Assholes, Fun, and No Profit - For the Kids

Well, the charity game came off pretty much as expected. Except for the pleasant surprise that the dealers actually knew what they were doing. Sure, there were a few small flubs, and corrections that wouldn't fly at a real game (ie.- dealer accidentally mucks cards, asks player what they were and fishes them out for them), but you can't expect Vegas rules in a game populated with people who are only donating to charity.

My first table was a good one. We had 3 rebuys within the first orbit, and many more to come. There was chatter among strangers, jokes, and drinks. Hell, everyone there even seemed to know how to play.

Except one guy. Drunk, belligerent, and generally an asshole. String betting, neither listening nor understanding the dealer as she explained why she was refusing his raises, and belittling every server that passed. To the point where he brought a completely innocent one to tears because she followed his instructions and he was too drunk and sociopathic to realize he was in the wrong. I wanted a table change just to get away from him.

Then he offered his bottle of Grey Goose to the table, and staying seemed like not such a bad idea.

I was generally card dead and in for $300 when I finally put away my cursed Caesars AC dice. A friend had swung by to see how I was doing and prompted this dice removal. The next hand was cowboys. An all-in before me screamed aces, but I called anyway. Sure enough, the rockets had me dead to 2 outs. The K on the river prompted a fistpump from me followed quickly by an apology to the guy I busted. What can I say, I'm Canadian.

Then it was back to no cards until the same friend came back along with N. I look down to cowboys once again. This time they're good all-in against pocket Ts and I'm looking pretty good. The TT I saw the next hand took out the guy I'd just crushed with the Kings.

The table broke and that was the beginning of the end. No huge hands, and a few stolen blinds kept me around an M of 10, which was less than comfortable, but completely reasonable for the structure we were playing.

Then I made my big mistake.

Pocket 8's and a limping table had me raising it up to 8k (1k/2k blinds). I got two callers, putting the pot at $28k. KQ3 on the flop didn't look good. My buddy M pushed his last 7k forward, and there was one to act behind me.

I gave it some thought. Chances of a K were good, but he could also be making what he figured was a move (not a lot of poker experience) with his stack, so I couldn't discount AJ or a lower pocket pair. Plus, of course, I had my 2 outs to a set, or a whopping 8%. With 5:1 odds, I should have folded. But instead I called. The player behind me called as well. Now she was the worst player at the table. The type who didn't have any idea what her chips were worth, or even how dirty her stacks were. She was relying on the dealer for all instruction. After the dealer counted out 7k in 1k chips for her, she decided she was in.

I was done. She could have bet $1 and I'd have folded. Instead, she checked the brick turn and the brick river, and I happily checked behind. My buddy had AK for TPTK, I had my melted snowmen, and the newbie had KQ for flopped top two pair. Half my stack was now hers.

With only 15k left and the blinds at 1k/2k, I wasn't doing so hot.

I eventually looked down at JTo in position and decided to call a raise to 5k. KQx on the flop kept me in. The flop was checked. Turn was a brick, and another 5k was bet out. I ran the numbers. 8 outs once, or 17-18% 8k left. I go all-in, he's insta-calling, so it's around 6:1 for me to push here. Odds said to push, and I did. River brick sent me home. Right move, wrong card.

Still, it was a fun time, with a generally good group. I'm sure a good chunk of change was raised for the children, so I can't complain.

Next live poker? The usual home game the weekend before I head off to Vegas. I'm leaving the cursed dice at home.

Charitable Fear

Back in '07 I played in a charity poker game. It still ranks as the worst-run tournament I've ever played in. And I played at The Orleans WPBT tourney a few summers ago!

Tonight, I return to that scene. Actually, they moved it from the Hockey Hall of Fame to a less glamourous location - the upstairs lounge of a downtown bar/restaurant/club. The buy-in is substantially lower too, leading me to believe the days of open bar and free eats are long gone as well. But, it's poker, it's live, and it should still be a fish pond. Plus, it's for kids, so I'll justify my desire for live poker by saying it's for a good cause and building karma.

