Sunday, August 14, 2005
Birthday Party Lesson from Frank
I went to my friend Jim's birthday party yesterday. I saw some people there that I hadn't seen in awhile. One was a girl named Candy that used to live across the street from me. The rest were people I knew through Jim, but also people that I knew from delivering pizzas at White Cottage Pizza. I thought it was weird that although I hadn't seen these people in awhile, and we had all grown a few years older, most of them looked basically the same. The only changes I noticed were that Paco's hair had gotten a little greyer and Paco's brother had gotten fatter (as had I).
Beata had come with me to the party. I had to go back to my house after I somehow got pasta sauce on my shirt. She dropped me off after my new shirt dried. She hadn't been feeling well, and we weren't getting along to well, so I guess it was better this way. Later, I learned that Frank had been dating my old neighbor, Candy, for awhile, but he had just broken up with her on Friday. His situation with Candy sounded just like my relationship with Beata. He said they had been dating on and off for about three years and they had broken up about 7 times. He said that he got sick of it against last night and had ended thing, but her and her friends somehow showed up at this party. There was even more drama for Frank because another ex-girlfriend happened to be at the party too.
I had always looked up to Frank when I was in my late teens and early twenties. I was totally clueless about dating back then as I never dated in high school. I always blamed it on my weight then and my reputation as a nerd. In college, I had tried to be more outgoing with women, but with little success my first year. At the end of my first year, and all of the summer I worked out like crazy. By the start of my 2nd year, I had gone from about 220 lbs, to 150 lbs. I thought had solved what I thought was my biggest problem with women, but looking back to my 2nd year, I was totally oblivious to what my real problems were. I had no confidence and I didn't know how to talk to women. Here are some examples of my mistakes. There were several girls that I found attractive, but I was too scared to talk to them. I had two classes with one girl in either winter or spring quarter, yet when she talked to me, I was afraid of boring her, so I remember ending the conversation as quickly as possible. (Two classes, by the way, is a lot of time to spend with someone considering a normal class load at the University ofChicago was 3 or 4 classes a quarter.) Another example of how weird/lame I was is as follows. One time, I was twenty minutes early for class. I was reading the paper and a pretty Spanish girl sat down next to me and started talking to me. Once again, I had tried to end the conversation as quickly as possible. I don't know if I could have gotten a date with her if I had conversed with her like I might do now, but it doesn't get any easier to get things moving than girls striking up conversations with you (and I blew it there).
Anyway, Frank seemed to be the opposite of me. He always had a girlfriend, and his girlfriends were always really good looking. One time at the pizza place, a new phone girl had started working. This guy Brian had invited her and a bunch of us to the bar after work. Frank worked his magic on that girl that evening, and by next week, he was dating her. A few months later, Frank broke up with that girl. Not too long after the break-up, I saw Frank at a party, and he was already dating another girl. Frank basically had the skills that I had always wished I had.
I thought it funny that we were in similar situations now. Frank, though, had learned something from experience that I had not, since Beata is my first serious girlfriend. When Frank and Candy break up, she keeps calling him, but he has the strength to stick his ground and not call her. I, on the other hand, am usually the one calling Beata up after we fight or break up. What's interesting, is that Frank admits that he was like me a few relationships earlier. I guess it's time to take my former idol's advice and show Beata that I can be a strong man if we're not going to get along. If I end it, I have to not call.
Poker
Jim had been bugging me for the last two weeks about playing cards at the party. He had told me that several people were going to be at the party that loved poker. As a pro, I like poker, but I'm not too excited about doing it for fun on my days off. I brought chips like Jim had requested, and right away people were asking me about playing a game. I guess this shows how big poker has become in the past few years.
We found seven people that were interested in playing a quick game. Frank said they usually played what is referred to as a freeze out. In a freeze out, you buy-in (for this game it was $5) and if you bust out, you can't rebuy. Like most people who got exicted about poker after watching it on TV, these guys wanted to play no limit hold 'em.
What follows is a summary of the two tournaments. I guess I just wrote it out because these tournaments are basically what I did today. The stakes are tiny. The $25 first prize is what one would win from on round of betting in a $20-40 game (what I usually play live), and it's about one hand in $3-6, which I play online as my bankroll is low at the moment. As I admit in the descriptions, I got lucky a few times, but these two tournaments show how poker is a skill game. I placed into the money easily. Basically everyone but Frank, Joe, and I were dead money. In poker, the term "dead money" is used to describe the buy-ins made by players that have virtually no chance of placing in the money. One girl, Jenny, had never even played hold 'em before, but was willing to mess around for the $5.
The summary of the two tournaments are below. Non-poker players need not read on as the poker jargon won't make any sense. Honestly, the hands aren't even that interesting, but I figured that I wrote it out, so I might was well keep it in here.
