Laying Down the Wrong Card

The previous weekend, I didn't bother to write a blog post, but I will sum things up real fast. I spent the weekend in my town. There was a big event called summer splash at the Canyons lodge near my apartment. They had live music and lots of people came. A bunch of other ALTs ended up crashing at my place afterwords. We got a late night poker game going that lasted until 8:30 am. I was smashed as hell, and was playing really sloppy and drunk. We actually had a game scheduled for Sunday at 4:30 pm as well, so I only got like 6 hours of sleep and then we played poker AGAIN. It was good fun but I lost money that time as well. Ryoko was super nice and brought over tons of fried chicken, fries, and fruit for everyone to snack on while we played. She enjoyed playing with as as well and actually did pretty good for only her 2nd time playing.

Getting to the weekend that just passed...

On Friday night, I just stayed home and chilled with Ryoko. On Saturday, I got up and went to Tokyo. Today was the 4th Final Roundbats tournament of this season (I missed the 3rd one when I was in America for summer vacation.)

This time, they had a new venue (though they actually had it last time for the one I missed as well.) It was at the Hobgoblin British Pub in Akasaka. Overall I would say I liked it better than Soundstone. They had better drink specials and this time, they actually had pizza buffet again. It wasn't as good as Dominoes and the pizza ran out sorta fast. I think I got like 7 slices but they werent very big. I guess I had enough to feel not hungry but I could have easily eaten a bunch more.

Most of the regular crew showed up for this one. Tokido didnt make it this time though. As far as the tournaments go, I did pretty lousy overall. I havn't actually played any fighting games for a whole month, so I was pretty rusty. I didnt show up in time for MK9 (and I dont play it so I didnt care). For Tekken 6 (which I also dont play but entered cuz its free), I lost first round to some guy who seemed like he knew what he was doing. For MvC3 I lost first round to a guy using Ammy/Sent/Spencer. I was dropping all kinds of combos. For SSFIVAE, I played a T.Hawk first round and lost. By this time I had a few drinks and was being a little sloppy and threw out a bad Ultra 1 that got blocked which cost me the final round. I did take one round. The T.Hawk went on to take first place in the tournament against Abelity's Abel in the finals. I did have a lot of fun playing ST vs a lot of people, however.

After FRB was over, I went drinking in Shinjuku with Jude AKA Claw, and Abelity AKA Hafiz. We went to Current first, where we ran into Johan and Terrence. It was dead so after a while, all of us went to GODZ and then eventually PSY. Nothing too noteworthy to mention other than the fact that PSY and GODZ both got the new Dream Theater album, A Dramatic Turn of Events, and were playing a lot of songs off it. I've been listening to the album for a few days and overall I think its a good solid album and its starting to really grow on me. I would say that as of now, overall, I like it better than their previous album, Black Clouds and Silver Linings. The Count of Tuscany is still the man though. I drank till pretty late. I think I passed out for about 10 minutes or so. I woke up at like 5:30 and Toru, the bartender of PSY, showed me a passed out picture of me that he took. I wont be surprised if it pops up online lol. After finishing my beer, I headed to the manga kissa.

The plan for Sunday was to play poker at the Propeller Bar, in Maebashi. This is the place where we always used to play but its been a while since we had a game there. I took the train there and once I arrived at Maebashi station, I passed an ATM and decided I might want to get some extra cash just in case. I went in the ATM booth and got out my wallet and my ATM card was nowhere to be found. I never lost anything like that before in Japan. Since my ATM card cant be used as a debit card, and I doubt someone would be easily able to crack my PIN number, I wasnt stressing about it too hard, but I called up Ryoko to ask her advice what to do. She said I should call the banks corporate lost and found or whatever to cancel the service on the card. She texted me the number and I made the call.

The next like 20 minutes was one of the biggest wastes of my time. The woman who answered the phone probably had the worst hearing ever. The whole conversation was in Japanese and we understood each other just fine, except for one annoying thing. She was asking for all my personal information, so I had to give her my name, phone number and birthday. I can understand that maybe she may have a bit of difficulty hearing a foreign name but I was trying to spell it out for her letter by letter for a fucking eternity. I was like... "my last name is B O C Z A R" and she kept saying it back wrong like " P O C G E R" and im like no its.. "B O C Z A R" and shes like "P O Z D A R". Then I was like ok... lets do this one letter at a time. Im like, "B", and shes like "P" and im like... no "B as in bus" and shes like "P" and I was just literally face palming at this woman's shitty hearing.

