Dumb Then Worse

So tonight in the ever-growing home game -- 17 players tonight with a slew of cancellations, I swear we're going to get to that third table soon -- I've got the big stack at my table in the tournament, and make it to the final... and for a while, things are going grand. I'm the chip leader at my table, then suffer a terrible whiff on a knockout chance where Ace-King suited fails against Ace-Four off (no, seriously), even after the flop gives me a flush draw. Just brutal, but I overcome it to pull in a few other pots and make it to the final table, where I get my charmed hand, King-Jack. Two others raise pre-flop, but I chase it to a high pair on the flop, and right into the buzzsaw of an opponent who made trips with his pocket '8s. Oh, and the third guy in the hand had aces. Jeez. So I pretty much shed the whole stack at once in a fit of stubbornness and good past memories, and a few hands later Ace-Queen suited in the don't even have enough for the small blind doesn't carry the mail against three other monster plays. Two really good hours of play, shot down in five really bad minutes. That's my 2011 in a nutshell, really.

The cash game, if it's possible, goes even worse. I bet middle pair and an open-ended straight draw... into a flopped straight. I chase two pair into a flopped flush. And then in the piece de resistance, I flop a full house -- no, seriously, flop a full house -- entice an all-in call where the other guy misread my hand totally, then watch runner-runner give him a better boat.

A smarter man, at this point, just realizes that it's not his night, and gets the hell away from the game. But when you host things and there's a lively group of people were you enjoy their company, and the game is something you look forward to, not playing is really not the option that it should be. And when things finally end, hours later as the sun comes up and the room gets cleaned and straightened and you realize that it's three long weeks before this can all happen again, assuming of course that something like this should be allowed to ever happen again, seeing as you are clearly a jaw-droopingly bad and unlucky player...

Well, I suppose the money lost here won't matter that much in the long run, and that an evening of playing heart and wallet-breaking power won't destroy me, or prove that the past three-plus years at the tables has just led me to this sad, sad state. The game is good at humbling you, really. Really, really good...