in tribute to our founding fathers

In celebration of the sacrafices that our founding fathers have made I did what any good American would do on this national holiday...I went gambling.

Yesterday was a good day.

I won an online tourney in the afternoon and headed up to the pub to give it a run.

As is worked out, the final table consisted of myself, some creepy guy, Poker Mike, his girlfriend ( and you could forget about those two colluding....if it's for poker chips she'd stab him with a rusty tent stake), and "The Chick"...our hero from the Tony Has A Meltdown Story.

When we got to three players the blinds were 20/40 and there were only 4000 chips on the table between the three of us. This meant that skill was secondary to luck. The prizes were $100 for first, a gift certificate for second, and a bucket for third...yeah a bucket. So I looked over and the chick had just a couple of chips left and I made the following proposal to the creepy guy, " How about you and I split the 100 50-50, and we'll give 'The Chick' the $20 and the bucket." I wasn't trying to insult anyone. I figured this was a fair deal. It would get The Chick a little more than she was probably going to get anyway...and would ensure that I'd walk out with a couple of bucks. He jumped at the idea immediately. The Chick looked at her cards and said, " No...who needs a fucking bucket. I'm playing to win".

Thats when I knew I was dead.

Sure enough...and just like in the basement, she doubled ...doubled...then finished off Mr. Creepy.

When we got to heads up I made a feeble attempt to negotiate another sort of chop and she shushed me....I don't mean figuratively either ..I mean she actually hip me with a full on libriarians " shushhhh". The Chick, it seems, has no time for chopping nonsense. The Chick is all about kicking ass.

It took about 3 hands heads up, and I was out.

At least she was kind enough to buy me a buckets worth of beer after the game. That gave her enoug time to explain the finer points of the game to me. While I drowned my losses in a seat of Labatts, she offered up some gems, my favorite of which was " There's really only one winner and everyone else is a loser........no offense".

Errrr, none taken ?

And then, her work done, she sent me stumbling home to sleep myself into a fine fourth of July hangover. For her just another tourney won and another man broken.

Lesson for the day: Don't corner 'The Chick'.

It only makes her angry...and you won't like it when she's angry.