So $100 to play. $100 rebuys, and a "top-off" as well. I get the impression they haven't become any less clueless than 2 years ago, so my guess would be that it's a rebuy only if you're busto, and truly a top-off instead of an add-on, so you can't head into the break with a real stack if you're in trouble, making the appeal of rebuying towards the end of the period pretty thin.

But here's hoping they at least start mildly on time and don't start eliminating levels or changing the structure partway through the game. And that the dealers can keep track of the levels and hand rankings.

So, expecting terrible play, I'm torn between playing tight ABC poker, or being a maniac. This may be one of the rare times I opt to have a few beverages while playing... hell, I'm pre-drinking tonight. Maniac it is.

In fact, I decided to bring a Caesars Atlantic City craps dice with me as a card capper. I shall let it determine my choices for at least some hands this evening. THAT should fuck with everyone at the table, fish and shark alike.

Maybe I Should Make Plans For Saturday

The way my poker game has been going of late, I expect I'll be out of the WPBT game in Vegas around the same time as dead stacks would be. I'm playing terrible poker. Weak, scared, frustrated poker. I'm letting card death control my play, and am ignoring everything else. That's a formula for bubbling, which I've been doing a lot of recently.

I've got a live game tomorrow, but it's a charity rebuy event, so I don't expect it to be indicative of real poker by any stretch. The $100 buy-in will probably stop people from acting crazy, but the structure will no doubt be horrible, and the play painful.

I should probably once again step away from the online game, much like I did last year, except I'm not playing very much these days anyway. The craving to jump online has long-ago subsided, and the desire to stay there when I do log on is minimal and quickly wanes. I still love the live game, but seldom get to one anymore. I haven't been by my local club since they were busted, and the nearest casino is still 90 minutes away.

Speaking of which - I'll be at Casino Niagara Sunday afternoon with a whack of friends to roll some dice if anyone has nothing better to do. Depending how that goes, some terrible table games may be played as well.

Point being, I should figure out which craps games I want to hit while the tournament is going on after I've busted out 2 hours in.

Oh who am I kidding? I'll be due for so many pocket rockets and river suckouts that your heads will spin.

My Vegas Itinerary

Ah, it's that glorious time of year. The leaves have fallen, the air is crisp (actually, it's been pretty warm here the past week), and my blogger brethren and sistren start heading into overdrive on the anticipation of the coming Winter Gathering.

I, of course, am no different. The excitement for the upcoming trip continues to increase as the date rapidly approaches. The flight was booked awhile ago, and the rooms at the Bellagio shortly thereafter. Car is rented. Ziplining is booked. Two dinner reservations are made. Golf payments have been forwarded, and the poker tournament has been RSVP'd to.

In other words - all that's left is the waiting. Well, the waiting and maybe a new pair of pants.

So, because you care, here's the general outline of my trip:

Wednesday

- Get in around 10:30pm, check-in, and hit The Strip until my brain stops working

Thursday

- Up, eat, and head out to Boulder for noon to zipline over Bootleg Canyon - want to come along?
- Back, do some shopping, and then gamble if there's time before dinner at Robuchon
- Dinner at Robuchon. This is where new pants may be needed.
- Mosey over to the IP for degeneracy and the gathering of degenerates
- Gamble and drink until my brain hurts

Friday

- Up, eat, and head out to Golf course for to take pictures of the golfing bloggers. Really, I do it to zip around in a golf cart.
- Golf ends, Strip is returned to
- Dinner at Delmonico
- Back to finding bloggerdom. MGM mixed games I believe are in order? Whilst I dislike mixed games, I like the MGM card room
- Gamble until my brain screams at me.

