The First Bad Beat of the Blog

Well, it turns out that Empire's reload bonus doesn't start until Thursday, so I was left a bit high-and-dry last night. I still have about 96% of my bonus to clear at Noble Poker, but I could drive to Ameristar, put my name on the list, order a drink, smoke a cigarette, lose $20 playing the slots, and drive home, all before I get a seat on the single 2/4 table that's open there.

I'm really starting to hate waitlists. Not because I'm impatient... I am, but I can kill hours in front of a computer without even thinking about poker, so that's hardly the issue. Mostly it's because I hate seeing such poorly implemented code. I was number nine (number nine... number nine...) of nine on the waitlist for 2/4 on Noble last night. You'd think that, if there are nine players waiting, it might be time to open another table and shove all of us on there. Surely if there were some way to communicate with the other players on the list, I could have convinced some of them to join a new table. Are they worried that the table will break shortly after it starts? Casinos have been using these things called "Must-Move tables" for years now, surely a similar strategy would work. It's really just lazy programming-by-committee bullshit that keeps the interfaces for these sites so terrible.

Anyway, I ended up playing on Ultimate Bet for most of the night, since I left a few hundred there after I cleared their most recent bonus. Someone once said, "If you're not playing for a bonus, you're losing money." I had no idea how right they were... one night with no bonus play and I dropped about 75 big bets. Yuck. The first four hands that I took to show-down, I got beat runner-runner. The third time, we capped on the flop and turn, only to watch the flush hit the river to beat my As and Ks.

Dammit. Well, there it is. My first bad beat story for the blog. My friend J said the other day that she believes that she is doomed to do everything she's ever said she'd never do. It would of course be easy enough for me to go back and delete the offending lines, but at least this way I won't have to worry about letting "The First One" slip out anymore.

posted by Captain Freeman @ 5:30 PM