 15 villagers left. It was insane.

Anyway, that was more or less how the gameday went. Next one's the end of november and I'm already looking forward to it. Should be lotsa fun.

Just got back from the poker and game day at the stronghold around the hour ago and it's taken me this long to take a shower and get ready for bed. It was a hell of a lot of fun with a lot of interesting stories to tell. Unfortunately, it's 4 fucking AM and I'm exhausted. I've got DnD at the bills tommorrow so I probaly won't get around to recapping all of these events until tommorrow night.

I hate it how events manage to clash on what is essentially an open calender. It looks like I'm going to have to miss out on the texas hold 'em tourney which is being held next month because I already promised a local game store I'd run some demo events for them. That really sorta sucks since I was looking forward to giving it another go around after catching the fever last time. As I recall, all told I ended up $.50 in the black or something along those lines. I was really hoping to be able to better that this time around.

So the game day at The Fortress yesterday was pretty spiffy. After all my costs for the day, I ended up picking up a 1 dollar profit from playing poker (Hadn't counted in the box of 50 munchkins I brought with me in the last tabulation), which came in handy today to pay the $1 meetup fee. Other than poker I got in on a game of buffy the vamprie slayer, the board game, alhambra, and apples to apples. Nothing overly exciting but it was a more than pleasant day.

What I'm starting to realize is that as I get to know the people who go to the double exposure cons is that I can now seperate them into two general categories. People I like and people I loathe and who I hope get run over by a bus. This is of course an indication of progression in my integration into this gaming community. Whenever you're new to a group you basically have a hard enough time just remembering who's who and you tend to generally get along with everyone. After continued and repeated exposure though, it's almost mandatory that people get grouped in my head into like and hate. In short, it's basically like a highschool clique whozit all over again. It's sorta funny to see the undercurrents of this running through the con or when all of these people get together like the gameday, and sometimes it's like a mine field with the whole who dosen't get along with who situation.

The meetup also went pretty well today. We had a NBC tourney where I got stomped for the first time in ages. One of the guys from andrew's playtest group had a deck that was just beyond fraking evil. My deck has been able to dominate in any game I've tried it in so far up to this point. Playing against him however was just painful and I got the tar kicked out of me. I think in the future if I'm ever matched up with him again I'll just forgoe the pleasure of the match and just let him kick me in the nads a couple of times. I ended up coming in fourth place which was suckage and the booster packs I won had zilch that I was looking for in th way of cards, double suckage.

On a positive note, the demo games for playroom went okay and there was a new record of 33 people at the meetup. It seems to keep expanding by leaps and bounds ever since feburary and it looks like that the increase in interest means that we'll slot in a 2nd meeting every month.

Well, the poker tournament was a mixed success. Suffice to say I didn't win the main event. I did however make it past the halfway point and got hosed mightily on a hand with bullets I won't be forgetting anytime soon. On the positive side, I ended up making more money than I lost playing in sporadic cash games that started up. I ended the day up 8 dollars overall, and that's including 5 dollars for the pizza buy-in. Not bad considering I was down 40 at one point. Part of the problem is I really don't know how to most effectively bet. My ability to use a chip lead to my advantage is almost nil and my skills in heads up play are abysmal. That aside, I did pretty well most of the time.

The rest of the game day was fun but I'm too tired to recap it now. I've got another event in around 9 hours and I'm exhausted.

Looks like I'm entering my first no limit texas hold 'em event tommorrow. There should be around 40 participants and it's a 20 dollar buy-in. That means whoever comes in first should claim around 400 dollars with money prizes for 2nd and 3rd as well. I figure my goal is to do well enough not to completely embarass myself. I think my 'strategy' should be just to keep pushing all in until my chips are all gone or I've amassed a giant fortune. This way, I won't have to sit through the tedium of a contest I likely won't have any chance of winning anyway.

There should be around a dozen people there not for the tourney, and as individuals get eliminated, they'll break off and play assorted other board and card games. Thus, there's really no penalty in boredom for getting eliminated early and all you're really out is 20 bucks.

On a sidenote, I was disapointed in both stargate sg1 and battlestar galactica today. They were both just pure setup episodes and I was hoping for something a little more exciting with a little more flash and sizzle. There's only one episode to go, the season finale, and it dosen't seem like either is going to offer any real climax. I'm not even sure they'll be all that exciting as cliff hangers from what I've read of the episode synopsis. Oh well. At least the new season will begin in june or something so it won't be too long to wait.