The murderous cooler beat as soon as you sit down trend continued as I noted in my last session. First hand I played I’m K-8 of clubs, flopping K-8-2, two spades. I get check-raised by the big blind, I hesitate just for a few seconds to consider, yes, the deuce of spades is the death card here. I go over the top, he shoves, I insta-call, and he immediately turns over 2-8 super confident. Turn is the 2s and I’m on my second buy-in.

So with this fresh in mind as I sat for my next session a week later, this Saturday night, I had a fairly impossible anomaly of deuce occurrences awaiting me. First one I’m pocket deuces, and I get a phone call in between limping and the flop, like perfectly inserted in that couple of seconds. I ask the dealer point blank, second time I’ve ever played here, can I answer? “No,” she says, point blank, “not if you are in the hand.” I send the call to voice mail. Everybody at the table immediately speaks up, “Yes you can talk on the phone any time here.” And then she says “Oh yeah. You can.” Why in the hell the dealer can’t give me the straight answer to the question is a little weird.

Flop immediately thereafter comes, reminiscent, K-8-2, but rainbow. No action. Winner. Quad deuces on turn but high hand is quad 3s. Win $30 or so.

30 minutes later deuces again. Flop nothing dry board. Check around. I say “deuce of spades “ out loud this time. Comes deuce of spades. A 25 bet, a call, I raise 100, two very slow folds and some kind of nasty antagonistic comment toward me, 100 a big overbet in this game, pretty much.

As god is my witness, in the next hand my first card is the 2clubs, next card is pitched at me, hits the auto shuffler, sticks straight up in the air and stands there. 20 seconds everybody just stares. Dealer freaks. No one’s ever seen it. I’ve played 40 years, never seen it. The card has it’s back to me and everyone is saying “deuce of spades” and laughing over the freak occurrence. I take my camera out. Snap it. Proof. I fold pre with whatever the replacement card was, flop is K-9-7 rainbow. Checked around. Turn … you know it: deuce. Dude had flopped top two under the gun and checked it. But my deuces were fouled, you know, standing straight up on the table. The same deuce of spades eerily freaking with me.

I’m called for PLO. My first two cards are black deuces, next two black fives.

I get involved in a pot, all my chips about an hour later, dude’s first or second hand at table. I have a set and a gutter, he has an overpair and a deuce for a wheel draw. If he hits his overpair for trips it makes me the nut straight. It comes the deuce of clubs.


Game breaks. Take hold’em seat waiting for main game PLO. I play a hand in the dark in a 1-3 game. Flop 6-7-8. I bet two calls. Turn 6. Check, check, check. River 8. Under the gun bets out, next shoves … I look. First card: deuce of spades, why not?. Ruh roh. Second card 8. 8’s full. LOL. Reshove. Uh huh, oh yeah. Dude has same hand: 2-8.

Very next deal I’m 3c-5c flop is 6c-6h-4c. Blank. River I call out loud for “deuce of clubs.” Thousand for high hand dude in pot only has 40 so doesn’t matter much. And it came this black deuce … this haunting black deuce of spades.

Kind of super weird. That’s 444 sessions of this otherworldly run, of the worst card possible turning off that deck immediately over and over and over and over. And “otherworldly” is exactly it. For 444 sessions and 5 years, the very idea of flopping a wrap and completing it, was a thousand lightyears from me. Over and over and over for 444 sessions I watched Omaha flops to which I had no pair, no draw, no backdoor flush draw. Constant double-suited hands the flop is the other two suits, and I show it. And this happened again last night for the umpteenth time. Dealer after dealer after dealer, week after week after week, month after month after month, year after year after year …. A zeroed out flop as if they checked my hand and hunted thru the deck for the three most unrelated cards.

Because here is the kicker: right when this started, five years ago, I had made a commitment to try to correct the “lost in the shuffle” aspect of my life. There is really only one possible thing that could do it: to stop winning, just like for an alcoholic, to stop drinking. On cue, when I started thinking like that, the universe delivered a trillions-to-one shot streak of bizarre savageness and impossibility to aid in the endeavor. This is a very mystical and spiritual universe. Any discounting of that in the goings on of life is inept.

