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Pittsburgh Recap - long per usual
Posted By: Stick
Date: Wednesday, 21 February 2007, at 9:45 a.m.
I arrived in Pitt. on Thursday night, a day early, because I was going to play a couple events the next day & didn't want to have to drive early in the day on my sleep schedule. The driver there was np even though the rest of the world is scared of a few snowflakes that didn't slow down my drive any.
Not much action the first night. I could only find one chouette and they were playing for $2/point. Oh well...I really just want to play even if it is $2/point. We played for a few hours and I broke even. I didn't get to sleep til 6 or 7am and was tentatively schedule to play tennis @ 10am w/Jeb, Ben, and I didn't know who else. At least I'll get a couple hours in?
I actually woke up in the morning and they only had two to play tennis which meant I'd be a 3rd wheel. Since I'm in absolutely no shape to play tennis anyway I took this as a sign from the Almighty Buddah that I should stay in bed and let them play singles. I got plenty of sleep and woke up in time to play the Grandmasters.
The biggest blunder. Here's how it went down. I felt I was playing reasonably well, matches to 13, I had worked my way up 10-6 in the first match. Thing is, when I went from 8-6 to 10-6 and wrote down the score for some reason it triggered me to think the match was to 11 even though dead in front of my face I had written 13 on the scoresheet. I took the cube off the board and I played the next game thinking I was up Crawford -5 away. I was making some bold plays and I reached many positions where my boldness had payed off and if the cube had been alive I'd have been far too good to double anyway. Bearing in against a 2-3 backgame I threw the only number that left a shot, 6-4. Then my opponent hit of course. After that he starts thinking. He doesn't have a perfect board but enough to contain me and when I see him thinking I ask myself "What the fuck is he thinking about? He hasn't rolled yet, it's Crawford, he can't cu..." And then it hits me. I realize the entire game I'd been playing like it was a different score. Who knows how the game would have went down otherwise. Maybe I'd have doubled at the right time and he'd have taken and I actually saved myself a point? Maybe I had a cash? But I was certainly too good for quite some time. My checker play was much too bold though since I had the wrong score. I'd imagine my error rate for that game came in around 123957129034875210934875209348752093487509234875230947.2
After that I'm not sure how I played the rest of the match. Tried to put it out of my mind because like I said, it could have actually saved me a point, but there was no denying my fuckup and that kind of shit pisses me off. I ended up losing that match @ DMP. DMP #1 of the weekend that I would lose after practicing them all week long it seems that the practice didn't help.
I played in a chou that night too, for nickels this time. Still not a ton of action and I was happy to play and forget about my match. I ended up winning 19 points, or $95. That eased my pain and put me back in a good frame of mind for the next day. I did however play way late again and skipped the Calcutta in the morning to catch some sleep.
I got up in time to shower & rush down & buy myself back. I also got to see that I didn't get the easiest draw in the world, first round? Steve Sax, Giant #6 last time I checked. I know Steve through Mary and he's a good guy. I've talked to him before and I'd prefer to play stronger players anyway. Buckle down and hope for the best. I ended up winning this match and took a few positions from it I'll be posting later.
I won't talk about the rest of it cept to mention I finally got over my doubles hump. I played doubles with Chris Yep (he won the last chance I think) and finally got over the hurdle of winning a first round match at doubles. I played with Mary Hickey last year and we lost and were ginoooooooooooooormous favorites. Then I played with Neil this year in NC and I felt we outplayed our opponent's by that veritable country mile but still came up short. (both matches my team was up Crawford like -4 or something... still not enough) I let Mary roll when we played, I let Neil roll when we played, I had no choice but to roll the first match with Chris as my doubles partner because he was still in another match!? The TD told me I had to start 'our' match due to time constraints. Not that I mind playing alone, esp. early in the match, but I signed up for doubles for shits & giggles and kind of annoyed I had to start w/out Chris because he was still in a match. It worked out though, Chris arrived when it was either 1-1 or 2-1 in a match to 7. We ended up winning the first match. Woo hoo!
Next match with Chris though I made the mistake of letting him roll. Alllllllll downhill from there. We didn't play poorly I didn't think but got whooped again by opponent's who @ least at the time played worse than we did from the positions I took. Post some of them later too...
Good news for me? I got knocked out of Doubles/Open/Grandmasters so swiftly on Sunday I could play in the Memorial Cup and should have decent equity, since anyone who gets into this tournament has to be out of basically everything else. Should be the worst of the worst (like me!) right? First match I get Harvey who it seems like I play every time I sit @ a tournament and I don't mind, I think I'm a favorite, not that I've ever won. This time again, matches to 9, I get up 8-6 Crawford. I'll post the lovely last two games so I can bitch and complain some more too.
