Once upon a midnight dreary

With great power, comes great responsibility. I don't have that kind of power, and I'm certainly not Spiderman. What kind of power do I have? The power to open your mind. But I can only show you the door, it is you that must walk through it.

Tell me did the wind sweep you off your feet
Did you finally get the chance to dance along the light of day
And head back to the Milky Way
And tell me, did Venus blow your mind
Was it everything you wanted to find
And did you miss me while you were looking for yourself out there
- taken from "Drops of Jupiter" by Train

I went back down to the poker room (almost called it a pool hall) at around 7pm. I put my name on the list and had to wait about 30 minutes for a table. I went to the cashier to get $100 in chips and sat down to play. If you're curious, playing $1/$3 limit all you need are $1 chips (which happen to be white). When I first sat down there was an older guy sitting to my left. He was 85 years old and seemed nice enough. I felt bad for wishing he'd leave the table. He gave me such a headache.

He couldn't see very well, so every time he was in a hand the dealer at to call out what the cards were. Then he didn't hear correctly most of the time so several people next to him, myself included, had to repeat. This happened on the flop, the turn, and the river. All the cards, all the time. In addition, he had to be told how much was being raised, who was raising, and needed constant reminding to put in his blinds. I'm not sure how much was for show, because he played well and did pretty good. He told me about how he is the most decorated WWII soldier in the state of New York. Told me all about his medals, about the articles that had been written about him. And he kept telling the table how he was diagnosed with cancer in May and was told he had three months to live, but that he showed them. Then he started talking about the millions he has in the bank, and the thousands that he won at poker the last time he played. After an hour or so of this, you'd have a headache too!

Kip came to see me twice while I was playing. Once he was on break from the satellite tournament he was in. The one I told you about the other day that I tried to register for ahead of time with little success. The next time, he was knocked out. At that point it was around 10pm, so we took off to get some takeout and call it a night. I didn't do quite as well this last session, being down about $40 after a couple hours of play. But still not terrible.

Once we split up going back to our rooms I went to the elevator going up the tower. When I got to the elevator there was a woman and a man talking, holding the door open. He was on the outside, she was in the inside. I asked her if she was going up, she said yes and off we went. Without the guy. On the way up she told me that they were breaking up. It was difficult with Kids involved (2 kids, if you were wondering) and he had a bad temper.

When I got back to the room I decided that it was time for a quick game of chess. I happened to get paired up against a guy that I've played many times over the past year on the Internet Chess Club. Given our history I would put us pretty even, but tonight wasn't to be his night. It was a good game until the end, where he dropped a bishop. One of the western mass chess players happened to be watching the game and afterwards sent me a message - "Lucky he dropped that bishop". It was certainly fortuitous for me, happy happenstance one might say. I'm just not convinced that luck was in the cards. Heck, we weren't playing cards, it was chess!

Now I'm getting dreary... midnight dreary one might say.

Once upon a midnight dreary...

Have a good night.

Ed.