The Donkey Manifesto Presents - The List - Poker Strategy part 2

Hello Manifestites! See, I promised, and I delivered. Last week I posted part one of the 2nd installment of the list found here. For those who haven’t read it, go back and read first before starting here, as there is not much, but some cohesiveness to the two parts. One thing I’ll say before we start is that I leave the quotes as they were typed. There are some obvious typos, and half-drunken mystery words and various other things that I don’t really want to edit. I think they work well in their original state. That said, let’s jump right in, shall we?

When we last left The List, we were talking about gobblers and nits and beggars, oh my! TNL left us with some of his wisdom. Over the years TNL has come up with some great new terms. Here’s the birth of the term ratstab, which was invented one day when a friend would sit at a table, win a few small pots, make up some excuse about his wife needing him, then show up at a new table within a matter of 30 seconds or so and repeat the whole thing again.

thenutlow: gonna ratstab his way to another $6 profit andthen ysteriously have to do some made up bullshit so he can run down his hole with that big bag of loot ratting its way on his shoulder
thenutlow: "ratstab"
thenutlow: verb: to win a small sum of money quickly and escape the table for spurious reasons

Then we have the min buyin guys, aka maggots, another TNL term. These fuckers buy in for the minimum and are like small little firecracker mines on the table. Just big enough to cause a loud noise and maybe burn a little if stepped on, but small enough that it’s hard to see them. Here we have the tale of one particular maggot I ran into while trying to un-quit poker and was forced to play at the low levels:

XaQ Morphy: this other fuck bought in for $10 about 4 times, now has $85 and probably hasn't had this big of a win since he discovered himself for the first time

Speaking of maggots, I used to go out of my way to try busting them just to watch them erupt in a hate-filled drooling rant. TNL got a little carried away with this one:

thenutlow: wheres thes something strange, on the poker table, who you gonna call? maggot busters!!!!!

When we play poker, especially online, we come up with all sorts of pet nicknames for our opponents. Idiots, morons, donkeys, retards, nits, maggots, the list goes on and on. When talking about retards inevitably the thought of them drooling all over themselves while playing poker comes to mind. I’ve collected a few drool related comments throughout the years. Here’s two of the best:

RonDworkin: these people are going to drown in each others drool

thenutlow: this retard is the 10 times world series of drooling-onto-keyboard champion

And speaking of champions, I don’t even remember where this quote came from, but it’s funny as hell, well it is to me at least:

thenutlow: its like the natiional retards HU championship and these two have out-tarded the rest of the field and are battling huhu

Ok back to some poker shall we? One of the most important concepts in learning how to play poker is counting outs. An out is a card that will improve your hand. I won’t get too far into the theory here, but just a quick example. Let’s say you have 2 hearts in your hand, and there’s 2 hearts on the flop. There are 13 hearts in the deck, you know of 4 total, so to fill your flush draw you have a total of 9 outs. What is 9 outs like?

Mukwrm715: and 9 outs is like christmas for a player of my standards

I, on the other hand, disagree completely:

XaQ Morphy: 3 outs is plenty

Sometimes we are down to so few outs it seems like we have no chance:

FellKnight: I HAVE NO OUTS
XaQ Morphy: how about that?
FellKnight: EXCEPT THAT ONE

Sometimes we have so many outs we don’t know what to do:

thenutlow: i cant even count the outs coz my socks are still on

And then of course, how to apply standard poker thinking to counting outs:

XaQ Morphy: sad fuckin day when you flop trips and immediately think about what your outs are

Taking the topic of outs one step further we have the term drawing. When you call a bet with 4 to a flush it’s called drawing to the flush. Drawing is the heart of the drooling retard strategy of poker. Where there’s a flush, there’s a way! How do I do when drawing, you ask?

XaQ Morphy: man I draw so bad I make a 2 year old retarded kid look like Picasso

And then of course there’s how well I do against someone who is drawing:

XaQ Morphy: the day I fade a fuckin J high flush draw is the day I win the poker champion of the universe award

Then we have the standard calling station line of thinking. Holdem is a 7 card game afterall…in this hand I made large bets on the flop and turn, my opponent who was obviously drawing missed, and I let him try to bluff on the river because I knew he had no chance of winning a showdown. He of course checked behind with no hand at all, and I won the pot…

XaQ Morphy: and can't bluff the river
XaQ Morphy: just gives up
XaQ Morphy: but I could bet $3 million into a 3c pot, and he'll fuckin call as long as there's a card to come