I’m not unlucky. That’s not the point. What this is is the wisdom, the agenda, of the telos of nature in action. The quantum field is capable of exactly this, and nothing else is.

Okay, here’s a good secret: the weight of the minds at the table changes the distribution of the cards, which is not random, but is approximated as random in our limited knowledge science of probability. The telos of nature, the agenda of the universe, is the ultimate driver of outcomes.

Funny, I didn’t really lose that much. I cut way back, didn’t play that often, went way down in stakes, shorter buy-ins, and only playing one, one and a half, two buy-ins. Amazing during the whole streak that was so full of beats, coolers and card death, I would win either zero or one significant pot in each session. And I would count those chips up after the one big winning pot, and over and over and over and over and over I was exactly $1 behind. One time, right as I put up the middel $2 blind while stacking my only winner of the night, six hours in, I realized, “that $2 blind is going to make me $1 behind.” Sure as a daisy, I counted up $699 in front of me, $700 in. There was a rule governing the deck: he plays and stays loser; that’s his medicine.

As reported, I was red hot for five years previous to this, and insanely hot the year before it. That last torrid year I won 10 in a row, then 10 in a row again, then 17 out of 18, then 31 in a row. It started with a 1-outer beat on Jan 1, 2016, hold’em, trip kings over trip threes. River. And then it was on me.

It becomes like the Buddhist dharma: Can you let it go? Can you let the thrilling yourself with gambling wins as a way of life go? And what is there if you do? “Oh, you committed to this value, to this truth, to this reality … instead of the mesmerizing diversion from all that in the cards? Okay. Here is a run to help you that is utterly beyond the realm of the feasible, trillions and trillions to one against if you figure it by rote odds. BUT, this is your medicine. You know, grasshopper, that you have been lost in the shuffle and that this is a cheapening of life, an addiction, and you were sincere in your intention to redress it. I, the universe, the cosmos, nature, the quantum field, will help you in this sincere intent. The only way for you to learn this is to quit winning, to quit medicating yourself with chips, to quit diverting from critical truths in your consciousness via the games and the highs, faux wellbeing, and fool’s gold they can bring.”

So, the part of us that has inclination to know ourselves and value our actual reality, instead of employing full on attempts to escape, when awakening, this part of us has a mighty trickster archetype in cahoots with the telos of nature in service to it. Don’t miss out on this so-called mystical aspect of life. Just as there are many levels to the games, there are many levels to this reality in which, at levels below, explicate and implicate orders (Bohm) have a threshold that holds the mystery of life. This principle visits where you live, of course. Nothing special about a deck of cards. It’s just part of the universe, part of the interface between quantum field and surface level perception like everything else. It has an agenda.

Once in a sangha-type philosophy group, somebody that had been studying PHI for about 50 years said he never had any idea what the common psychobabble phrase, and to be fair spiritual-type phrase, "let it go" meant. I had always felt the same, could never get any real traction on how important certain orientations seemed to consider it. But shortly before he said this I had read something about exactly that. So I spoke up with it and he loved it ... so did I.

Then ever since I could never remember the point. It was something about the "it" part of "let it go." Sometimes there are a bunch of key words in a sentence and you overlook one. One classic example is the title Healing the Shame that Binds You, by John Bradshaw. Healing is a huge word drawing much focus, "shame" is a massive concept that bears on people in ways they are very slow to realize or understand, even psychologists, so it leaps out of that title once you get it. But there is another key word there: "binds." Likewise, with "let it go" ... the "it" contains some key overlooked meaning. For what is it a pronoun exactly, is key?

Unmooring oneself, unbinding oneself, from something, splicing it off from when it got welded onto your self-concept, or from your world view, is a part of what "letting it go" is about. For people ate up with poker and gambling, including edge games certainly, if their subconscious could speak, it would say that the game, the winning, the chips ... is the most important thing in their life. Which means they are using the game to escape their life. It's a form of gold ... but a fool's gold. And as long as you keep going for the fool's gold, there is no room or value in consciousness for the real gold. Gambling wins as an inflation of how you feel about yourself and life: FOOL'S GOLD. So the thrill -- the jacked up winning high and sense of wellbeing of playing and winning -- is anti-spiritual. Is the wasteland, is a compensating scorecard for the emptiness that Doc Holliday talked about. With the brain's reward system hijacked like this, we have addiction filling the emptiness of alienation, and that is being lost, and if it's in poker, it's being Lost in the Shuffle (another great title).

So to "let it go," to let the whole lifestyle, highs, and scorecard (both financial and emotional) go ... is a complex maneuver worthy of satori.

This is the strangest run in the history of poker ... gotta be. Pay attention to it. Take it seriously. Trillions-to-one already then this itself impossible deuce of spades phenomenon. The Trickster and Synchronicity archetypes are powerful.

"They go to the casino to leave the self behind" is a great quote I came across a few years ago, I think by a non-famous psychologist, because I have not been able to find the attribution since. It is so true in so many cases, including about poker players often. Including me profoundly. So I'll speak mostly for myself.

Going to a casino for me is kind of the opposite of going to the desert. The whole idea is escape and indulgence. Escape from the world, it's issues, oneself and its issues; indulging in excitement, gorging yourself culinarily, boosting your mood and wellbeing in a faux way with wins, even repping yourself internally and externally as one who can pull this off. "It's like magic, it isn't good for you," said one brilliant Freudian analyst, admittedly largely unfamiliar with the distinction between edge play and degenerate gambling.

So of course we know there isn't anything really magical about it, except in that its transforming effect to our experience of life and self without really changing anything. Thus "magical": appealing to something a little bit akin to magical thinking by radically changing one's emotional landscape via an agent ... more commonly called addiction. An addiction with tremendous actual positive upsides is a tricky thing to the literature. It doesn't fit nicely. This is of course why the DSM's and the like need to constantly evolve and not be applied generally but specifically on a case by case basis.

The desert, on the other hand, is a place lacking diversions and indulgences ... leaving oneself and being itself kind of exposed, much less
occupied or hijacked. A good Freudian slip there as I first typed "muck" instead of "much." Lost in the shuffle is part of the wasteland, part of the alienated self ... and itself needs "mucking." A trick that hides our actual existential status is a defense mechanism, an escapist value ... very different from "The Wisdom of No Escape" (Pema Chodron). This kind of headlong escape is anti-self-knowledge, anti-philosophical, anti-psychological. And so, begs to be redressed by our true nature.

Session 445 tonight:

Dude decides to defend his BB against me heads-up. I raised with K-Q of spades on button, he, a tight player, calls with 2-9 offsuit. Because this is way beyond the Twilight Zone. They just know anything works. Flop K-Q-9. He gets sticky. And get's the chips. This guy slow-rolled me as he didn't realize I had called on the river and started showing his hand to all his neighbors instead of tabling it. Super weird.

I have K-Q of diamonds, flop is Q-J-9. Q-3 straddler takes the chips with a 3 on river.

I have flush draw and an over, I hit the over on the river ... the only card I would have to pay off with. Loser.

I move tables. The very first deal the guy I'm sitting right next to on my left bets out of turn as I am stabbing. My hand couldn't have been more visible and it couldn't have been more obvious that I was in the process of betting. I have A-9, flop A-9-4 with a flush draw. Since he bets out of turn, I check, his bet is binding, I raise now, since he's involved he gets sticky and pissed at me somehow. He busts me.

I have K-K heads up, flop is K-10-4 rainbow, I lose stack and didn't slow play.

I flop quad jacks to J-J and win keeps me alive. Guy has no win of course so, short of closing the casino or some kind of Calypso of Swords coming on the turn or river, fouling the hand, I guess I pretty much have to win it. None of that happened. Wow.

Then flop set to 3-3 versus top two and win for the session. Moral of the story this guy missed his four-outer in a hand against me. Absolutely astounding. For 5 years.

Poker swinging one's metaphysics? Might seem strange ... but it's legit. The game, the deck, etc ... are parts of the universe, parts of reality. Therefore they take on characteristics of the nature of reality, whatever that nature might be. So how the deck and the game "behaves" can affect and inform one's of the what's and whys of nature. Above all what we as beings are is experiencers ... and we deduce the nature of things through a phenomenological framework pretty much inevitably. It's legit: poker, gambling -- and everything else that we experience -- are or can be critical clues about the nature of "reality."

Sounds like a good rant. Hope you get it all out of your system.

On a slightly different note, I suggest you try some meditation. It helps direct the energy flow of the universe.

Well A-8 of spades vs. A-4 off suit heads up. Flop 8-5-2 rainbow. He wins. Perfect immediate on turn. Small pot.

I miss four flush draws in little over a lap, 3 nutters, one second nutter. Not easy.

New player coming in. I move seats one to my left, 6 to 7. New dude takes 6. I straddle his first pot as it's a straddle game and you gotta keep up appearances. So I look down at Q-10 diamonds on my straddle. Brand new guy who I just gave my seat makes it $25 heads up. Call. Flop: Q-Q-A. And I have absolutely no win under the sun. Even if he has aces full I have an out. Nope, A-Q. Dead. Sick. I folded it face up on the river and he showed his A-Q saying good fold, amazing fold. I think maybe the 446 session cooler supernova streak just bottomed out right there. I give him my seat and the first hand I flop a monster and he has the only hand that no wins me. Astounding perfect card tricks.

Flop another nut flush draw, I'm A-10 clubs on 5c-7c-9-d flop. 2h on turn. We check around to button, he looks like a steal with a $75 stab, I check raise and he tank calls. I catch the ace winner. First hand I've played so aggressively since I went into the super cooler series and I catch. Hmm.

Now this immediately: I have J-7 of clubs heads up, flop 4-5-6, two clubs. I bet he calls. Turn the beautiful 8d. I check, looking legit weak. The dude has it. He really has it. 7-9, got me nutted. He out thinks himself and checks. I'm gonna raise his arse out of his seat and he's gonna shove of course. Instead check check. I'm nutted again in this heads up pot with my super monster hand. Wow, he didn't charge me. It comes the club. I bet and he shoves. Weird. Winner.

I mentioned last time I sensed a possible shift in the 446 session death run/cooler bonanza streak unlike any in the history of the game. That shift I thought I might have felt, very respectfully to the card gods, when I switched seats with a player and first hand, heads up, I flopped a monster (trip queens) and he had the only two cards that zero-outered me. That was something outside of the norm even in this streak of gargantuan insult to, nay cancellation of, general probability.

I got three buy-ins in in a 1-2-10 PLO game, when an odd thing happened. Oh, a part of the get stuck was flopping a set with the nut flush draw, turning the other nut flush draw, and, how many outs is that??? ... anyway, losing to the flopped nut straight of course. I folded face up on the river and I hear all about what a bad fold it was for $200. This old nit was firing away with 100% confidence, me with everything else but the straight so he couldn't have been betting any of that, pure nit, approaching 100% chance he had flopped the straight. If they think you call on the river because you have trips, well, they're not quite seeing what I'm seeing.

(How many outs did I have on the river there, really? Any club, any spade, any pair. You don't get that hand but one every 20 years or so. Loser, of course.)

I rebought, $600. Took a $55 flop 5-handed UTG, flopped top 2, just fired out the $275 and it worked. Amazing. A $200 profit in a hand of poker. That's a dozen times or so that's happened in this 446 session, 5-year mega streak that has seen zero rushes, zero mini-rushes, one mini-mini rush. One big winner in 446 sessions, one medium winner until lately, then 2 more medium winners (about a nickel each time). A smattering of small wins.

