Never needing a win more in my life because of financial
situations at home, I came away from my monthly poker game in Weatherford $140
richer.
Saturday was a day of emotional swings, and my poker game
was probably the most calming part. The
morning started out with Emery having a soccer game. This is our third attempt at soccer with her,
in only 7 years of life, and while she has gotten better it is still not a
sport she shows much interest in. She
played two different positions yesterday and when in the defender spot her
level of interest was about as low as you can get. I try not to be one of those parents on the
sideline that yells over the coach at their child, but Emery simply wasn’t
paying attention to what was going on and I couldn’t keep the instructions to
myself. Luckily for me I only had to
endure her lackadaisical attitude for about 10 minutes.
Following the soccer game, we went home and I started
working on my wife’s car. The lock on
her door has not been working for a couple of weeks. A quick call to my local auto repair shop
resulted in an estimated price of fixing the problem at a little more than
$300. I then got on the Internet and
found out that should I be able to fix the problem on my own, it would only
cost $25 for the part.
Once I received the new part about 10 days ago I quickly
tried to remove the inside door panel, but was unable to loosen the section of
the car needed to get to the broken part of the locking mechanism. I decided since I was already saving myself
$275 in labor I would purchase a repair manual for Joanna’s car that could tell
me how to disassemble and reassemble pretty much every single piece of the
Acura. This was an additional $60.
The repair manual, which is the size of a George Foreman
grill, came late last week and I put to use the book immediately following the
soccer game. It turns out it was one
little screw that was preventing me from getting the inside panel off the door
in my first attempt. However, I’m glad I
purchased the book because it played an integral role in getting the broken
part located quickly and removed without further issues. Plus, I plan on trying to repair any minor
issues that happen with Joanna’s car in the future and can use this book again
to do so.
I did strip a screw when taking the old part out, so that
was an additional hour of work to slowly twist the screw out of its hole with
some wire cutters and then go to my local hardware store to purchase a
replacement screw. It was then another
15 minutes of searching for the small envelope holding the new screw when I got
home because it fell between the seat and console in Joanna’s car. I also had an issue when the car door
(without an inside handle or power to the locking mechanism) closed on me and
it took five minutes to figure out how to get the door open without the normal
methods of doing so.
Finally getting the new part in and everything back as it
should be, I tested the automatic lock on Joanna’s door and things had gotten …
worse. The door wouldn’t lock at all
now, which beforehand it could lock all the doors if you did so in a certain
way, and even the passenger door was having locking issues now. So my attempt at saving money and fixing the
car on my own had resulted in spending $85 on the new part and a book and then
I would still have to send the car in to get repaired by a professional for the
original $300 price tag. Things were not
looking good.
I took the car door apart again and gave it another go at
fixing the issue. I was able to make a
change that I was hoping would fix all of the problems. Again, I put everything back together (which
if you need a car door taken apart I am your man as I have several hours of
experience now under my belt at such a task) and was ready to test the
lock. But wouldn’t you believe it, after
listening to the car stereo the entire time of working on the door repair, the
car battery had drained and the car was completely dead.
This led to Joanna and me pushing the car out of the
driveway so I could get street access to my car, because I certainly wasn’t going
to miss my poker game. After a bit of
verbal brawling with my wife due to an injured ego and strained back from not
being able to fix the initial problem, causing a new problem, and pushing an
SUV around the backyard, we were able to get the car over enough so that I
could back my car out. My brother-in-law
brought a charger over late Saturday night in order to hopefully get some juice
back into the battery.
Well, after about 24 hours of charging we checked the
battery and it seems that the battery is working properly. We took the car out for a spin last night to
get snow cones and the car battery was fully juiced, but the locks aren’t quite
working as they should be. Joanna has
taken the car in to the Acura dealer to see whether they can make a slight
adjustment to get everything working properly.
So that brings us to the poker game. Unfortunately it was a bit of a boring game
for me. I won a lot of pots, but most of
them were only about $10-20 in size. I
was the table bully, bluffing and betting a lot, before Phil and Brandon showed
up. Once they got there I had to change
my game some because they are big bettors.
Brandon simply gets bored if he isn’t involved in a pot, so
he sees a lot of hands. Phil is an
over-bettor and will make bets that are the size of the pot, no matter what he
is holding. If you have the fortitude to
hang in there and call big bets, you can normally win out against Phil.
The only hand I really can recall worth mentioning was one
against Phil. He raised the pot pre-flop
to $10. I had limped in for $2 with A-3
offsuit and was the only other player in the hand after Phil’s raise. I called the additional $8 and saw a
flop. It came out 10-7-3. I checked in the dark, meaning I made my
check prior to the flop being seen, and Phil, surprisingly, also checked. Had he bet I was going to call because he
normally makes a continuation bet no matter what comes out. It is the turn where you can figure out if Phil
actually has a hand or not.
The turn was a 2, making the board 10-7-3-2. I had again checked in the dark. This time Phil bet the pot and made it
$20. I immediately called with my pair
of threes.
Again, I made my bet by checking before the final card was
dealt. The river was a king and the
board was made up of 10-7-3-2-K with no threat of a flush. Phil made a $30 bet and I instantly
called. I felt that if he truly had a
hand worth betting he would make another pot-sized bet of something around $60. He turned over A-2 for bottom pair and my
slightly better pair won the hand.
I could tell the loss was a bit of a kick to the junk for
Phil as he probably thought my hand wasn’t worth calling for $30. But I have come to figure out that if you are
willing to gamble at the high stakes Phil wants to play for then you will
usually come out a winner.
With the $140 win I am now in the black for poker this year
if you don’t count the winnings from last month’s tournament, which I will be
counting. My year-to-date total in
winnings is $900, $830 of which was from the tournament. Unless I play in another game at WinStar
between now and the end of the year, I should only get three more games in
Weatherford. Hopefully I can continue
the win streak I have been on lately and get my total winnings up to four digits.
