Strange days indeed

The Poker Jones blog has been dark for awhile. And for good reason. There's been nothing to report except more bad luck and (shocking) bad play. No one, including me, wants to read how I suck and every donk in the world has been bitch-slapping me around like I'm a 25-cent crack ho.

Then tonight happened. In all of its glorious, insane and maddening weirdness. With a grand total of $22 left in my Poker Stars account (down from nearly $600 a month ago), I signed up for the $11, 7:45 p.m. tournament almost as an afterthought, figuring I'd zero it out (as I did with accounts at Party AND Full Tilt over the last week) and, like a brokeback cowboy, quit you poker and get on with my life. But a funny thing happened. I managed to finish second for an $1,800 payday. Go figure.

Some luck finally fell my way. What's even stranger is that while I'm heads up with a nice guy from Rochester, Minnesota (screen name: kirbyelway -- which is a combination of my all-time favorite baseball player who died a couple of days ago and an asshole villain QB who I detest for obvious reasons) I'm calling 9-1-1 because someone is literally SHOOTING AT MY FUCKING HOUSE. What kind of weird karmic convergence is occurring here, for God's sake?

After I made the final table and I kept hearing a "plink" against the dining room windows. I thought initially that it was one of the neighborhood cats jumping on the sill looking to steal the virginity of our dear, sweet, randy 6-month-old Belle, who has a major date to get her kitty tubes tied this weekend. But when the glass starts breaking, I realized: Holy Shit, we're taking fire. Lacking the coordinates to call in artillery or possessing any armament beyond a half-dozen dead Top-Flites, I called the Poker Jones Police Department.

While the dispatcher is telling me to stay on the phone, I turn a 1.3 million to 300,000 chip disadvantage into a slight lead because countless SNGs have taught me how to play heads up, for Christ's sake. But then I get Qh-Jh, push and get called by Ace-crap, lose the hand, and find myself on drip -- WHILE STILL ON THE PHONE WITH THE POLICE. I'm out two hands later and my laptop goes dead because I need a new battery as bored cops armed with high-powered flashlights arrive and begin patrolling my backyard. WHAT THE FUCK IS HAPPENING HERE?
Bad beat? Anytime someone shoots at you or your house, that's not a good night. Fortunately, it was only a pellet gun and not real weaponry, but I'm pissed off just the same and wondering if it's not time to brush up on the marksmanship skills that earned me an Expert Badge in the U.S. of A. Army and get me a gat to bust some caps on some motherfuckin' G's.

Pokerwise, I was one lucky sumbitch. I managed to turn my starting stack of 1,500 into 14K at the first break, got blinded down with card-dead hands, stay patient and survived. Turned 10,000 chips into 150,000 in a span of less than five minutes with around 20 players left.

With the world passing me by at the final table and with the blinds eating away at my stack, I managed to win some races, sucked out twice, including a cracking of kirbyelway's aces with pocket sixes (I DID push first) and watched as all but one of my final tablemates fell by the wayside. Along with the luck, I did play goot. Throughout the night, I consciously reverted to my former tight, conservative and selectively aggressive Poker Jones self that previously won me me a decent amount of dough and felt all the better for it. (Did I mention I was drinking vodka gimlets virtually the entire tournament?)

If any of this post seems a bit incoherent, tough shit. I'm wired, weirded out and don't know if I should laugh, cry or kill someone. I do know that I've got a bankroll again. Thank God. Wasn't looking forward to going cold turkey on poker. Now if I can just find the asshole who decided to use my house for target practice. That, ladies and gents, would be a very good thing.