Saturday

- Up, eat, be amazed that I'm still in Vegas
- Register for poker tournament
- Play in poker tournament
- This period is foggy due to uncertainty of how I'll do in the tournament
- Eventually, everyone will gather at the IP and we'll drink, gamble, and be merry
- Brain thing again

Sunday

- Get up, be totally sick of Vegas, go home
- Get home, start missing Vegas already

How To Kill A Weekend

Has it really been over 2 weeks since I posted? I blame Twitter - all the stuff I'd normally drag out to hundreds of words I'm not cramming into 140 characters. Time to reverse that trend!

My weekend was dominated by a single thing. I heard about it on Thursday, and had planned to look into Saturday, but a bit more information revealed I might not have that long.

So Friday I rushed home from work and headed out. What I was looking for was easy to find. Right up the stairs, you can't miss it.

"Can I help you sir?"

Someone was about to make the easiest sale of his life.

But this all starts much earlier. Maybe some 7 years earlier.

I was looking for a house back then, and walked into one of the many I had seen. The place was nice, but didn't suit my needs. What DID suit me was up on the wall. A glossy black thing of beauty.

And on Friday night, I got one of my own - a 50" Pioneer Kuro Elite Signature.

They're sold out in Canada. The Pioneer warehouse is bare, with no more coming in. They're out of the TV-making business in 2010, and the 101FD is going fast. But the place down the road from me had some in stock. It was now or never.

Of course, buying a TV means killing a weekend. After annoying me by refusing to drop the delivery fee after I just dropped a few grand with minimal effort from the commissioned guy, I opted to come back Saturday with a vehicle capable of carrying this beast.

Saturday was spent setting the system up. 160lbs of 34" 480p/1080i CRT taken down, 70lbs of plasma glory going up. Furniture rearranged, wiring redone, and a universal remote reprogrammed for the new screen.

Oh, and I picked up that CD player I wanted too (far too lazy to rip/download my entire music collection), so that came into the mix.

A side benefit of the whole thing was fixing a few wiring issues from the last time I redid the system (Blu-Ray player and new receiver). Now the whole system works as I'd planned, and it's a thing of beauty.

50" of THE top-of-the-line TV, 7.1 surround, and at least half a dozen ways to send data to it all. Naturally the rest of the weekend was spent watching anything I could on it. Yah, I guess I'll be watching more TV and movies for a while. Even football and golf seem enticing now... okay, maybe not golf.

/crowing

A Touch More Heat

Well, as inspired by yesterday's post, I made some jambalaya last night. This would be the... 3rd time I've made it. First inspired by the terrible concoction I received at the once great Southern Accent (seriously, it was as if they'd just slopped some pre-made rice, pasta sauce, and meats together instead of slow-cooking them), I was further angered when I realized how simple it was.

And it had some heat last night. Just the right amount - you could feel it, but it didn't cause pain and suffering.

The beauty of jambalaya is that it's pretty versatile and forgiving. My version, with a couple additions you won't usually find (namely mushrooms and zucchini).

The whole thing gets made in one pot, so make sure you use one big enough for your purposes. Also, note that measurements are all approximate.

Oil
Butter
1 green bell pepper, chopped
1 red onion, chopped
3 or 4 stalks of celery, chopped
1/3 of a zucchini (store bought size), sliced and quartered
3 or 4 white mushrooms, cubed
3 cloves garlic - chopped
1/2 lb chicken breast (about 1 good-sized boneless, skinless half-breast), cubed
1/2 lb Louisiana/andouille/spicy sausage, sliced and halved
1/2 lb uncooked, peeled shrimp (the good kind, not those stupid rings), cut in halves or thirds
Salt, pepper, and spices to taste
1 large can tomatoes
1 can tomato paste
4 cups poultry stock
2 cups uncooked long grain white rice


