Last Night

Last night Pedro returned to the mound at Fenway and I returned to the final table of the Wednesday night poker game - similar results occurred for both Pedro and the man.

It was good to see Pedro get a well deserved ovation from the Fenway faithful. If it were up to me Pedro would have ended his career as a member of the Red Sox and his number would have been retired. My head, though, says that not giving him that 4th year was a very good business move.

It was equally good to see him get roughed up in his 3 innings. Poor Lastings Milledge. Omar will never be able to trade him to Boston now that he's developed a phobia of the Green Monster.

I watched the game from a local athletic club that has a regular Wednesday night Texas Hold 'em tourney. Its a $30 buy-in with $20 re-buys for the first hour. We had four tables each with 8 or 9 players with the goal of getting down to 2 players per table. The top 4 places get paid with the winner taking down $600 based upon last night's draw.

My table was fairly conservative and it took forever to get it down to three people. The other tables were waiting for us and I was concerned about wasting my stack trying to knock out one guy and be crippled at the final table. At one point a guy goes all-in for $1300 and I already had $300 in chips commtted as the small blind. I had Q / 9 offsuit but my gut told me to call (it would have cost me half my stack). After long consideration - I dropped. We "rabbit hunted" and it turned out that my Q / 9 would have been good. The other players finally got tired of waiting for us and the final 3 from my table made the final table a 9 player table.

I had just enough chips for twice around (blinds were $600 / $300) and I had not seen any good starting hands all night. One guy quickly busted out and we were down to 8 players. Right before I was the big blind - I got K/10 clubs. I called the $600 and the guy in 3rd position went all in for $1100. The button called and I added another $500 to call as well. The flop was crap but I was committed at this point so I went all in (which I should have done to begin with). The button called and showed K/J offsuit which held up against me for the sidepot. 3rd position took the main pot with a lousy pair of sixes.

Oh well. I was out in 7th place and out of the money.

One last thought from last night. Trot Nixon has been one of the hottest players in baseball. In his last 10 games he's hitting .389 with 9 runs and 7 RBI. For the month of June he's hitting .395 with 1 HR, 16 runs and 14 RBI. That's a pretty hot bat. Nixon is making it pretty tough not to re-sign him in the offseason.

Looking back I wish I called that guy when I had the Q / 9 - just as I bet Pedro wishes Lastings Milledge caught that flyball in the first inning.