Just Like It's Not Supposed To Happen.

I played a little too much poker this past week and at some point I finally cracked. I went over to the neighborhood where tilt resides. You don't want to park there. People will steal your car. Your esteem. Your soul.

What got me so upset and messed up my psyche?

Expectations.

I was silly enough to expect my big hands to win. I thought that perhaps the long term math might want to hook me up in the short term. Didn't happen.

The most startling observation was my picking up pocket queens 6 times and incredibly, almost unbelievably, all 6 times an ace flopped. I want to go to the Hilton sports book and place a prop bet on what the flop will look like the next time I pick up queens.

To add to my paranoia I could not connect anytime I had ace king.

Poker gets real hard when I can't win either side of the race.

The most insulting moment?

That would be watching pocket kings go down to a miserable older gentleman who was abusive towards the dealers and waitresses. Boy did I want to take his chips. The money would have been nice but it would have been even more satisfying to get him to leave the table.

At least there was some irony in that he called my push on the flop with ace jack off and he himself was a jack off. I appreciated the symmetry of this coincidence despite having to sit there and watch an ace come out on the turn.

Using "The Power of Negative Thinking" TM I was able to crack my own pocket aces twice. The first time my opponent flopped a set. This happens. The second occurrence however was much more impressive as a small stack called and beat me with king 8 off. I wish he hadn't turned over his cards preflop because as soon as I saw the king 8, I knew I was in trouble.

Oh sure I won some pots. That's because sometimes I too had the worse starting hand. This type of hand I can win. Twice this week I won big pots with my ace queen versus some suckers ace king. Finally got my money in good. And by good I mean bad. The new good.

It's such a cruel game.

We live in a cruel world.

Maybe that's why poker is so popular on this planet.