Holliston Poker Tour

What a night. One few of the attendees will soon forget. This was an event for the ages, if bards still roamed the countryside, it would surely be the subject of an epic tale of victory and defeat. (And I am not talking about Rob’s 40th Birthday! Which it was!)

First order of business

Here are the results of the HPT Live Friday night:

Congratulations to Kris for pulling down the win! (First female champion of the HPT! Nice work!)

Phil B took 2nd, and Roy took third. Phil collected the most bounties (6 I think?), but could not overcome Kris at the final table.

I’d love to say I watched Kris battle her way on to becoming the first female champion of the prestigious HPT. But the cards were not where the fun of my night was, no sir, my fun began when a foul odor wafted through the house…everyone started getting this wrinkled nose disapproving look on their faces. One of the more vocal players voiced “What the fuck is that smell?”. Anita and I locked eyes, each with a horror stricken look…we were familiar with the odor…and the difficulty it brings

It sort of reminded me of the cheesy 80’s horror flick “The Fog”, (back when Jamie Lee Curtis was yummy), instead of a zombie-laden fog bringing death and destruction upon our small town, it was a far more worthy foe…it was Mephitis mephitis…more commonly known as a country kitty, a woods pussy, yes it was a skunk (Insert shudder here)

If you are a dog owner, you have not truly lived in the ‘burbs until you are familiar with the stench of a skunk. I am not talking about the “oooh-that- stinks” odor as you drive through the cloud that follows skunk road kill. That, my friends, is nothing…I’m talking about the olfactory overload you get when you smell that musky mustardy stench of a direct-hit on the face of man’s best friend (yes, both of our dogs got nailed).

In the off chance you are unfamiliar with how skunks make life miserable for dogs (and by extension their owners) I found this on the internet:

Skunks use a highly odoriferous secretion to deter predation: A yellow oil composed of thiols and thioacetate derivatives of these thiols. This secretion is stored in two walnut sized glands with openings in the anus. When alarmed or attacked, a skunk can direct this spray several feet. At high concentrations the secretion causes nausea and retching and will act like tear gas if the liquid gets in the eyes. At lower concentrations it has a very foul odor. The human nose can detect skunk spray thiols at about 10 parts per billion.

Well the little fucker that nailed my dogs must have had grapefruit sized glands on either side of its asshole because theses guys were soaked in that nasty shit! I am not kidding, and I have had my share of skunk clean up. Years ago we used to have a beagle that was as smart as a brick. This dog mixed it up with a skunk on a weekly basis one spring and I was a master at detoxifying the thiols with a mixture of hydrogen peroxide, baking soda and dish detergent (Google it, it works!).

So we were familiar with the odor and the ritual that is required to let your dog live in your house again. As quickly as the fog of odor rode in, so did the sinking feeling of knowing the task that would have to follow….decontamination of the afflicted victim.

Anita and I both suddenly had a far greater incentive to go deep in the tourney. Not only the pride and prize winning the HPT brings you, but I think Anita said it best when in a very McCoy-esque dead pan (”He’s dead Jim”) she uttered: “First out cleans “. At this point I had less than 2k in chips. Anita had a solid stack of 8k. Fuck. I knew what I had to do. I knew I had to win. Don’t get me wrong, I play every poker game with the intent of wining, but this was different, this was war. This was to be a battle that had only one purpose: Outlast my wife. I planned to dig deep into my poker-psyche, use all my skills, all my talents as a poker player to turn my short stack into a victory. With 19 players and 4,000 in chips each to start, I had only 74,000 more in chips to go….

I was out 5 minutes later. (thanks Phil B)

This was the most disappointing loss I have EVER experienced. This was worse than a one out suckout on the river, worse than slow playing that full house only to realize your opponent was doing the same thing…but with a bigger boat……

I’ll spare you the details on cleaning two skunk ass-juice soaked dogs and I’ll just sum it up: it sucked, it was miserable and it is now over. They are clean, relatively odor free and up for grabs…

Filed under: HPT Live Results