- Heat oil and butter in the pot over medium heat
- Add celery, pepper, and onion, and some salt
- Cook until softened
- Add chicken and sausage, cook until chicken is white
- Add zucchini and mushrooms, cook for a few minutes until starting to soften
- Add garlic and cook until you can smell the garlic (a couple minutes tops)
- Add spices (I used [deep breath] - kosher salt, fresh ground black pepper, ghost pepper salt, habanero salt, roast garlic salt, habanero powder, sweet smoked paprika, marash pepper, mexican chili powder, chipotle chili powder, and ancho chili powder)
- Add canned tomatoes, cook until bubbling
- Add 1/2 stock and bring to boil
- Add rice and stir to distribute it
- Reduce heat to med-low and cover, stirring occasionally
- At first, check and stir regularly, to avoid sticking. If rice is sticking to bottom, pull back the jambalaya so you can see bottom and drizzle more oil in, repeat in a few spots and stir, scraping the bottom as you go. If you're using a pot that's prone to scratching, I suggest a wooden or plastic utensil
- As the liquid absorbs in the rice, check the rice for texture. Add more stock as needed, stirring each time and recovering for a few minutes.
- Taste the rice (try to avoid the other stuff) to gauge if you like the level of tomato. If not, add tomato paste to taste. I used the whole can cuz I likes me my tomato flavour.
- Once the rice is the texture you like, reduce heat to low and add the raw shrimp. Stir the shrimp in and cover for 5 minutes.
- Check the jambalaya, if the shrimp is cooked, it's good to go.

Total time after everything is prepped is about an hour of cooking. This is largely due to the rice needing time to absorb the liquid. I like adding the liquid in stages and stirring until it's absorbed - much like risotto. Alternately, you can just dump all the liquid in and let it absorb like when you cook rice regularly.

Regardless of how you do it, you should reduce the amount of stirring your doing as you progress, unless you want the rice to me more of a goopy mush that is.

Not So Hot

As with most things in life, heat is something we adapt to. Which heat am I talking about? Spice.

I often find myself looking for the next step up in spicy when I cook for myself. I'm not one of those guys who grows his own super-hot peppers, or tries to break the record for most suicide wings eaten in 20 minutes (in fact, I tend to stay at the "hot" level when it comes to wings), I like heat, not pain.

I'm sadly disappointed when it's not there as advertised.

There's a fantastic sausage maker that operates out of the St. Lawrence farmers market on Saturdays - Gaucho's Chorizo. Delicious offerings, no filling, lean, and one hell of a variety of flavours. Honey garlic? Easy. Red wine and fennel? Sure. Beer and cheese? Right here. Etc, etc.. They also have their hot ones. Hot chorizo, spicy Louisiana, and their top of the heap - Internal Combustion. I picked up an IC a few weeks ago and fried it up last night.

Nada.

The barest hint of spice. I was ready for eye-watering, tissue-grabbing heat. Not even a sniffle. The sausage was tasty for sure, but not hot.

I was also saddened that I had apparently not used enough ghost pepper infused salt on my fried potatoes, as they also lacked heat (but were delicious). Next time, I'll also toss in some habanero powder, as the hot cayenne ain't doing it.

There's my favourite mustard place at St. Lawrence too (in the south market). When I first tried them years ago, I was tearing up with their mild mustards. The last time I made a purchase there, I tried their XXX hot mustard and shrugged. The woman behind the counter missed me trying it and asked what I was looking for. "Something hot." "Have you tried the XXX?" "Yah, not doing it for me." She was shocked. She pointed me to their hot russian, and IT had some bite. Nice! So I bought it, and it sat in my pantry for months. Then I noticed it had popped its seal and honey was leaking out. I opened it, it was fine, and put it in the fridge. But sadly... the heat was gone. I'm not sure if just mellowed over time, or if I once again had moved up the Scoville scale in my tolerance, or a combination of both, but I was disappointed.

I have a bottle of "Super hot" horseradish I bought for a roast beef sandwich. I nearly wept when I opened it the day I bought it and discovered barely any FLAVOUR let alone heat.

So now? I'll stick with the thai chili infused pickles in my fridge. Not burning, but still hot. Might be time for more Jambalaya. Have to remember to pick up shrimp...