Then the hand: I have the black kings and the Q-10 of hearts, K-K-Q-10. $25 to go over the $10 forced winner straddle, standard for the game. I call. 6-ways. Straddler, super tight nut player, last to act, blows it open for $150 more. Little doubt what that is in this spot. Ultra predictable ... it's an "announcing aces, Get out" type raise. But they start calling. I've got about $1200 in front of me after one other winning pot (nut flush on river, astounding catch, and dude bluffs it for me). So I'm last to act making the pot $750 to call. Two people have me covered, two have short $300 stacks after the flop.

Flop ... fairly interesting: Ah-Kd-4h. Absolutely comical. I'm trip kings 2nd nuts, flush draw 2nd nuts, plus gutter nuts. Straddler who made it $150 guy is also the big blind, and of course he fires right out. One big stack calls, a very tight player as well. Two folds. And me.

I just start laughing as I count the chips. The most likely hands out against me here are trip aces (the bettor), and the nut flush draw (the insta-caller). What other hand does a nut player call with there when it looks for all the world like the trip aces are an open hand? So if I've got him on the side with the nut flush draw and I've got two blockers, just gotta raise it up and go for a sidepot obv and if the main is trip aces so be it. He insta-calls that along with some kind of complaint about me laughing at this possible cooler deluxe flop, like "What the hell you laughing at?" It comes the 6h on the turn, and with only a couple hundred left, he checks. A mild surprise. I put him in of course.

Suddenly i knew what they had: one trip aces and one aces-up. The dude with me in the side pot says the other guy can't have trip aces and shows an ace. I'm already speechless by this otherworldly series of card tricks ... I can't respond to that.

I had no loss on the side so I won it, in fact swept. Blank on river. Then I won another one with a big full I almost overlooked until I got bet into. All this about 2AM. I hit the road. Two good wins in 446 sessions, or is this 447? ... have to check my notes.

I'm trying to either quit playing, kill myself, or turn pro. That hand with both nut flush draws and trips ... that's 9+9+10-? outs? It was all baby and black out there on the turn, me with trips, clubs, and spades ... and I said if that's not a red face card on the river I'll eat your hat. BAM: jack of diamonds -- thanks for playing!

Funny and notable, on the drive home with this cosmic streak perhaps shifting, the song "Brown Eyed Girl" came on the radio. I jammed to it a bit and when it was over an ad came on, so I bumped the channel up and "Brown Eyed Girl" started right in at the beginning again. This song, by Van Morrison, is one I once lost a prop bet at the table about, confusing it with "Brown Sugar" and betting a guy it was by The Rolling Stones. It was one of only 3 such bets I had ever lost on such table trivia, then another one recently making it 4 ... hundreds of winners, I just don't bet unless I'm sure and many just bet just for the hell of it. But sometimes you think you are sure, and you just have it jumbled. So I lost. But that this particular song played consecutive as my otherworldly run seemed to be stabilizing was notable. I've always said music can be like an accompaniment to our life and experience. That fabric of reality thing is a thing.

I'm reading The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and it occurs to me that this streak (above) might be a function of the Infinite Improbability Drive, that is I might have been picked up by its mother ship there about five years ago. I have been, strangely, continually seated at Booth 42 in restaurants all over town (but I was slow to realize the possible implications of this). I love this countdown from "two to the power of two hundred and seventy-six thousand, seven hundred and nine to one" to 1:1 to manifestation. Adams is the man.

Well, the second cooler in my favor tonight in the last 464 sessions (hundreds the other way):

I'm A-Q clubs

flop Ks-5c-7c.


Big action on flop three ways, me cold calling a raise with a tight image. Raiser checked on turn of Js. I took a stab thinking they might be leary of the tight image. Both called.

River 10h.

Dude has 8-9 of clubs and made a straight, and could never put me on A-Q. He fired out. Oh my!


Quite odd, in this hand and in another hand later when I flopped trip 6's. Both times the 6 of clubs looked like it made me the holy nuts, both times would have beat me. Quad 6's would have lost to straight flush. Nut flush would have lost to same straight flush. Weird. Somehow, the death card didn't come either time. Not used to that.

