Poker Tuesday

My favorite non-athletic games, in order:

(1)    Texas 42 Dominoes (and its rarely seen variant 88).

(2)    Hold’em poker (and its extremely dangerous variant Omaha).

(3)    Rummy 500.

(4)    Backgammon.

(5)    Hearts.

I’ve written about the domino game before (see here), and I have written about poker frequently too.  

Rummy was our family game for many years, a complicated variant of gin that my dad loved and my mother has become quite adept at too.

Backgammon was my game in college, balancing aggression, probability and luck.  I have always been very good at it, whether in person or online.  It’s hard to find people to play in real life, however.

Same for Hearts.  It is easy to get a game online, but there you don’t get the pleasure of watching someone in person catch the queen of spades unexpectedly, their faces falling as they replay the hand in their mind, wishing they had played any other card.  My brother’s face is particularly aggrieved when that happens, which is why he doesn’t play with me much anymore.

Tonight was my biweekly poker game at my friend Jimmy’s house.  The way it usually goes is a tournament with between 25 and 30 players on three or four different tables, and then, as players get knocked out of the tournament, a cash game.

Tonight, the poker tournament did not go well for me, but I won about $185 in the cash game, so it was pretty much a wash for the night.  The stakes are not scary, so the point really is the camaraderie and the competition.  I’ve been playing in this game for about 15 years and consider the guys to be some of my best friends.

It’s what I tell my son frequently: you have to find your tribe and then say yes.  If you are lucky, you can belong to many tribes - for me, family, basketball, gym, band, cards - and know that there are people out there who have your back because you share their interests and have their backs.

I am a lucky person.

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Breakfast today: bowl of cereal with skim milk, then a couple of energy bars before leg day at the gym.  I leg pressed about 380 pounds and did walking lunges, tire pushes, step-ups, sumo squats, and some kind of weird curtsy exercise with the TRX straps.  Then a hot dog for lunch, and some chicken quarters with green beans for dinner.

My culinary highlight today was making two quarts of pickled green beans with the produce I got at the farmers market on Saturday.  Two kinds of vinegar, a little salt, a little sugar, and pickling spices with blanched beans.  They will soak for a day or two and then we will see what we have.

Tomorrow, a long walk, some more exercise, and lunch with a former co-worker.  And I need to practice my guitar!

Nighty night!