Good luck charms and beating dead horses

Filed under: Thoughts on Poker


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I'm known... on occasion to beat the dead horse until it's once again fashionable to do so... This applies to jokes, pranks, charactures, parodies, etc... "Going Overboard" is something that I'd historically be guilty of...

One small example would be back in the day, we'd have the neighborhood wrestling leagues... And of course, with any good wrestling league, there had to be... tables, ladders, chairs, 2 zillion pound stairs, contracts drawn up, right? Of course there had to be! And as would be the case with any contract, there had to be fine print buried in the contract... So, I would draw these contracts, and put a little * somewhere in the contract. And if you turn to the back of the contract notebook, you'd find some ridiculous stipulation tied into an already ridiculous stipulation that the idiot person was unaware of...

Where was I... Ah, yes... I was discussing going overboard, beating the dead horse til it was fashionable once again to do so... Good luck charms!

At the "monthly game," there's a "character" I refer to as "the shirt." Now, "the shirt" is the only other two time champion of the monthly game, other than myself... We call him the shirt because he has this "poker shirt"... it's a bit of a hawaiian design, and it has cards, starting hands, poker phrases, etc... We called it his lucky shirt. The reason I refer to him as "the shirt" on here, is because many of my online readers wouldn't remember a character if I used his regular name, especially if you weren't to meet him via CheckRayz or something. So, to make it more memorable, I refer to him as "the shirt."

In tournaments, Mitch and I battle back and forth quite a bit for some strange reason. When the shirt first hit the scene, we'd reference this shirt. Mitch would raise on my BB, action would get to me, and I'd check my cards, then check the shirt... If I could find my starting hand, it was on... And we'd make a big "to do" about our starting hands, relative to Mark's shirt. We were pretty much disrespecting the lucky shirt.

This shirt inspired Mitch to take on a cheesy good luck charm. He brings this plastic dollar sign necklace that he got out of a gumball machine or something... He makes a production about his "Plus EV necklace"... and then goes on to win his first monthly game. He didn't stop there, as he cashed in five or six misc. events following... Then it happened...

I had to enter this whole good luck charm thing... I got myself one of them there rubber poker bracelets... you know, the ones that usually say breast cancer, or support our troops... yea, those. I got one that said "poker." That was my "plus EV bracelet." It was marketed though as a trump card. Mitch was obviously trying to counteract the powers of the shirt with the necklace, so my bracelet was counteracting the powers of the necklace and the powers of the shirt... And with the introduction of the bracelet, I went on to win my second championship, and cashed in two other events.

Somehow, when Mitch and i were letting SuperDonk hang out with us, we started discussing that we believed Ninjas to be +EV. I'm not really sure how Ninjas or +EV actually related to the Penn State game, but we're kinda random around here...

Anyway, we decided Ninjas in fact were plus EV and that anything ninja-like would be hard to counteract if introduced as an appropriate good luck charm. So, of course, the next day, Mitch brings to the weekly game, two little ninjas that he's intending to use as card protectors. I suggested he make on his pre-ante phase guardian, and then retire him and have the other be his post-ante/endgame ninja. Perhaps even have one protect his cards from the drop ceiling, as ninjas are stealthy like that, right?

Well, as tradition has it, Mitch and his Ninjas go on to win the weekly event.
This is going to be tough to beat, as these ninjas are very powerful... In fact, short of getting a shuriken as a card protector, there's very little I can do to trump the powers of the ninja. (for the record, Mitch tells me that if I show up with a shuriken card protector, that would be "very rude.")...

I might try one of my son's teenage mutant ninja turtle action figures, but I'm not sure these things will work. I'm going to have to think on this one really hard and come up with something...
Mike