Almost forgot about the Saturday night chouette, again for nickels. There were chouettes going on for dimes but they had so many players in them I'd rather play for less and get to play more. I'm not looking to make money exactly in the chouettes, just get some quality PT in. With 8-10 ppl in the chou you rarely get to play, though probably make more $$$. I joined a 5-6 person chou and lost 12 points to some phenomenal rolling. First cube I beavered all weekend I lost in a double 5s double 6 flurry by CJC. For only 5 bucks a point I got to see some of the best 3% jokers I've ever seen. Quality.
So after a decent January in North Carolina, Pittsburgh bit my ass. Here's the $$$ breakdown again for anyone who cares:
- $250 Open Division Entry, $100 side pool
- $750 Grandmasters Entry, $100 side pool
- $90 (per person) Doubles Entry, $50 (per person) side pool
- $200 Memorial Cup Entry, $100 side pool
- Hotel was around $80/night, 4 nights, so $320 ~ish
- Only one tank of gas since it was a 2-3 hour drive, another $35
- Food, we'll guesstimate an overall average of $30/day for 3 days, $90
- I won a FAT $35 from playing in the chous, so that'll offset whatever I forgot, too depressed to keep thinking about this tourney lol
Overall I lost around 2 grand, the figures for the entry fees may not be exact exact (yes, I meant to type that twice) since I lost the brochure, but they're a pretty accurate ballpark.
The highlights of this trip were few -- I got to talk to Kit & Neil & Steve awhile about bg, in return they got to talk to me, which is definitively priceless in their eyes I'm sure. I also met a few more bg whores like Claude and ... Peggy was her name maybe? (she's a lurker on GoL). Always amazes me what a friendly bunch bg people are in general, from the worst to the best, I'm not sure which is more impressive. There are a couple of bad seeds, like myself of course, but overall a good crowd.
Other notables: Meeting a group of players the first night who were from Montreal. They were all speaking French for quite a while why we were playing before I decided to sploooooooooosh them and toss in my French. Unfortunately they weren't saying anything interesting like "Boy...this guy plays for shit." Would have been more fun...they still wondered what in the fuck an American was doing speaking French.
Notable #2: Carlos -- oh Carlos. He's the one from North Carolina who wondered if I knew how to use Snowie at all. He was there again, we played again, all good fun. He told me "before the end of the weekend we'd play heads up for $25 or $50 or whatever I wanted, just show him the money" he said. I took out my poker bankroll and let it THUD on the table. Told him I'd play for whatever he wanted. He tried to follow up by saying it was probably a $100 bill rapped around a bunch of ones...I fanned them out for him, they were basically all "ones" [benjis]. We never played.... hmm... =P
Notable #3: Karma -- I believe in karma about as much as I believe in god and I do understand it's 'playing by the rules' and in theory I should hold no grudge against anyone who lets an illegal play stand. I never ask my opponents if they want to play legal moves, nobody does and I really don't care. I saw my opponent make an illegal move, on accident, 3x this weekend. All 3 times I just told them and let them play a legal move. Once again, I think the rules need to be changed and I won't get in to that here since it will do no good, but it's my perrogative to do it the way I want. Well...one match early on I rolled a 5-1 that was of little or no consequence what I played but I forgot to play the 5 until I was picking up my dice. I realized right when I was picking them up but it was legally too late. I asked him what he wanted me to do, he thought about it, made the move stick. Ok, gla then :)
Again, it's his right to do that...and again, it's my right to think it's fuckin' pathetic to do so and the rest of the match I'll be sure to push the rules as they swing. Next game he's on the bar with one checker and I have a two point board, the 3 pt. & 6 pt. are made, he has the two point anchor already. He rolls a 6-2 and picks up his dice. I glance and roll, he must have thought he danced. Titties for him. I hit another checker this roll, now he has two up and I'm on the verge of too good if he doesn't enter one of his checkers. Know what he tosses again? 6-2 from the bar! He picks his dice up again thinking he danced. Now I am too good, I roll, his turn, he tosses yet another 6-2 but this time realizes just as he's picking up his dice that he can enter. He gets belligerent and I sit and smile (more of a smirk than a smile, you can imagine). If he'd told me to play that 5-1 he wouldn't have been bitten in the ass by karma. KerrrrrrrrrrrrrrSPLAT!
Stick
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