First and foremost – I was alerted to this little piece of crap – the Trojan is the piece of crap, not the site that has the info – by Ken (one of the forum posters and soon to have articles published on the main page of PokerWorks). I hate cheaters and liars and thiefs. Have I ever told you that before? If I didn’t, please have it tattooed in your thoughts when you deal with me. Do it in red ink so it can’t be lasered out. Ahhh…What’s the difference? Answer: You can have ink lasered out, the tattoo remains but laser makes the dye invisible…red is much harder to get rid of. Go for red if you ever doubt that I hate cheaters and liars and thiefs.

The time drift is on. Moving back to the last few weeks, Felicia Lee and Glen were both in Bellagio and stopped to say ‘hi’. Felicia caught me in a conversation with Lance (other posts about him) and he can get pretty intense when he wants to make a point. I was trying to stay tuned to his ‘intenseness’ and not lose the thread of the conversation when she walked up and wanted to know if she was interrupting anything. So…it may have seemed to her that I was ‘dissing’ her but I really wasn’t and I believe she was trying to tease me with the fact that he could be a romantic liaison. *Pssst…He’s married* A half hour later, or so, I was in a $15-30 H game and she stopped by for a moment with Glen. It’s always a pleasure to see her.

*****

I got stood up by two guys in the same week – almost to the day:

Michael sent me an email, he and Michelle would be in to see me and he would play poker with me. No call, no show! In my business, you can be fired for that! I don’t want to fire him because he’s such a kewl kid. But I truly missed seeing him and drinking a few ‘ultras’ while we tried to beat each other in a poker game.

And Ben Stanfield. Where the hell did you go? I honestly thought you’d be in to say ‘hello’ and even brought my camera in to the room. That bachelor party must’ve been a rip snorting affair. Hope you guys had a great time and things went well.

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Apparently I have my own ‘limo’ service now. Wow! I’ve come up in the world.

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This guy is one of the best poker stories I’ve seen in years. His name is Charlie. And hopefully, when he returns home, he will get in touch with me (or rather his son will because his son ‘knows geek’ and Charlie doesn’t) and Craig Cunningham (he’s writing for PokerWorks) will do an interview with him for PokerWorks main page. To find out more about Charlie and his poker ventures, you’ll have to wait until we have more news of him. All of his shirts have this embroidered – somewhere – on them.

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I’ve had my butt glued in the $15-30 seat for the last two weeks. Three sessions were quite painful – back to back – and I didn’t even feel like committing suicide. That in itself, is pretty damned amazing. I looked at 9-3, 6-4, 5-6, Q-3, J-2, repeat – repeat – repeat, for hours. I’ve never understood why, if there is four of everything in a deck, I should get the same cards over and over and over. I picked up pocket fives and pocket threes at least 15 times. How does that happen? Where are the Kings and Queens or Aces for that matter? Never picking up A-K but twice in about 15 to 16 hours of play, A-Q twice, and lots of poopie/doopie hands that weren’t even playable. I’m sure I bad played off about $400 on one night. But the rest of the time I feel my play was solid and I just couldn’t connect with anything.

In one of the $15-30 plays, I met a youngster named Dan. Why and how we struck up a conversation, I’m not sure. I believe it started with hiking, he was here for the summer and wanted to play to win his tuition and help pay for school and he needed to impress his father with the fact that he could play poker, win, and still have outside interests…that’s why hiking seemed to suit him. I gave him my card. He’s read here, he thought it was me just from the pictures up on and site, and we continued to gab and play for a few hours. He was pretty damn funny. He had all the straight man lines down and I couldn’t help but chuckle every time he popped one into the heat of the action.

The conversation went to hookers…somehow. He said he really was so dumb about it that he met one of them (at a bar I think) and she told him $400 and he thought she needed the money for something so he asked her what she needed it for. *LMAO*

Jamie was in this game also, sitting next to me. I’ve dealt to him a lot of times and played with him twice. Our first session of playing together was a few weeks ago and our conversation turned to that game – a noisy, in love with himself, ego bigger than the Atlantic, type of kid got in the game. Don’t even take this as a slam to that kid. I love to play poker with people like him. He had a sweater.

*Backtrack*

That’s another funny part of the conversation with Dan. Jamie and I were talking about the previous play and the kid and his sweater. Dan thought we were talking specifically about an article of clothing the kid was wearing. *hysterical laughter*

*End Backtrack*

The Kid kept giving me a come on – he would move down to a seat next to me and I would like it, blah, blah, blah. He had me chuckling. Until he said he didn’t see a ring on my finger but everyone said that a ring didn’t plug a hole. With a straight face I asked him where they said that at. He couldn’t answer my question.

I left that game and it started to break down. Jamie played the Kid heads-up because the Kid suggested it. And Jamie took all of his chips.

To the present game, with Dan and Jamie, couldn’t put anything together in this game and finally ran into one hand that was bizarre in the way it was played, me and the 6s heads-up (Dan left that seat and cashed for the night). I’m going to post the play of the hand on the Forum. Read the hand here, hopefully I can get a few responses as to thoughts on the hand because I seriously want to get a few opinions.

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I still have a rag with dealers. This is one of the things that tighten my jaws. I hadn’t won a pot in forever and I picked up 9-9. I was middle position in the action. No…I didn’t raise it. The Flop brought 9-3-2 with three hearts. The SB bet, I raised, he just called, and we were heads-up. Five of Hearts on the Turn. He checked, so did I. The River brought a blank. He bet, I called. He went into a, “Do you really want to see this hand. Do you want me to show it to you…”

He turned over the A-4 of Hearts. He had me beat on the Flop and on every street, and yes…he made a Straight Flush.

The dealer did a, “Flush…Straight Flush…He’s got a Steel Wheel!” as he pushed the cards up on the board.

I’m not sure if the dealer picked up the sarcasm in my voice when I asked, “Got any more names for that hand?”

I could see the straight flush. I wasn’t upset over the hand, I never had the best of it except pre-flop. I learned to deal with all the old timers badgering my brain, “Linda, for every winner at the table, there are more losers. Don’t talk. Don’t say anything you don’t have to say. Just deal the game.” Those were the kind ones. The other ones snarled, “Shut the fuck up and deal!” I don’t need a dealer going through all the theatrics and gimmicks and statements trying to make themselves look like they are the star of the show. And besides, it’s only called a ‘steel wheel’ in eight or better games.

The End: