(1) Last week a coworker was killed. A pickup truck struck the passenger side of her car, pushing her into traffic. She was killed instantly.

The truck continued on and hit a tree. The driver fled on foot (drunk, I suspect) and turned himself in 24 hours later.

She was 20 years old.

Katie was a sweet, attractive, hardworking woman who joined us last summer after her freshman year at William and Mary. She came back over spring break and had just returned for the beginning of this summer, ready to work with us another couple months.

I can think of many better things a 20-year-old would prefer with an entire summer off, and Katie chose to make some extra money. She even had a project of ours in her car when she was hit.

Shocking, terribly sad, and utterly unfair.


(2) A couple weeks ago I had a startling dream. I was in the house where I grew up, peering out the window. Everything was peaceful. A beautiful day.

Suddenly there was the searing sound of a missile flying above and striking a few miles ahead.

Nothing at first but silence. Then the billowing smoke, as the path of destruction rolled my way, evaporating the neighbor's house across the street. All while maintaining that eerie, muted quiet.

I'm watching this, thinking my house is next. Nothing I can do, nowhere to go.

Then I woke up, shaken, and very much glad to be alive.

I've been out of sorts this past week. When I get in a fatalistic mood, I'm careless with money. Not a good way to be when you're a gambler and enveloped in online blackjack (curse these bonuses). I think about Katie and the Ground Zero dream and money is the least of importance.

This, however, is possibly the best attitude when playing poker, when I'm not thinking of money as money but money as worthless chips.

Pretty much nonstop this weekend I played SnGs and multi-tournaments. I feel I'm playing well, despite ending in the red. I shouldn't still be surprised at people calling all-ins with inferior hands, nor should I be surprised they get lucky. If it weren't for that luck, they wouldn't continue to call with those hands.

I'm handling the beats better, particularly after steeling myself from thousands of hands of bad beat blackjack.

This Saturday there's a live tournament for the Arthritis Foundation that I'd like to play but with a steep buy-in. DC isn't Vegas; there couldn't possibly be that many good players in this thing, could there?

My unfulfilled hope was to play a bunch of online tourneys this past weekend and cash enough to cobble together the $500. Instead I lost close to that in tourney fees and, yes, blackjack (cashout cashout cashout after meeting your wage requirements!).

Out of eight multis, I was on the bubble twice, cashed in one (double my buy-in), and was out midway in the other three.

This hand was from one of those multis...


Grubby's Hand of the Week #8
for Monday, June 14, 2004

Prize: $25
Iceyburnz bubbled with Hand of the Week #7. So close, Icey guessed that SB had AK and MP had 55. If only he had reversed that. The SB had 55 and MP had A8o. (Yes, that much aggression with 55. At least my read was correct, he just happened to get lucky on the river.)

The consolation is that no one else guessed that SB had 55, so $5 more for this week.

The first person to correctly guess my opponent's hand before next Monday wins. Suits may or may not matter. One guess per person, please. Winner will be declared here the following week. If there's no winner, the prize will roll over to next week plus $5.

If you're signed up to Empire Poker or Absolute Poker through me (use those links to sign up), the prize is doubled for you.

Absolute, by the way, has a couple good promotions in the coming weeks -- including several 25 percent reload bonuses and rakefree 6/12 tables.

Leave your guess in the comments section below. You can be Anonymous without registering through Blogger, but do include your name so I know whose guess is whose.

If you don't include contact info and you're the winner, email me after the quiz is over.

Good luck and good skills,

---

Aztec Riches Poker NL Hold'em Tourney, Big Blind T1600 (10 handed)

Preflop: grubby is MP3 with A Q
SB posts T800, BB posts T1600, 4 folds, grubby raises all-in T5180, it's folded to the BB who has about T25000 left and pauses for almost the entire time bar... and then calls!

Board: 7 K 2 7 3


Aztec Riches Poker is part of the Prima Network and offers pretty terrific overlays and few people entering. Very loose, too. New signups get $50 if you deposit $100, and that extra $50 is in your account to play with. The only catch is you need to play 100 raked hands before you can cash out. Aztec's definition of a valid raked hand: you must contribute toward the raked hand in order for it to count. You'll therefore rake hands at a much slower pace than other sites, but you can see how this encourages the fish to play more hands than normal.

(Aztec also has a casino with the Viper software. If you've been casino whoring, I would not recommend this casino, nor any of the other casinos in the Casino Profit Share network -- Challenge, Music Hall, Golden Reef, UK Casino Club. See their terms and conditions, and you'll see why.)

This past Saturday found me in a $7,500 guaranteed pool. $10+1 buy-in, unlimited $10 rebuys, and a $10 add-on. I did one rebuy and one add-on. 263 people entered and top 30 cash.

(If you think that's good, they also have $100K guaranteed tourneys on Saturdays... I played this past weekend and only 831 people entered at $50+5. Try to touch that, Empire and Party!)

Throughout I had some beats, all when I raised all-in preflop and was called with the underdog: KQ vs. KJ (quad Jacks), AA vs. 10-10 (quad 10s), QQ vs. 10-10 (a 10 on the board).

These were the only three hands of note, and despite them, I made it to the top 33.

Which gets us to the hand above. I was shortest stack by half and had to make a move at some point. My previous two all-ins were in the past two orbits with QQ and AK, and were enough to take the blinds. The table was tight enough that no one was calling an all-in raise, wanting to get in the money and avoid that bubble.

BB was third-largest chipstack at the table when he called. I didn't have a read on him.

What did BB have?