When we use a canoe to cross a river, we do not then carry the canoe above our heads for the rest of the journey. I enjoyed reading this.

It seems odd that in the last three sessions, won small in all three in spite of being completely card dead, that all three hands that I won, one each session, was when I took a much more aggressive line than usual ... and all 3 hands my dream card showed up on the river (in 2 of the 3 I already had the best hand but kind of nutted it up with perfect river). But anyway this brings up the point of catching differently according to how aggressive you bet. Of course it's impossible ... of course it also seems a truism of the game. As the super cooler streak stretched on of course I had gotten more and more passive. In these last three hands I fired, fired, fired ... caught perfect, perfect, perfect. Notable ... after 465 sessions of super death.

And I so forgot to mention ... the first card in each of my first three hands was the deuce of spades. First hand 2s-6c, second hand 2s-2h, third hand I'm looking at a little askance ... sure enough, 2s-5c ... fourth hand I'm looking at extremely askance like I'm scared and "Get this flippin deuce of spades off of me before I die" .... thank god 9s-6h.

Reality is virtual ... and the deck is part of reality. Non-randomness raining and reigning.

First rush in 465 sessions of bizarre card death the other night, with not even a mini rush in it (maybe one). Big hands rained on my seat after 6 years (once a week play) of utter, bizarre, impossible, none-of-the-above flops in nearly 100,000 hands. Made a nut flush and quadrupled up, had a guy with 3 outs bluffing into me not catch it, would have made another nut flush on river if I called my stack off to catch it, had the winner in a few other skirmishes then hot my last round. The session started similar to the bizarre streak, none of the above constantly, going to the flop with double-suited rundowns and flopping no pair, no straight draw, no flush draw, and no back door flush draw. Zero. It was bizarre to look at for 6 years, let me tell you. This felt very different.]

The nut flush quadruple up was deuce of spades on the river. For real ... in this spooky deuce of spades thread/run.

So tonight I'm playing 1-2 NL waiting for PLO seat. It's a peppy and deep 1-2 game for sure. Lots of nickel+ stacks, one dime+ stack ... standard 20-25 to come in. So I'm sticking with the game for bit to see what develops. Pass up my PLO seat one time. The floor comes up to replace a card. "Quit marking cards, gentlemen," he says facetiously. The replacement card coming in is -- you guessed it -- the deuce of spades. Weird.

I'm on the button immediately and straddle. Pocket nines. I make nines-full on a Q-9-8-8-7 board. Loser. Stack gone. Immediate move to PLO. It went well there. The ubiquitous, magical deuce of spades seemed to hearken the cooler, prompt the table move, and produce a good result.

I lost a $100 chip somewhere between leaving the PLO table and the double cash out (poker room colors up all chips leaving poker area). I'm well over 90% sure of what I was up, had it stacked out where it couldn't be mistaken. Then I remembered. After I cashed and colored, I stood watching the last half inning of the Padres win. And as I did, I dropped a couple chips. Checked pretty good but only saw a white and a red and grabbed them. Must have been a black fell too and rolled quite a bit. Driving home this bothered me, but I quickly remembered finding a black chip under a chair at a blackjack table years, decades, ago. I was a green, maybe even red chip player at the time. I remember I bet the chip and blackjacked it. So talking on the phone with a co-metaphysician of mine, he mentioned it might be the universe balancing accounts. I liked it.

This is the deuce of spades thread ... and the freakiest run in the history of poker streak that the deuce of spades seems to mark, as if alive.

So I haven't been posting here recently because I've been on a bit of a tear and bragging while it's going on always seems counterproductive. I had won 7 in a row, then a loss, then 7 more in a row making 14 out of 15. No personal record at all but it might be about my fourth best little streak over the last 40 years.