Ahh yes, drawing. One of my favorite subjects. Speaking of drawing and flushes and such, Omaha is known as a game of draws. It’s just about the only poker game where you can flop the nuts and be an underdog to win the hand. A fucked up game for sure. Note that there are two main forms of Omaha, high only and hi/lo, where the pot is split between the best high hand and the best low hand. If you don’t understand Omaha these quotes won’t make much sense, so I’ll stop babbling and get on with it. You may be familiar with the PLO (pot limit Omaha) Pied Piper of Donks series of videos found here, but I wouldn’t necessarily use them to try and learn the game or get any better at it. Over the years I’ve developed a hate/hate, err, I mean a love/hate relationship with the game. We start with a strategy tip on how not to play:

curtiskrunk: who reraises in omaha????
curtiskrunk: idiots, that's who

On the subject of Omaha hi/lo, Muk chimes in:

Mukwrm715: fucking people would ride a horse off a cliff if you wrote A2 on the side of it

In Omaha, hands with AA in them are very deceptively strong. They are great before the flop but are very hard to continue with after the flop. In this hand TNL and I witness some moron going broke with basically no hand as his aces go down in flames:

thenutlow: i mean if ur not gonna fold AA on that fucking flop, u might as well just set up a nodding donkey to mash the call button foreever more

Along with AAxx hands, double suited hands are another trap for our donkey friends. Give them a hand with 2 hearts and 2 diamonds in it, and they go wild. Or:

XaQ Morphy: the fucking cards could be a King, Apple, -5 and a piano, and these fuckers would see any flop as long as the colors matched

Because you can only use 2 of your 4 hole cards to make up your 5 card hand, hole cards with 3 of a kind in them aren’t strong at all, and are generally folded preflop. Or are they?

XaQ Morphy: It's a new part of my arsenal at the poker table. If you ever play me and think to yourself "what in the holy name of the donkey could Morphy have here?", the answer is just as likely to be the nuts as it is 2292.

Nearly all the online sites have Omaha tournaments as part of their normal lineups. A few sites have had rebuy events, where you can rebuy if you bust in the first hour of play. It generally makes for a crazy first hour, a fairly slow next few hours, and then a race to the finish. Well, that’s not exactly how TNL described it, but I was close:

thenutlow: the one thingi love about these omaha rebuys is that the tourney is deepstacked until the bubble,then the fucking penny donk scumcuntations just do all they can to bank a matchstick and then after the bubble breaks its just like a turbo shipfest

Most of the time I play Omaha it’s a pot limit format, PLO or PLO8 (hi/lo). Occasionally I’ll find myself stuck in a limit Omaha hi/lo game, and well…

XaQ Morphy: omaha without a "get my stack in now and get me the fk outta here" button is hard to play

One night famous donkey and former RGPer EstebanAA apparently was out of matches, because instead of just lighting thousands of dollars on fire, he decided to put it in play at various PLO tables on FullTilt. I saved a bunch of hands where he got his stack in with no hand, no draw, and no hope of winning, and sent them to some friends. FellKnight had this to say:

FellKnight: i could be blazed out of my mind on heroin, ecstacy and weed, and I'd still play better than that

Ahh, Omaha, how I hate thee. Then again, it could be worse, it could be 7 Card Stud, or Stud hi/lo (aka Stud8). What is Stud, you may ask?

thenutlow: if poking a hot iron bar in your eye was a sport, that would resemble Stud most accurately.

Stud games are played in what’s called limit form, which means that each betting street has its own set betting amount. Our friend Joe here (aka some anonymous fucker I only played once in my life) has limit strategy down cold:

Joe_Banks: there isnt alot of folding in limit, it just has to go yer way

I however, have figured out the secrets behind Stud games:

XaQ Morphy: I figured out stud/stud8
XaQ Morphy: it's a race to 2 pair, and then jumping around like a bunch of retards to see who wins

Another form of Stud is called Razz, which is dealt the same, bet the same, but the worst hand wins. Aces are low, and A2345 is the “best” hand. During what I like to call my Percocet years, before/during/after neck and arm surgeries in 2005/2006, I found I could actually play the game of Razz fairly well. TNL didn’t really get into it though…

thenutlow: blah blah razz talk blah blah

On the subject of Razz, one day I searched my stalker list (that is, a list of people who are really bad that I want to play again), I saw one of them playing a Razz freeroll. TNL has his opinion on freerolls in general:

thenutlow: i wouldn't play a 2 man freeroll vs the nodding donkey for a place in immortality

There’s that nodding donkey again…ahem, but Razz freerolls have a special place in TNL’s heart:

thenutlow: I sometimes feel sorry for these poor fucks that live on the streets and have to sleep in the freezing cold, but that pity pales in comparison to the levels of sorrow i feel for the fuckers that willingly enter a razz freeroll with 2400 people

