July 14, 2006

Friday friday...

somewhere off in the upper reaches of this company, some power-that-be decided he wanted to do a live in-studio presentation at 8:30am pacific time today. he called down to the oracle studios and told the technician to get a room ready for 8:30am sharp.

why does this matter? well the technician (we'll call him technician A) then promptly bumped the 8am presentation recording that was supposed to happen in the studio. by 'bumped', i mean 'cancelled'. nevermind that the 8am presenter had scheduled this particular timeslot a month ago because he's leaving for vacation next tuesday and needs to get this recorded before then. the result was this:

jack: "hi *shake hands*, i'm a product manager with customer data management. i'm doing a recording at 8am."

technician B: "hi *looks confused*, i don't actually see you on the schedule. lemme call someone to ask.... (he calls larry, or president bush, or the olsen twins, or someone equally important). sorry, i don't see you on here. i think your recording got cancelled and no one told you. sorry about that."

jack: "that's awesome. i love my life."

technician B: "great."

and that is why i'm sitting in my cube at 8:15 writing instead of speaking into an oversized microphone.

i'm honestly not irritated, though i probably will be when i realize at 4pm that i'm insanely tired. when you work at a large LARGE company, sometimes strange things will happen and there will be no justification beyond a shrug and a smile. maybe sipping this green tea will help.

much more irritating however, was wednesday afternoon, when i jetted out of work at 5:10 sharp to head home and make the 6pm $69+$6 full tilt tournament (still trying to win a seat to a bracelet event). i've discovered lately that the traffic on 101 south seems to be getting worse, which is of course why i left myself a whole 50 minutes to get home. clearly you know how this story ends. as i walked in my apartment door at 6:03pm, i was able to take solace in the fact that in just a few hours i would get to dust off my chips in the 9pm $200+$16 tournament and then take a bad beat for a LOT of chips in a cash game. awesome!

i think the particular bad beat story is worth telling not for the sympathy that it will garner from scores of kind souls (because no one ever cares about bad beat stories), but just to note how ridiculous the hand was:

on the button, i found KhKc. as two players had limped around to me, i raised to 3x the BB. this might look like a tiny raise that isn't sufficient to drive out limpers, but i always raise to 3x the BB, whether i have KK or 97 suited. the small blind folded and the big blind IMMEDIATELY moved all-in for 50x the big blind. yes, 50. that's about 8x the entire pot.

it was pretty clear that the player had a medium-sized pair that he was afraid to play after the flop out of position. he probably also thought that my button raise was a steal (a huge mistake by online tournament players when playing cash games). figuring he has the best hand, he doesn't want to get played off of it when an overcard hits the flop. it turned out he had ThTs.

as i waited for the two limpers to fold so i could call, i considered how ridiculous this play was.

- he hadn't seen me play five hands, so he really couldn't have an idea of how i played.

- by raising to 50x the BB, he was forcing out every single hand that he was a big favorite over. i certainly wouldn't call 50x with 99 or 88.

- by raising to 50x the BB, he was going to get called only by hands that dominated or raced with his tens (AA, KK, QQ, AK, AQ, JJ).

- there's no way i could actually be stealing in that position. with two limpers in front of me, how could i be trying to steal the blinds with a raise to 3x the BB?

as i watched the inevitable T spike on the turn, followed by a very kind exclamation in the chatbox ("send it!" which is roughly equivalent to those cheating, flopping italian soccer players), i couldn't help noticing that all the money would have gone in on the flop anyway. with a 7-high flop, there was no possible way either player would get away from the hand. i just wonder whether the other guy knows how insanely he played the hand. judging by his response, i would guess not.

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