In the first game, I folded every hand except and AQ off-suit (in poker literature, that would be noted as an AQo) that I took all-in against Paco's 75o. I survived Paco and not long after, Frank and I ended up playing heads-up as Frank busted the other players. People were anxious to play another game, but I wanted to finish the game. Frank said we could just end it there, but he wanted the full 1st place payout. He wasn't going to give me any extra because he had a 2-1 chip lead on me. I figured that I'm a poker pro so I might as well play it out. The tournament ended with me taking a KQo against Frank's ATo. I got lucky and spiked a king on the river for the win. We paid 1st place $25 that game, and 2nd place $10.
The next game we had 8 people in, again for $5 each. We paid 1st $25, 2nd $10, and 3rd $5. The first hand, I got dealt a straight. I had a Q8s that I limped in an 8 way pot on the button. I floped a striaght with an 9JT (two spade) flop. It was checked to me, and I went all in. Jenny called (after some help from some people next to her; that's total no-no in real card games, but it's a fun game so I didn't care. Besides, I wanted her to call.) with pocket kings. Against real players, I never would have won because most people would have raised with KK preflop, so I wouldn't have been in, and they woudln't have called all in with the kings on the flop. The next hand 4 people went busted, so the game went pretty fast. My friend Joe and I ended up heads up. He had a chip lead on me. I thought I was busted in our second heads-up hand when I put a move with bottom pair. He called with top pair, and I hit trips on the river. The poker gods evened the odds a few hands later when he busted me with KJ against my AQs by hitting a king. I pulled 2nd, but oh well; $25 of for playing at a birthday party on my day off is still nice. Joe commented that if we could play with these people all the time, he could be a pro too.
Sidenote: Some guy was arguing with someone being able to go all in out of turn. I explained that technically, a player would have to wait his turn before declaring all-in. This guy said that a player could do so in any position at the start of the hand. I tried explaining it to him why he was wrong, but he kpet arguing. He said that you could do this in Vegas, blah blah, and Carlo tried to back this guy up by saying that my online play is different. I soon got annoyed and said, "I play 40-50 hours a week and I've been playing for awhile now. I've played live in many places. I think I know what I'm talking about." He had no response to that, of course. Now that I'm older, I dont' tend to argue with people about stupid stuff as much as I used to, but sometimes you just have shut up ignorant poeple that won't stop telling you that you are wrong.
I went to my friend Jim's birthday party yesterday. I saw some people there that I hadn't seen in awhile. One was a girl named Candy that used to live across the street from me. The rest were people I knew through Jim, but also people that I knew from delivering pizzas at White Cottage Pizza. I thought it was weird that although I hadn't seen these people in awhile, and we had all grown a few years older, most of them looked basically the same. The only changes I noticed were that Paco's hair had gotten a little greyer and Paco's brother had gotten fatter (as had I).
Beata had come with me to the party. I had to go back to my house after I somehow got pasta sauce on my shirt. She dropped me off after my new shirt dried. She hadn't been feeling well, and we weren't getting along to well, so I guess it was better this way. Later, I learned that Frank had been dating my old neighbor, Candy, for awhile, but he had just broken up with her on Friday. His situation with Candy sounded just like my relationship with Beata. He said they had been dating on and off for about three years and they had broken up about 7 times. He said that he got sick of it against last night and had ended thing, but her and her friends somehow showed up at this party. There was even more drama for Frank because another ex-girlfriend happened to be at the party too.
I had always looked up to Frank when I was in my late teens and early twenties. I was totally clueless about dating back then as I never dated in high school. I always blamed it on my weight then and my reputation as a nerd. In college, I had tried to be more outgoing with women, but with little success my first year. At the end of my first year, and all of the summer I worked out like crazy. By the start of my 2nd year, I had gone from about 220 lbs, to 150 lbs. I thought had solved what I thought was my biggest problem with women, but looking back to my 2nd year, I was totally oblivious to what my real problems were. I had no confidence and I didn't know how to talk to women. Here are some examples of my mistakes. There were several girls that I found attractive, but I was too scared to talk to them. I had two classes with one girl in either winter or spring quarter, yet when she talked to me, I was afraid of boring her, so I remember ending the conversation as quickly as possible. (Two classes, by the way, is a lot of time to spend with someone considering a normal class load at the University ofChicago was 3 or 4 classes a quarter.) Another example of how weird/lame I was is as follows. One time, I was twenty minutes early for class. I was reading the paper and a pretty Spanish girl sat down next to me and started talking to me. Once again, I had tried to end the conversation as quickly as possible. I don't know if I could have gotten a date with her if I had conversed with her like I might do now, but it doesn't get any easier to get things moving than girls striking up conversations with you (and I blew it there).
