Good weekend

I don’t think I’ve ever wanted to clap at the opening credits of a movie before, but hearing the theme to Superman in a theatre again pretty much made me wanna stand up and yell like the uber-geek that I am. Suzy and I dragged E3 along to see the new Superflick, and it was worth the $9 a head, which is almost never my opinion of movies these days.

The big blue boy scout is all he’s ever been, and Suzy thinks the new one is almost as hot as Tom Welling (Smallville). I was less enamored of Kate Bosworth’s Lois Lane, but how can you go wrong when Kevin Spacey is your villain and Parker Posey is his moll? She’s fantastic in everything, and Spacey’s a creepy little fuck when he wants to be, so that was a great pairing.

All in all, we really enjoyed the movie, I thought it did justice to the mythos and the movies that came before (while successfully ignoring some of the atrocities committed in the later films). But it was a little creepy to see Brandon Rouch’s lips move, and hear Chris Reeve’s voice come out. It was absolutely freaky how much this kid sounds like Reeve, who will always be Superman in my eyes, given my age.

New Superman movie yesterday, and the new Johnny Cash album today – doesn’t get much better for me. This is American V, the album he was working on with Rick Rubin just before he died, and you can hear the years taking their toll on the man in some songs, especially Like the 309, which sounds a lot like a man who knows his time is coming soon. Death has been a present specter in all of the American Recordings Cash albums, but on this one it sounds more like an old friend he’s waiting on the porch for than something he’s fighting against. Somebody give Rick Rubin a medal for bringing Cash back to the forefront of music in his last years, we all almost let that national treasure of songwriting fade away.

Oh yeah, you thought this was a poker blog! Ok, I played a shitload of poker this weekend, putting something like 400 miles on the car just cruising to home games and underground games. It went something like this:

Thursday night – drive to G-Vegas. Sit between G-Rob and The Mark. Regret that position for 5 hours. Go home down a buyin and change (-$125)

Friday night – host a game at my house. Run over the table for an hour, donate everything back by the end of the night. Suzy finishes the night up a buyin (+$50).

Saturday night – learn the hard way that when the chick dealing check-raises your queens, you’re probably fucked. Drop 1.5 buyins in 2 hours. Go home reeling (-$300).

Sunday – drive back to G-Vegas for a tourney at Casa de Mark. Continue my stellar tournament performance, proving the wisdom of my decision not to register for any WSOP events this year (-$55). Gambool like a degenerate in the cash games and rake the biggest single pot of my life when I hit one of 14 outs on the river to beat The Mark’s flopped two pair in a hand with 2 all-ins and an absolutely retarded level of action (+$900).

The hand in question went something like this – we were down to five-handed. I was on the button, Juan (down a pile of cash already but an amazing action junkie) in the SB, Walt (up and down stacks all night) in the BB, The Mark (strong aggressive action junkie, table chip leader) in the straddle and Shep Tiltstein in the CO. Shep call the straddle, I look down at AQ diamonds and pop it to $10. Juan calls, Walt calls, The Mark calls, Shep folds.

Flop Kd Qs 10d giving me middle pair with the nut flush and straight draws. Checked to me and I bet $30. Juan comes over the top all in for another $70. I pause. The Mark comes over the top of that for another $70. I pause a LOT. Then I push my remaining $300 into the pot.

The Mark goes deep into the tank, and I tell him that I’m behind, but still a favorite to win. Interestingly enough, we had talked a couple hours before about how AK sooted is a favorite over QQ after a J-high flop with two of the correct suit. Mark tells me he has K 10, and I tell him he’s technically a dog to my hand, calling out the percentages we’d found on the cardplayer odds calculator earlier (I was actually about 1% more of a favorite than in that particular hand, since I also had straight draws, but that was pretty irrelevant). Mark thinks a little while longer and calls.

Turn is a four of clubs and my nuts curl up somewhere comfy behind my pancreas. I look down and ask for a Queen…or an Ace. And Walt kindly flips over the Ace of clubs for a pot in excess of $700, by far the largest single pot I’ve ever pulled down. I don’t know if I would have been able to make that push if I didn’t already have $100 in profits from the afternoon session in my pocket, and I’m not sure I can make that push at a reasonable hour of the day or night, but at past 1 AM, it felt like the right thing to do.

I did go back to the odds calculator and see that I was indeed a 55/45 favorite in the hand, but I’m not sure how often I’m gonna have the stones to push with it. I know there’s no way I’d have made that move after the turn. Had I just called, then seen the four come up, I would never have had the strength of conviction to stick with it any further. So I’m glad I made the push, and now just need to make sure I don’t let Mark sit to my left when we’re in Vegas this weekend, or he’s gonna push me around like the skinny kid in the schoolyard.

Heh. I just went back and erased “next weekend” to replace it with “this weekend.” I fly in three days, and I had my first Vegas dream tonight. I know that’s kinda sick. And the fact that Nickerson was there teaching me to throw craps was also kinda twisted.