Thursday, March 12th action

The game at Lederach last Thursday night featured eight handed action and included the return of Chommie, the world’s dumbest Jew, which puts a smile on the face of this blogger as he writes the painful details of all the action. Onto the game:

The big winner of the night was salad munching TJ who profited $514. Young TJ’s big hand of the night was the third to the last hand of the evening when he pushed all-in on the river with a busted straight draw into a large pot with his final $200+ against a pretty tame board and pushed Chommie off of his pocket Jacks. More impressively, however, TJ won a $100 side bet with host Sir Lawrence betting on whether or not Chommie would end the evening profitably. He did. TJ loves the long shots and betting straight up whether or not Chommie would end the night profitably is like playing “00” on the roulette table (in more ways than one).

Mr. Chad won for the 7th time in 8 sessions this year to vault himself past the $3,000 profit mark overall. Mr. Chad, in between bragging about how much money he makes, how many people report to him, how short his commute to work is, how he can get his hair to look so good with so little product and how his North Face jacket makes him look like he’s 23 still, played some more good, clean poker. Chad’s play of the night was Sir Lawrence’s first “cracking” when Mr. Chad showed the discipline of a seasoned senior executive by checking his straight on the river, inducing an all-in bet from Sir Lawrence that Mr. Chad quickly called. Mr. Chad was also involved in Sir Lawrence’s second cracking and more pleased he could not be. Despite our constant jabs at him, Mr. Chad continues to dominate this year and has 43% of all profits. We hope he remembers the little people like us when he’s hiring for open positions on his team when the Great Depression Part II comes to an end.

Chommie, against all odds, profited $63 for the evening. As usual, Chommie went against conventional wisdom and worked to get his money in with the lesser hand which he did time after time. Chommie actually had nearly $400 in profits at one point until gravity kicked in and Chommie began falling to earth. Only Chommie’s pocket 9’s suck out versus Joey’s pocket Jacks (all-in pre-flop) prevented him from losing it all and allowed him to rally and turn modest profits. Despite Chommie’s poor play, he did provide the crowd with the cutest moment of the night asking where the Big East Tournament was being held (in about the 5th OT of the final game on the TV that had been on for about 6 hours from MSG at that point). We happily answered that question for Chommie although we’re still reluctant to tell him that a flush beats a straight.

Ronny Ballz had another excellent night winning over $200 and is now 3 for 3 this year on his “comeback tour”, the most successful comeback tour since Ronny’s favorite band “New Kids on the Block” or “NKOTB” as Ronny’s lower back tattoo shows, returned several years ago. Ronny’s big hand of the night was against dim-witted nemesis Chommie who paid him nicely when his top pair ran into Ronny B’s flopped set of Queens. In a statistical oddity, both Ronny B and TJ have played 3 sessions this year and both are up exactly $637. So, both are completely tied up and we know the thought of being completely tied up with TJ (figuratively or literally) gives Ronny that special feeling. Yuck.

Mr. Cooper had his five session winning streak come to a grinding halt losing $175 for the night along with one of his sneakers to Ace Nelson, our host’s beloved puppy, who stole his shoe in the middle of the game. Although Mr. Cooper successfully recovered his shoe, he was unable to recover from his early losses as his multiple tells have become so bad lately even lower level talents such as Young TJ have successfully picked up on them. Mr. Cooper better work on that soon as he is officially “on the clock” with only 7 or 8 sessions remaining before his princess of a fiancé moves into his home and mandates a midnight curfew which will lessen the number of hands an evening Mr. Cooper can fold.

Chick the Brick had his second straight winning session profiting $101 for the evening although he did give away a good portion of his profits to Chommie later in the session when Chommie turned a straight against him. C the B also had the worst poker etiquette of the evening as in the hand of the evening between TJ and Chommie, he burned three cards on the flop and compounded that poker feux pas by rooting through the deck after the river. Mr. Chick is evidently looking to acquire the nickname “Shady” as his alias for the game although we all know that has been locked up for quite some time by our beloved host, Sir Lawrence.

Speaking of Sir Lawrence, he had a brutal night getting cracked twice by Mr. Chad and even cashing in late night with just $17. Although Sir Lawrence made a little run with that last “baby buy-in”, he ultimately lost it all and dropped $677 for the evening. Sir Lawrence also inexplicably lost the “Will Chommie accidentally earn a profit?” bet with TJ and had to wait 6 OT’s to have the perpetually absent Mr. Dana’s Orangemen finally beat his UConn bet. On the bright side, however, Sir Lawrence did pull one over on his little sidekick, TJ, by betting him $5 that he couldn’t eat two pieces of bread in a minute. Evidently the rye bread used for the bet had been sitting in the basement of Mr. Cooper’s synagogue for the last 5 years as young TJ nearly choked on it while trying to get it down (a feeling G Ron knows all too well) and had to throw up the white flag and concede the bet to bitter Sir Lawrence.

Finally, last but certainly not least was Young Joseph Crawford who has worked hard the last couple of weeks to get all his earlier losses back from the beginning of the year to only see most of that hard work go away with a $500 loss last Thursday. Joseph was ultimately cracked by the aforementioned JJ vs. 99 hand against Little Chommie Luckbox. This was the first week in quite some time that Young Joseph neglected to bring alcohol from his beer collection from around the world and the poker gods noticed and made him pay dearly. On the positive side, this blogger’s 10x12 front lawn is starting to grow and the $8 we’re going to pay Joe in a couple of weeks to mow it should provide him with enough cash to call one TJ straddle when he returns from his 9th retirement this year.

Let’s go ‘Nova.