It Hurts So Good

Image from Time.com/Isaac Brekken AP

No matter much I tried to become uninterested in poker the itch to watch, play, and write about it comes back three-fold everytime. This weekend was working the Sunday Warm-up and Sunday Million at PokerStarsBlog and here I am at 3:00am watching turns of the virtual cards for tens of thousands of dollars and trying to pick apart the game as to who was going to win along with trying to make the play interesting to read (I hope I'm accomplishing that for you readers, if I'm not drop me a line with a suggestion or two).

My picks came in fourth and second, both knocked out by suckouts by the same guy. One was a nut punch for the title and a $66K difference between first and second when the four flush fell on the river after just one hand of heads-up play. To think I was pissed about the rivered flushes over the past month that costed me the maximum of a plane ticket to Vegas, this guy just lost a few cars with enough to get fuzzy dice or one of those cardboard pine trees in the windows of each one.

Knowing in the back of my mind I wanted to watch the donkey slaughterfest at the WSOP Main Event final table, last night started off with supporting my wife's new found committment to getting back into a shape we used to enjoy before spitting out the occupants of the other bedrooms in our current house. While you won't find me downing Herbalife shakes with G540-T muscle max protein shakes with a wheat grass chaser, I've been trying to hit the gym 3-4 days a week minimum. More energy to shake off those late poker nights has been most welcome, not to mention gaining a little self-esteem while tightening the belt.

But to give up breakfast sandwiches, pints of Surly and dozen happy hour wings at 3 Squares? Let's not talk crazy here.

Most of the time if I'm hitting up the gym with my bride its to hop into a "class". Yes, I admit to being one of the two male presences in the aerobic classes. Since balance and stamina are the reason I go, it only made sense to put up with the potential embarrassment of doing poses and pirouettes. Usually we attend a Strike class which consist of kickboxing with weights and a weighted pole (not just the one in my shorts HA!). This class is manliness cubed. You kick, you punch, you grunt, and best of all you sweat a lot.

However I tuck my balls in while hitting up last night's class called "Yoga Fusion". You bend, you twist, you try not to check out which color thong the stripper in the front is wearing that night but fail miserably. Before you ask, no, I leave my Hello Kitty pink leotard in the locker opting for the black one which has a slimming effect.

Essentially its dancing which I hate unless I'm wandering around Chicago looking for a hick bar at 2am with The Rooster and DP after endless beers throughout the day, or celebrating a birthday with a hippie in the middle of Phillie-land.

After getting my groove on (last night the thong was black with a lace trim if you must know) we returned home just in time to pass out from an exhausting day, but wait there's poker on TV! All it took was watching poor Schaffel's bullets go down hard versus the quad kings of Buchman and I was locked in on the Sony for the next 90 minutes. Despite knowing every outcome thanks to wonderful friends who kept us abreast of the going ons of Saturday at the Penn and Teller theater via Twitter and their various media outlets, I soaked up every minute of it.

Every set hitting with baby pairs over the painted pairs, every Ace-Queen that Moon held that turned into gold, ESPN's production crew kicked ass splicing the right images. True, the hard-core poker fan would want more four-bet preflop bluffs and find out how these players really battled their ways to those place changing hands over the 21 hours of play. But, the entertainment value for a card lover like me was there.

Officially the WSOP Main Event ended Monday with Cada defeating unmoving logger from Maryland heads-up after 88 hands, but tonight the fanbois of this game will get closure after watching the hole cards come out on those hands that were not flipped over.

And I'll be watching with an ice pack on my back, as a prolonged Warrior pose didn't agree with my girly muscles last night.