What does the palm reader say?

Can I whine here?

Wasn't this supposed to be easy?

Do I really have to believe that "poker is a hard way to make an easy living"?

I started tonight by losing 80 BB.

Then I won it back. Plus an additional 30 BB.

And then I had my moment. The reason why I sit at the poker table. I found the opportunity to get all in preflop as a 3 to 1 favorite.

If I win I've earned a week's salary of poker money.

If I lose, it's poker.

Tonight I lost.

The beat itself doesn't matter. The edge I had is all I can focus on.

Maybe when I lose I can write it off to being entertainment right? Like instead of my wife and I going out in a Hummer Limo for three hours with a couple of hookers and an eight ball of coke, I got to go to the casino and watch a crazy Asian man make a move on me from late position. I paid 130 big blinds to have a front row seat for the whole thing.

Besides who the hell wants to bring 6 friends to go see Prince at the Rio when you can spend the same money watching a bored dealer turn over cards. For all I care they may as well be Tarot cards.

Why even use playing cards in the first place? Why not go a step further and just use palm readers? Like why not just read my hand and tell me my future and then point to different people at the table and tell me what I owe each of them?

"Give the guy from Australia 130 dollars. Give the old guy in the wheel chair 80 bucks.

Give the young Pakistani dude to your left 20 dollars.

Uh oh. I got good news and bad news. Which do you want to hear first?

The good news is you can take 300 from the Mexican guy on tilt across from you.

But now the bad news is you gotta give your entire stack to the Asian gentleman to your right."

Despite the money, losing this hand with pocket kings didn't hurt as much emotionally as losing a hand tonight where I raised the BB to 7x to get rid of a few limpers and got called by this one drunk guy.

Sure he shouldn't be operating dangerous machinery, but in his defense, his hand was suited. (Insert applause).

So for the joke of me playing this hand to fully work, we need me to flop top pair with my ace kicker. No problems there.

The universe, fate and destiny can make that happen. But to give our studio audience some extra fun, we're gonna also have two diamonds on the board. After all, he could have a flush draw.

I bet an amount that makes it's incorrect for him to chase a flush draw.

He calls.

And yes the third diamond appears on the turn. For all intents and purposes he's hit his flush.

He checks to me. I step on the brake and check too.

Here's the strange part. He checks the river.

I think something is fishy. It's one of those hands where I'm only gonna get called (or check raised) if I'm beat. I check behind him.

He shows me his diamonds. Jack high.

This hand sort of put me on tilt. I should have been proud of how I played it. I bet preflop and on the flop when I was ahead in the hand and then didn't put another chip in when I was behind.

It all makes perfect sense to me now sitting here typing this. But live in the moment the whole sequence made me feel angry. If I had gotten a couple of callers preflop he would have great odds to chase. But everyone else folded to me yet he still called. Logically this was good for me. But like I said, emotionally it pissed me off. He was looking to get lucky.

Now I'll also admit I feel even sillier for admitting these feelings. Obviously I want to be playing with a guy like this. But my feelings are my feelings. I hope I can read this in a few months and wonder how it ever bothered me.