Posted by Al Pastor

5/17/05 Oaks Club $1-2/$2-4 Hold’em
12:15-3:15 PM
In $60 Out $154 +$94

5/21/05 Oaks Club $2-4 Hold’em
8:30 PM-12:30 AM
In $160 Out $160 +$60

5/24/05 Oaks Club $2-4 Hold’em
3:15-6:30 PM
In $100 Out $21 -$79

5/30/05 Oaks Club $1-2/$2-4 Hold’em
12:30-7:30 PM
In $110 Out $128 +$18

5/31/05 Oaks Club $2-4 Hold’em
3:45-7:15 PM
In $60 Out $166 +$106

6/1/05 Oaks Club $2-4 Hold’em
4:15-7:00 PM
In $60 Out $206 +$146

6/5/05 Oaks Club $2-4 Hold’em
4:15-7:00 PM
in $60 Out $126


Hours Played 2005: 125.75 YTD -$478

I am playing pretty well lately, and, as the totals above reflect, catching and winning. My father says that in the Houston days, when he was keeping good records, he had 22 winning sessions in a row. I have now put together 4.

I am on my way to play now. After I take a bath, read some INFINITE JEST, and get the coffee that makes my life liveable. I wanted to make a post before I had any more activity, though, and relate some of the things that have occurred since my last.

First, there was the guy who came sat down at my table a few days ago. Pretty heavily accented Chinese guy, in his fifties, who I have seen in the club before but never played at the same table with. He always wears all white--shorts, t-shirt, sweatshirt (when I have seen him before, he wore a BUSH/CHENEY sweatshirt, which he spared us today), tall sock, and a white cap with an embroidered Corvette logo. So he gets called to our table, and before he sits down he takes two garbage can liner bags from his shorts’ pocket and puts one over his chair’s back and one over the chairs seat. Weird enough, but then whenever he bets he makes this gesture where he extends his arm high above his head and then brings it down into an arc into the pot. And when he raises, he makes the same crane like gesture accompanied by the exclamation “RAISHE!”

The second fellow I will mention was already at the table when I sat down the other day. African American, in his thirties (36, I would learn), wearing a ring the size of a doorknob, platinum, I guess, encrusted with bling and runes I couldn’t make out for a while. He mentioned he played football several times, but nobody would bite. Finally, he just came out and told us he played for the San Jose Saber Cats. I refrained from asking why they were not called the saber TOOTHED cats. Anyway, he was playing really loose, but getting really lucky. But he is the kind of player you want at your table-new to the game, drunk (every time a waitress came around, he ordered a double Hennessy rocks and a double Hennessy neat), and with a tremendous ego that made him never let go of a hand. He got several phone calls, and his most endearing quality(other than his paying me off on every bet I made against him) was that he would answer saying “Hey lemme call you back, I’m playing poker---no, at a real table in Oakland---” His least endearing quality was that when his girlfriend showed up, he made a show of introducing her to the table, and then when she went to the rail to wait for him, he said, loudly enough for the whole table to hear “I can’t trust that bitch.”

Anyway, my bath calls.