Anyway, Frank seemed to be the opposite of me. He always had a girlfriend, and his girlfriends were always really good looking. One time at the pizza place, a new phone girl had started working. This guy Brian had invited her and a bunch of us to the bar after work. Frank worked his magic on that girl that evening, and by next week, he was dating her. A few months later, Frank broke up with that girl. Not too long after the break-up, I saw Frank at a party, and he was already dating another girl. Frank basically had the skills that I had always wished I had.
I thought it funny that we were in similar situations now. Frank, though, had learned something from experience that I had not, since Beata is my first serious girlfriend. When Frank and Candy break up, she keeps calling him, but he has the strength to stick his ground and not call her. I, on the other hand, am usually the one calling Beata up after we fight or break up. What's interesting, is that Frank admits that he was like me a few relationships earlier. I guess it's time to take my former idol's advice and show Beata that I can be a strong man if we're not going to get along. If I end it, I have to not call.
Poker
Jim had been bugging me for the last two weeks about playing cards at the party. He had told me that several people were going to be at the party that loved poker. As a pro, I like poker, but I'm not too excited about doing it for fun on my days off. I brought chips like Jim had requested, and right away people were asking me about playing a game. I guess this shows how big poker has become in the past few years.
We found seven people that were interested in playing a quick game. Frank said they usually played what is referred to as a freeze out. In a freeze out, you buy-in (for this game it was $5) and if you bust out, you can't rebuy. Like most people who got exicted about poker after watching it on TV, these guys wanted to play no limit hold 'em.
What follows is a summary of the two tournaments. I guess I just wrote it out because these tournaments are basically what I did today. The stakes are tiny. The $25 first prize is what one would win from on round of betting in a $20-40 game (what I usually play live), and it's about one hand in $3-6, which I play online as my bankroll is low at the moment. As I admit in the descriptions, I got lucky a few times, but these two tournaments show how poker is a skill game. I placed into the money easily. Basically everyone but Frank, Joe, and I were dead money. In poker, the term "dead money" is used to describe the buy-ins made by players that have virtually no chance of placing in the money. One girl, Jenny, had never even played hold 'em before, but was willing to mess around for the $5.
The summary of the two tournaments are below. Non-poker players need not read on as the poker jargon won't make any sense. Honestly, the hands aren't even that interesting, but I figured that I wrote it out, so I might was well keep it in here.
In the first game, I folded every hand except and AQ off-suit (in poker literature, that would be noted as an AQo) that I took all-in against Paco's 75o. I survived Paco and not long after, Frank and I ended up playing heads-up as Frank busted the other players. People were anxious to play another game, but I wanted to finish the game. Frank said we could just end it there, but he wanted the full 1st place payout. He wasn't going to give me any extra because he had a 2-1 chip lead on me. I figured that I'm a poker pro so I might as well play it out. The tournament ended with me taking a KQo against Frank's ATo. I got lucky and spiked a king on the river for the win. We paid 1st place $25 that game, and 2nd place $10.
The next game we had 8 people in, again for $5 each. We paid 1st $25, 2nd $10, and 3rd $5. The first hand, I got dealt a straight. I had a Q8s that I limped in an 8 way pot on the button. I floped a striaght with an 9JT (two spade) flop. It was checked to me, and I went all in. Jenny called (after some help from some people next to her; that's total no-no in real card games, but it's a fun game so I didn't care. Besides, I wanted her to call.) with pocket kings. Against real players, I never would have won because most people would have raised with KK preflop, so I wouldn't have been in, and they woudln't have called all in with the kings on the flop. The next hand 4 people went busted, so the game went pretty fast. My friend Joe and I ended up heads up. He had a chip lead on me. I thought I was busted in our second heads-up hand when I put a move with bottom pair. He called with top pair, and I hit trips on the river. The poker gods evened the odds a few hands later when he busted me with KJ against my AQs by hitting a king. I pulled 2nd, but oh well; $25 of for playing at a birthday party on my day off is still nice. Joe commented that if we could play with these people all the time, he could be a pro too.
Sidenote: Some guy was arguing with someone being able to go all in out of turn. I explained that technically, a player would have to wait his turn before declaring all-in. This guy said that a player could do so in any position at the start of the hand. I tried explaining it to him why he was wrong, but he kpet arguing. He said that you could do this in Vegas, blah blah, and Carlo tried to back this guy up by saying that my online play is different. I soon got annoyed and said, "I play 40-50 hours a week and I've been playing for awhile now. I've played live in many places. I think I know what I'm talking about." He had no response to that, of course. Now that I'm older, I dont' tend to argue with people about stupid stuff as much as I used to, but sometimes you just have shut up ignorant poeple that won't stop telling you that you are wrong.
