In the Shadow of the "Luck Vortex"...

From Dictionary.com...

"Luck- the force that seems to operate for good or ill in a person's life, as in shaping circumstances, events, or opportunities: With my luck I'll probably get pneumonia. "


"Vortex- a whirling mass of water, or air, esp. one in which a force of suction operates, as a whirlpool. "



In the final tourney of the Battle of the Bloggers series on FullTiltPoker last night(Dec.13), the usual witty banter was flowing freely in the chat windows and the laughter, as usual, was abundant.

After a few 'interesting' hands, BrainMC (hope i got that right..) offered the observation that what we were witnessing was the effects of a "Luck Vortex", and I thought that quite fascinating....and so, I offer in return, my own analysis-ness of- no, not poker, Im not sure i could capture anyones imagination with that quite yet, but rather of the "Luck Vortex" and what that could be, in relation to poker, as well as in relation to life. Hear that sssssucking sound yet..?

Lately, I've become very familiar with vortex's of the luck variety, not neccessarily only at the poker table, and I can tell you, first hand, they are not only real, but they are disorienting as well. It's almost as if the inter-dimensional forces of suction aren't limited strictly to issues of luck, but also to one's abilities to 'reason'. And most of us don't have much of that to spare to begin with..



For example, 25 years into what I thought was a wonderful marriage/relationship, my wife comes home one day and announces she doesnt know if she wants to continue.
"Yeah honey..", i said,".. it's my turn to put our young daughter to bed, i know.." She didn't bat an eye.. No, it turns out she really meant what she said.



To put it in perspective quickly, i'll give this short backstory synopsis. Please feel free to go get another double shot of scotch and slam it down: A few weeks earlier, i left a job I held for 15 yrs at a good, stable company so i could start my own business, which i had been working on for two years. A week before that, I lost my car in a flash flood and needed transportation. Then the atom bomb was dropped and before I knew it, I was living in a bedroom at my mothers house(God bless her), with no job, no income, no wife, away from my kids and a head that was spinning wildly like a star about to become a supernova... or so I Imagined.



Of course, luck has nothing to do with all of that until you try and form a perspective you can handle and you are grasping for some form of reason, within which you can survive, and somehow make it through the day. A really, really bad stretch of luck seemed to make sense.

Instead, the next three months were a drunken blur and when i came to, i found myself struggling with finding gas money when just several months earlier i had the world by the tail.

No, its not another man or anything sane like that..in fact there's no rational way to concisely explain it other than the "Luck Vortex". At least that's something I can wrap my head around and accept. Why else would a good woman reject a stud like me? There's got to be more info to the story, right?... Yeah, enough for another twelve-thousand blogs! I'll spare both of us for now...

Well, now let's take a look at poker. Lets look at the Bloggers Aussie Challenge series that just wrapped up the qualifying round last night with a 13-person redo tourney for the 27th and final seat in the finals. The actual last tourney was Thursday night (Dec.13th) on FullTiltPoker.com with the Riverchasers Poker Tour tourney and it was going quite well as we headed towards the final table. In fact, I remember it quite well, as one often does when they look back on a situation that somehow inexplicably turns from a golden opportunity into a gigantic clusterfuck within nanoseconds.

We were down to, you guessed it, 13 players and I was roughly middle-stack with 24k+ and feeling very good about where i was headed. In fact, as I looked at the table, I was pleased to be in middle position with pocket 10's with the blinds and two callers behind me. I reach for the keyboard to raise big and hopefully take it down right there as the blinds were significant enough to tuck them in to my stack and move on. Only problem was ..nothing happened. I was frantically smashing the buttons on my laptop, screaming at the top of my lungs, "I said RAISE ..RAISE YOU MOTHERFUCKER..RAISE!, I'm RAISING here........FUUUUUUUUUUUCCCCCCCKKKKKK!!!!!"

And FullTilt crashed. End of game.Sorry, thanks for coming is how it initially felt and the tourney ended up blinding down to the end and i finished exactly where i was at the time, which was 8th out of however fucking many originally entered..prolly @ 100.

So we're back to last night where the 13 of us who were left were given the opportunity to replay to the end for the last seat. BEAUTIFUL. BINGO. DONE and FUCKIN DONE, LET'S GET IT ON!

Skillfully, ......it wasn't long before i had the chip lead at our truncated table of 6- after some nice hands, including my first-ever back-to-back rockets, and some respected pre-flop raises,.. and then after a little more play, including a horrible call , by yours truly, of a short-stacked all-in with my A9 sooooooted..i was between 2nd and third on the table, but still quite healthy.

It wasn't much longer after that and we were at the final table, heading for the big finish. There were @ 7 people left, i'm mid-stack again and feeling good. I was walked in the Big probably 8 times up to this point in the tourney and for the most part, was respected on my pre-flop raises, which was fine with me because i'm all over small-pot poker at this point...

And then, out of nowhere, it happened. I really should've noticed, knowing what I know now about it, but a nasty, steaming, swirling "Luck Vortex" opened up right there where I was sitting.. I obviously didnt notice its' stealthy grand entrance, nor its gradual build-up of circular speed and sudden drop of the barometric pressure, ..or even the basketball-sized hail that began to pummel the sweet comfort zone i was in, along with a howling, swirling wind and a sucking sound so friggin eerie, the ghost of Bloggers Past would've tucked tail ( i never said what kind of tail or tale, like a Donkey's tail for example-just saying..)and hit the highway, en route to his or her favorite ghost of watering-holes past.. you get the picture, no real need for boring, gory details.

Needless to say, i finished less-than-first, in 5th place and that was the end of that. And then, just as quickly as the silent slit opened up, that silent-ass, mother-fucking, scuba-diving-dark, stealthy "Luck Vortex" was gone, and with it, my thoughts of roasting shrimps on the bar-b-ie as well..

And so, we end where we began. Just another hee-hawing schmoe, sitting on the rail, wishing luck to all the winners, on the outside-looking-in. Hey, at least I made the top 50 and get to play in that tourney or something, and I can even brag a little for having the highest average points out of those in the top 50....Woo.Hoo. I'm really stretching now..

Speaking of now, if I can only go find that fucking "Luck Vortex", maybe I can find the woman I married and reverse the obvious brain damage she suffered as a result of it's rotating fury, and while I'm at it, maybe i can find that key I lost that opened the door to.......