Tonight 4 brutal hands to close the show in PLO: wrap plus flush draw versus set, brick brick; middle set versus 3 spade flush draws and the flush comes on the river, fairly bizarre; wrap plus top pair, brick brick loses to pocket aces who I had flopped big against; then the coup de grace ... dude bets 700 into my nut straight-plus-flush draw on the turn, him with the nut flush draw, 6 spades left, and he gets there on the river. Brutal the flushes.

I've started a collection of deuce of spades cards in honor of its preeminence in the preceding streak. Gott'em displayed. I have also begun collecting chips again. Anybody who plays a lot of places I highly recommend the hobby. Or if you just love one brand or town, you can begin gobbling up chips from there. There are albums by Dansco for great storing and viewing. So if you are playing at a bunch of different places, grab a chip at least from each place. If you love, say, the Hard Rock, you can try to get one from every Hard Rock on the planet. Great fun. You don't have to travel the world. You can trade them and there are chip dealers, and of course, ebay.

How do I forget flopping the nut full three times in one lap early in the session and not winning any of the three pots. Rocky to say the least.

Are there no moderators on here anymore? This drivel should be relegated to BBV or Poker Blogs.

First rush of cards in over 6 years and nearly 500 sessions tonight. Caught a card all-in in bad shape then rampaged the table, winning 8 of 10 hands and would have flopped trips and quads in the other two hands had I played garbage. It stayed hot. When the smoke cleared hours later only one player had any chips left, and I quit. At no time in 494 sessions was there a hint of a rush, one mini-rush. Gawd was it painful. I had only seen one extended streak in my life laced with super coolers and where just every card when the money went in was continually death, the worst card possible over and over. That was about 30 years ago, 18 or 20 sessions. One about 20 years after that of 8 sessions. Then this one ... for 6 years and tears playing once or twice a week, just south of 500 sessions of calling the worst card possible, including a dozen one outers, in a stretch where one outers went 70% winner. It was all so, so stuck. Tonight for the first time in 6+ years I experienced what it is to not having the deck terrorizing me. And there is a shift in me over it all. Evolution of a poker player.

Jeez one of those "worst games ever" scenarios tonight ... super slow lousy dealers can't even burn a card under the other burns without 3 or 4 tries, can't make a hand, player asleep at the table constantly slowing the game down which the dealer and her another player pal of hers I guess found funny and giggly, instead of insulting to the other players. If you say something along the lines of GTFO of the game if you aren't awake, you're the bad, rude guy. I move to a bigger game, not gonna be boring at all, first hand I am BB+1, and not a soul had said its near-must straddle until after I folded, dude goes on about it a bit, they call the floor who calls security and they boot the guy, which pisses off 3 players and the game breaks. After about 8 hours at 5 AM I flop J-9-2 to 9-9-K-Q, and dude just sat very first hand right in front of me check raises. Yeah trip jacks. Jeezus. Playing in pain too, ugly sciatica with sitting. Sure enough after the session the train was waiting ... Ugh.

A little re-visitation of the super-cooler as soon as you sit streak I had a while back. First hand I play I'm on the button, all fold to me and I make it 3x with 4-5 diamonds. Big blind call. Me and the big blind. Me and the big blind. Flop 4s-6d-7d. He leads into me, I raise. Turn 3s. He leads again. I raise. He ships. We turn them over, he's 4-5 of spades. River 10 of spades. Just a standard button-raise steal to prevent chopping by blinds hand. "Oh, one of those card tricks, " I quip. Obviously I should have just folded and allowed the chop. I only wish it had been 2s river, but I'm out of that metaphysical lesson.

Nope something is wrong there. How do we both have the straight and the flush draw and a pair of fours? Not possible. Anyway we both had 4-5 suited with straight on turn. I think I'm confusing something with a later hand in PLO. Key point: stacked first hand with straight vs. same hand. I must have had back door draw diamond on that hand. New glasses and was seriously having trouble with suits all night. One hand in PLO I was sure there were 5 diamonds on board, me with nut flush, dude behind me drafting, me just smoothing ... at the end I realized there were only 4 diamonds on board.