After what seemed like eons, she finally managed to get my name right. Then she somehow couldnt understand me when I was giving my fucking phone number and birthday. How hard can it be to hear numbers!?

Eventually she got that down and finally found my information in the system. Then she put me on hold for like 5 minutes, got back to me, and said she needed like some sort of account number. I didnt have my bank book on me cuz it was in my apartment which is over an hour away. I told her I had an old ATM receipt and she has me read the info on that but then after wasting my time reading all that (and mind you she was having hearing problems with THIS too...) she said it wasnt enough information and said she couldnt help me and that I would have to call back again later. What I dont get is... why couldnt she have just fucking told me that in the first place? She puts me through all this and then finally tells me AT THE END!? After I put up with her deaf ass?

Anyway, I wasn't going to let it ruin my day and figured I would just take care of it when I got home at around midnight.

I went into propeller after helping a friend find parking, and eventually everyone started to roll in and the game went well. We had 7 people playing throughout the night, and most of the time we were playing 6 handed which is pretty good. Ryoko was gonna come to but she ended up doing something with her sisters and was tired afterwords and went home. The game was fun, but I lost a lot of money. I had 3 all in situations where I lost.

The first one, I was up against 2 people. The first guy flop comes up some cards, I dont even remember what they were but they were all diamonds. I had the ace of diamonds in my hand, and some other irrelevant card, I think it was a queen of some other suit. The small stack guy acts first and goes all in for about 1000 yen. I have about 3500 yen at this point and call. What I SHOULD have done is went all in instead of calling him, because Emmet was behind me in the hand with a bigger stack. Instead of calling, HE went all in since technically all I did was bet 1000. I already had a lot of money in there since there were big pre flop raises as well. I had 2 chances to get another diamond which is actually only like a 30% chance, but I decided to just gamble and hope it came up, because if it did I would have the absolute best hand 100% guaranteed. Unfortunately no diamonds came and I lost the hand. I was pretty salty after that but I kept playing and actually won it all back after a while.

The next bad hand was I got dealt Jack Queen. Flop comes up 2 Jacks and some low card. 2 other people were in the hand. I was slow playing it and no one was really betting much. The turn comes up an Ace and one guy bets a sorta high bet of like 1000 yen or something. I put him on an ace and figured I had this. Other guy folded and I went all in. He called. The last card didnt matter. I turn over my Jack expecting to get big money and then he owns me with Jack Ace and a full house. Shitty beat. I just couldnt have put him on Jack Ace given the way things went down.

The last big hand I lost was the final hand I played. I pretty much just was getting impatient, I had pocket Jacks again at this point and I just got hustled.

In any case, I have been on a bit of a poker slump the last few games I played, but I will learn from my mistakes. Its all good.

Anyway, I rode the train home and made it back to my place. A little after midnight, I called the bank company again and this time a different dude answered the phone. I did everything the exact same way as last time (except now I had my account info) and the whole thing was done in 5 minutes because this guy WASNT FUCKING DEAF!!! With that done, I went to sleep.

Yesterday, I got a call from the bank that someone found my ATM card and brought it to the Numata police station. I went there after work and got it back, and today I went to the bank and had them re activate it. It turns out I simply just left it at the atm at my local bank. Im not quite sure why the person who found it would bring it to the city next to the town I live in, instead of the local police station, but I guess im glad I got it back and that nothing was stolen.

Anyway, next weekend is Tokyo Game Show and SBO finals but I cant go this year because my school's sports festival is on the same day and I have to work. Since theres no GG this year, im not as upset as I would be otherwise but it still kinda sucks. Matt will visit Gunma so I will hang out with him a bit, and we have another poker game scheduled in Takasaki next Monday (I get Monday and Tuesday off next week) so at least it will be a fun weekend.

Heres hoping next game I know what cards to lay down in poker instead of laying my ATM card down.