Weatherford (September 20)

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.