I've been in Vegas the past three weeks trying to make a buck at the Five Diamond Classic. I didn't make it past the 200/400 level until the last tourney before the $15k, the $5k. I got 11th for $17k and that made my trip a little less of a nightmare. Unfortunately I was not happy with the way I busted out of the $5k. Had I lost a coinflip, gotten three outed, or even two outed I would've been okay with all of them but I just blatantly screwed up my last hand. The biggest issue was me chickening out in making a preflop squeeze when I knew one of the players was folding 100% of the time. It was a confidence issue that pops up here and there in live tournaments. Sometimes it keeps me out of trouble because I usually end up folding but most of the time my instincts are telling me to do one thing and I just don't have the balls/heart to go through with it. Even though this sounds pretty ridiculous, I think it was because I had left my super awesome Rayban Aviators at J.C.'s place and ended up playing without them. When I wear them it just puts me in a good place. It's like my beard, mohawk, and sunglasses are my mojo :). And if one of them is missing then I'm just not 100% confident. So I end up compounding my mistake by making two more throughout the hand and bust out. I was pissed at myself for not making the right play preflop and tried to make up for it postflop to no avail.
The 15k main event went pretty bad. I already wrote about day 1 but I'm not going to go into much about day 2. Basically I lost a 70k pot at 400/800 on the 876ss flop with 77 against JJs. He ran the flush. Well played guy. I had 30k after that and never rebounded after that. Never got a hand, never a good spot and busted at the end of 500/1000. Oh well, I was very satisfied with my play.
That's it for poker in this blog. I'm moving onto more important issues. Something of utmost importance: The Guy to Guy Handshake/Pound Limbo.
I know that any guy has come across this before many times. Before I get into the ins and outs of this. Let me tell you exactly what I am talking about:
Okay, so you see one of your buddies, not a buddy you haven’t seen in a while but a buddy who is one of your boys but you see him on a daily basis. You go up to him and say “sup dawg” or ‘what’s happenin’ brosef” or whatever. He replies with some standard “not much” or “nothing” similar to standard convos on AIM. You know what I’m talking about. Then after you are done jibber-jabbering about nothingness you say something to the effect of “Aight, peace” “Lata, yo”, “Adios Muchachos”, whatever it is. Then you go in for some sort of 'bro' affection. Girls hug or kiss their respective friends when leaving, bros, they just pound or give a good handshake. See back in the day it was always a handshake but at some point some guy rebelled against all of man and decided to close his hand into a fist, better known as a “pound”. If I were to guess who started this social phenomenon I’d have to say it was someone like Snoop Dogg or maybe Dr. Dre. I’d bet on it that it was a black dude because black dudes are just flat out cooler than white guys. It’s a proven fact, look it up on wikipedia or something. But anyways, this guy started pounding his homies and then those homies were like man, that’s cool, I gotta start pounding my homies and so on. I assume this trickling affect is similar to those wine pyramids where you pour into one glass on top and it overflows into the rest.
So this probably took a couple of years to progress and now the pound is giving the handshake a run for it’s money. Granted literally no one between the ages of 14-30 gives a standard handshake anymore unless it’s concerning something with business. There are many variations of the handshake. One being the handshake and snap where you would give a good handshake, but the cool way, the one where it looks like you are trying to arm wrestle with the other person, and then when you are sliding down his hand you put two of your fingers on his two fingers and it creates a snaplike sound. It’s pretty cool but got old fast. There's also the "bring it in" handshake where you give your 'bro' the aforementioned arm wrestling handshake and then you bring it in for a hug, a manly hug. The pound however is just simple, to the point, and it’s hard not to look cool using the pound.
So I digress, basically now the pound is up there with the handshake. You go various places across the US of A and I’m sure you will see assorted variants of both of them. But we can all agree on something, the pound has gained a tremendous following and now you don’t know if the person you are about to handshake is going to give you a pound or a handshake and vice versa. This brings me to the topic I wanted to address. This is truly plaguing teenagers and twenty-somethings across the country. So you go to give your boy a handhake and he’s giving you a pound. This is when disaster strikes. You now fumble to switch to the pound but it’s too late because he’s seeing the same thing only he’s switching to the handshake!!! Oh no!!! So now you are split seconds away from connected hands and that’s when the coolness that you two were about to exhibit turns to awkwardness. You guys touch and then there’s this, “I-dunno-what-to-do-now" type of vibe. You both just glance at each other and someone gives in to the other person and both agree on either a pound or the handshake. But the moment of acting cool is gone and both of you are left saying goodbye awkwardly.
The other day this happened, which I’ve come to expect being at a poker tournament for three weeks. So many handshakes, so many pounds. It’s impossible to think that all of them will go right. So yea the other day, I go to pound my friend Marco Johnson (CrazyMarco, NoraFlum who just pwns souls) and this exact thing happens but he changed his hand up quicker and went for the pound. But I stuck to my guns before he changed back to the handshake and told him to pound me (and yes I realize how awkward that sounds but how else do you want me to express this lol). So basically Marco got OWNED. Yes I’m saying this on the Interwebz, so bring it Marco! You got nothin'!
But yea, so as a duty to your fellow pounders across America, if you want the pound to become more popular we need to unite as a Pounding Nation and force people to pound over the so so so standard handshake. On top of beating out the handshake you get to own your friends and act like you have control over them because you forced them to pound instead handshake.
I know you never thought twice about the Guy to Guy Handshake-Pound Limbo that happens everyday, even every minute somewhere but that’s just me. I look way way way too deep into things. But hey, at least I wrote a blog about it! So much for keeping it short. This topic could literally be my whole blog lol. Awww fuck it, it is my whole blog today and it works out perfectly because my battery is stone cold dead on my Mac. :)
I really need to start writing more in my blog. I can think of a number of reasons why I should but still, I just sit on my festively plump ass all day (btw ill give you a gold star like in 3rd grade math class if anyone knows where that’s from. Yes yes, I know it’s a pretty standard quote but at the same time it’s pretty old school) playing poker or eating or Fifa’ing (dunno if it’s an actual word but it should be!) or even dare I say, en fuego(that’s old school too). I mean dare I say, talking to girls! I know aksdakjjklakljfgdskljfkljasdfjkasd Please don’t stop reading my blog now because I mentioned a poker player’s Kryptonite. I happen to dabble in ‘The Game’ (great book) that we call women believe it or not. I really thought I had ended this blog but apparently I can't stop writing. I'm addicted. It's like a drug lol.
Alright, I swear I'm done! Good night. Peace. ****pound****
