Old friend

It's funny how, when we're reminded by our past, we usually enjoy some fond memories. No matter how many people you have met over the course of your life and will still meet, it's the people when you were young that will play a significant part in your life no matter how long it has been.

When I was young, I used to think that friends were ranked according to certain criteria. Like how understanding they are, or reliable when you got problems. I have met people like those and they're really great friends. But you had when you were young are some of the fondest friends that I have come to appreciate.

Like today, for example. I used friendster to lookup an old friend. We had some good times, and the feelings I had when I was a kid all came back. I remember how we were, our place in each other. There aren't any walls during that time, not that we were even aware of them, and that kind of gives it an innocent feel. There was even the hint of childhood crush that I hid. Those were fun and innocent times.

As I read more about her entry, I notice myself thinking of "What could have been." What if we continued to be friends? Or maybe even a step farther, "What if we became more than friends?" During those times, I could certainly have taken steps to make it happen.

It occurred to me how great her life must be these days. She has lots of friends and she seems successful in her career. And knowing what I know about her kindness and caring for the people around her, she is the perfect girl any guy can dream of.

It's so fun to ask these questions, and not dwell on them. They are just day dreams after all. But if I were given a choice to go back and choose, would I really _want_ it different than what it is now? Hmmm, now _that_ is an interesting question.

Thank God I have a lifetime to enjoy thinking about it.

That Unforgettable Night

It was easily my most physically painful night...

I looked at the wall clock. It read 2:36am. For 5 hours, I have been vomitting like crazy. Judging from the amount that I have purged, last night's dinner was all gone 2 hours ago. Whatever I'm was still vomitting, only God knows.

My stomach started aching at around 9pm and I figured it must be just a small deal and I can just sleep over it. Now, I'm thinking of how to get to the hospital. What made the situation worse is that my closest friend was in another place 2 hours away. How did I end up here? All alone in this alien town?

I suited up and walked slowly toward the parking lot behind the apartment building. God, it's cold. I already had 3 layers of clothing and it was still cold. It's not as bad as the eery silence all around. There's absolutely no one awake.

The pain was excrutiating. I couldn't walk very fast and one hand was holding my aching belly. I hope I don't vomit on my way.

I got into my car and reached for the glove compartment. It was a lot of effort just to stretch out a bit and get this folded piece of paper. I unfolded a map of the town to figure out exactly where the hospital is. The map was drawn in a kiddie sort of way, which I noticed made me upset since it was hard to see where the hospital is.

I drove into the town's main road. For some reason, I was hoping to catch a glimpse of a police car or something.

But there was none. It was like a ghost town.

After getting lost for a few minutes, I finally found the hospital. My stomach was so painful I was surprised I didn't pass out from the pain. I quickly knocked into the hospital door, which was locked. It took the guard a couple of painstaking minutes to open it.

I told the nurse about the whole ordeal. The doctor came afterwards and he pumped out all the contents of my stomach and injected some fluids. I then drove back and was glad I can fall asleep peacefully.

Looking back, it was a trying time, but these days, it's a good story for laughs.
The doctor said that I may have to change my diet forever, like no spicy or greasy foods. Pizza has turned me off, since it's makes my stomach queasy. And I have gotten a new found appreciation for milk which I drink whenever I can.

Can't win

#%()*&@$()*&^%$_)**()^(*&&*(*&(@#$@#@$@#$%^_)*I^_*(%^%)(*&!!!!!

Cavite

Well, I've watched the movie that made the rounds when it was shown in a select theaters a few months back. It was shown only on L.A. and New York so there was little chance I get to watch it. It was well-received by critics and that's why I wanted to have a look-see.

It was a truly low budget film. The actors are limited and the scenes like as if they were shot in real time, with no 2nd takes.

I'm not much of a film critic, so I can't say if this was a good film or not. But it's meaningful to me. I get to see the streets of the Philippines in that movie and brought some old memories.

Anyway, it was good movie. And I'm glad I saw scenes from the Philippines again.

Tired

I played two more tournaments after this one, and I am just tired. I did end up in the prize bracket though on one ^_^ and barely missed the prize money on the other =(.

Poker just tolls your mind. I have gained a new found respect to tournament players who sit for hours and days grinding away at tournaments.

To compare how tiring this is, I played a two set of tennis before, and in my state of physically fitness (which can be described as barely) it was so tiring. After that, I didn't do any physical labor for the next 2-3 days.

But right now, I'm so burnt. My mind is vegetating with having to be alert for more 4 hours. It's gone. I can't even think right now...

Update

Update on what's happening. I'm excited to talk about what just happened in a poker tournament I joined. However, poker isn't the only thing that been happening. Perhaps more significant than any other right now is I'm thinking of moving to California in the next few weeks. I haven't made my decision yet. And I might have to talk about it in more details in some post in the future.

Anyway, on to the tournament. Four hundred eighty nine players this time. I finished 6th. I outlasted 483 other players! Woohoo! It was an awesome ride and it is my best poker experience so far.

