Thursday, February 26, 2004

I was seated at the four table. Usually, the way the tourney tables are decided is the breaking up of games by the majority of players being in tourneys. Management re-seats the non-tourney players to existing games, and tables that end up with only a couple of players left are used for the tournament. Usually these tables are on the right side of the poker room, and kind of wind into the back tables, which are the last used for cash games.

Since there is no-smoking anymore in the tourneys, all of the tourney tables are in kind of a section by themselves. Unfortunately, it doesn't always work out. Sometimes a table will be right in the middle of the tourney section, but is still a cash game. It is just a freak occurance when one of these tables has few to no players participating in the tournament.

That is what happened on Thursday. A cash game was kept running in the middle of the tournament tables. It is usually no big deal, but on this occasion, there just happened to be a lot of smokers at that particular table. Not the kind of smokers who care that others do not smoke, hence being a little more polite, but the kind of smokers who assert, "We are allowed to blow smoke in your face, because we smoke and this is a smoking room." Everyone knows those type.

I am fortunate in the fact that smoke doesn't bother me. I have no idea why. I would suspect it is because my Mom smoked from before I was even conceived. My Dad never smoked, but both of my Stepdad's have been almost chain smokers.

Anyway, there was a guy next to me in the tourney who was definitely affected. He never said a thing. He pulled his turtleneck up over his mouth and sometimes nose, when it got overwhelming, but he never said anything rude. He coughed during almost the whole tourney. He was a tourist, and I have never seen him.

Doug, the TD, asked the smokers at that table to please be a little more polite about their smoking (and Doug smokes, so this shows you how rude they were being). They started laughing and heckling our table, urging other smokers to blow the smoke at us, and "puff away," (according to one of the group), to irritate our table as much as possible. Soon more than half of the table was smoking and blowing it at us. They were all holding their cigarettes out towards us, so that the smoke would waft over to our table.

I went and got Glenn's fan, to blow it back at them. We never said a word. I put it in front of the guy next to me, in his drink holder, so that he wouldn't suffer so badly.

He never said a word, even though he was clearly uncomfortable. All of the bad behavior was on the part of the other table.

Sad that our society has gotten this atrocious.

My losing streak was broken a bit by a few split pots and quarters of big pots. I survived after the first NL Omaha 8 hand. Thank you, God!

I did receive an A2xx hand twice. I am not running quite so badly anymore.

I played quite a bit more passively, but Omaha 8 encourages passive plays. I can check call until I have the nuts, then pump the pot for all I have.

Glenn got moved to my table when we were down to 30 players. Glenn went out almost immediately. There is an older senior named Jerry who loves Omaha. He plays the highest limit offered until the game breaks up for the tourney, then plays the tourney, and if he is not in a commanding lead when we go to no-limit, he just shoves all-in every hand until he busts out, then goes back into the newly formed cash game (formed from players who bust out early).

So poor Glenn got caught in Jerry's crossfire. Jerry kept going all-in every hand. Glenn woke up to A267s and had to call. Naturally the flop came all high, and instead, both Jerry and Glenn were eliminated by another player with a high hand in between.

I managed to stay on.

Finally we were down to 20 players, so I was assured of WPT points. I kept running short, so I took chances when I needed to win a pot, or at least halve it.

In my final hand, I was in the blind and flopped top pair, with an open-ended straight draw on an all high board. I had to call all-in, and got two pair, but that made the bettor a straight. C'est la vie.

At least I'm not busting out first anymore! What a triumph!