For a long time, I was actually the chip leader. In the tournament, people start out with 1500 chips. When I joined, I just told myself to be aggressive and put the decision on other people. I wasn't expecting to last beyond 30 minutes of playing, I just wanted to have fun. When I got to 20,000 in chips, I was just curious as to how much the chip leader had. I usually look at it as a gauge on how well I am doing.

And zing! The chip leader had 20,000! It was me! :O

I pretty much stayed as the chip leader until I reached 60,000. Then I got some hit. I went down to 54,000 and went down to like 10th place in the leaderboard. After some time, I got into two big pots (one of which is the hand that I'll tell you about) that catapulted me into a huge chip leader.

How big a chip leader was I? Massive. For a time, I had 130,000 to my stack, and the 2nd place guy is 52,000. I was more than twice the next guy. And it's fun playing the big stack. You get to bully people out of pots and that helped me a lot to accumulate more chips.

Anyway, this is one of the critical hands in the tournament. If I lose, I'll get a huge hit, if I win, I'll distance myself further from the rest.

Here's how it went down. I had and raised as is my SOP. I've been raising my hand a lot of times that I hope people won't think I have a monster when I actually have like in this hand. One guy called. The pot was approximately 5,000

The flop was something like:



The guy lead on and bet a healthy bet of another 4,000. At this point, I thought about raising him to see if indeed he has the king. It's the only card that can beat me. But I just called thinking I could re-raise on the turn (the 4th card is called the turn).

The turn gave another king. A King of clubs to be precise. So the board now looks like:



My opponent then bet something like 9,000.

At this point I was even less inclined to believe that my opponent has kings. It's just a law of probability, if there are more kings on the board, there are less kings anywhere else. So I was thinking my opponent probably hit the 3 or 5 or has a pocket pair. He's trying to represent he has kings by betting here with the fact that there's 2nd king on the board.

However, my initial plan of re-raising him on the turn had to change. His 9,000 bet was pretty high for me. Poker rules state I can only re-raise by at least twice that and I wasn't prepared to part ways with 18,000 to someone with 3 kings. I could have folded here and cut my losses, but the fact that there are 3 clubs already and I have a Jack of clubs, could give me some additional help. (i.e., I need 5 clubs to get a flush.)

So I just called.

The river (5th card) came 9c. And the board now looked like:



At this point, my opponent went all in for more than 30,000-35,000 of his remaining chips. Yikes!

Ok, I have to think this through and figure out if I'm ahead or not. If I'm not, I can still walk away and fold. And even though I lost a significant part of my chip stack, it's not game breaking. I think I started with around 55,000 chips and I still had around 40,000 if I walk away.

This is the hand that I took a long time contemplating. I had to answer 3 questions. Depending on how I answer these questions would determine whether I'll fold or call.

(1) Did he really have the king? At the turn, like I said, I was inclined to not believe he had the king. After reviewing what has happened though, I was 98% sure he _HAD_ the king.

Now, 3 kings would not beat a flush. So I had to dig deeper and two more questions needed to be answered. A hand that can beat me is a higher flush. With 4 clubs on the board, it's so easy to make a flush if you have one in your hand. But the question is:

(2) Did he flop a higher flush? He could be playing a king with an kicker of Ace of clubs. If that's the case, then he'll have a higher flush than my J-high. But I figured if he had AK pre-flop he would have been a lot more aggressive pre-flop. So I'm inclined to believe he didn't have the ace of clubs and that he didn't have a higher flush.

Note that at this point nothing is certain. I could still be wrong in my read. Right now, I'm looking at the "percentage" he could have the Ace of club. After revisiting how he played this hand, my gut is telling me it's probably not the case.

(3) Could he be playing K9 and got a full house? I figured it's possible, but I have a feeling that's not what he has. The main reason is that K9 is pretty weak, compared to say KJ or KQ or even AK. I made a healthy raised pre-flop and people don't usually call with K9.

After answering these 3 questions, I was confident that more than 50%, my Jack high flush is the better hand.

I called. He did indeed have the king. He had no clubs, his kicker wasn't 9 and I became ~50,000 richer.

WSOP update

After the last "day 1"* has been concluded, organizers now know how many joined and how much to award from the price pool of this years World Series of Poker. And it's a whopping: $12,000,000.

Last year it was 7.5 million and the year before, it was 5 million. So this year is a big jump.

As for the players I'm routing for, about 90% of them have been eliminated! But thankfully, a shining light, Daniel Negreanu is still in the chase and actually kicked butt in his day 1. Hopefully he does well in day 2. Another one is Chris "Jesus" Ferguson (his nickname is Jesus cause he has long hair and a goatie and looks pretty much like Jesus).

*The number of this year's players is so huge that in an unprecedented move, the tournament organizers had to had to divide the "first day" into 4 batches over 4 days, and labeled it 1A, 1B, 1C and 1D. Day 2 will similarly be divided but only into 2 batches. Day 3 and so on will be played normally.