Most players have their favorite hands in holdem and other forms of poker. There are also ones that players despise for one reason or another. AA is easy to play, just set up the nodding donkey, and well, you know the rest. 63 of clubs is easy to play as well, aka The Morphy, the power of 6c3c is beyond comprehension for most humans. A really tough hand to play is JJ, and…

XaQ Morphy: JJ on the button is like an invitation to just get up from the table and walk away

My most hated hand is KK. I seemed to do just fine with it until I met TNL. Only then I did truly understand his pure hatred for this miserable piece of poker profanity. As the old saying goes:

XaQ Morphy: someone wake me up when I get KK so I can get busted by A3o and go to bed

On the subject of KK, one night I was playing and got my stack in with KK vs. some moron with an A and fuck, I don’t even know if he had a 2nd card. As the board came down TNL switched gears mid-sentence:

thenutlow: Ace on the what the fuck?

Ahh yes, KK is possibly the most tilt-inducing hand of poker. Speaking of tilt, here’s one of the more interesting tilt chats I’ve seen. I was playing on some stupid ass site where you pay a monthly fee and all the games are essentially free, but there are ways to win real money. It was run by a former RGPer, and while it seemed like a good idea and was completely legal in the US, because it was basically a site full of retards and freerolls, it went the way you’d expect it to: straight out of business. Anyway, I was playing in a tournament one day and got moved tables. Suddenly I see this mess:

(Observer) samson1121: NIGGGER
(Observer) samson1121: ?#!*
(Observer) samson1121: #!*?#!
(Observer) samson1121: GAY
(Observer) samson1121: #!*
(Observer) samson1121: ?#!*?
(Observer) samson1121: #!*?
(Observer) samson1121: #!*
(Observer) samson1121: @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
(Observer) samson1121: ?#!*?#!*?#!*
(Observer) samson1121: ?#!*?#!*?
(Observer) samson1121: THE ?#!*?#
(Observer) samson1121: ?#!*?#!
(Observer) samson1121: BAST ARD
(Observer) samson1121: F UCK
(Observer) samson1121: #!*?#!
(Observer) samson1121: NIGG ER
(Observer) samson1121: JEER
Nuke: ummm Samson -- he's not at this table lol"

LOL, seems our friend samson was so tilted he didn’t even realize the person his hatred was intended for was gone. Add a drooling retard and a freeroll site together with a smattering of tilt and what do you get?

(Observer) firemother: honey we'll meet in freeroll and then you talka big like now

Not sure what language that was, but maybe she could get this idiot to translate for her:

Christ1234 [observer]: all players wait of big carts many players play not poker

There are a lot of activities that are somewhat related to poker. A lot of poker players used to or still do play video games, some have played other card games, and a lot of them golf. Do I golf, you ask?

XaQ Morphy: I don't even bother trying to golf, cause anything as frustrating as poker that involves metal poles just has bad news written all over it

As you’ve seen in previous blog entries, I like to tilt people on the poker table, because it generally makes them play bad and give their money away. The guy below and I have a history of getting into it on the table. This exchange I just crack up over, so I’ll include it here:

PhippsJ: your like the 5 foot 5 guy at the bar trying to pick fights
PhippsJ: and everyone just laughs at
XaQ Morphy: yup that's me
XaQ Morphy: except I'm 5 foot 10
XaQ Morphy: and have a blackbelt in dawnkeigh-do

As the poker world knows, the internet is full of resources, from various web sites, blogs, forums, newsgroups, etc. The internet newsgroup rec.gambling.poker (RGP) is where we all met, and really how this blog started. A while back Fell and I were talking about just giving up RGP because of how useless it’s become, but he just couldn’t do it. Why?

FellKnight: RGP IS ALL I HAVE DUDE

Necron99 chimes in with a great quote from several years ago:

Necron99: If the world was run by rgp we would all be sleeping with our cousins, living on diets of cheesewhizz and self treating serious medical complaints with a xanax and a bottle of good scotch.

Along with the newsgroups and forums, several programs and tracking sites have come out. My buddy IceOhio was having problems with his game, so he downloaded a trial version of PokerTracker (PT) which is a tool to help analyze your play. His results weren’t all that great:

IceOhio: i ran my hand histories thru PT.. it said "Ummm, dude. You need a new hobby"

One of the online tracking sites is called Sharkscope. It tracks online SNG tournaments and has various little icons next to players’ names to categorize them. There's a shark, several levels of stars, and for those not so great players, a little fishbowl with a goldfish swimming around. My thoughts on that?

(10:49:20 PM) XaQ Morphy: but to be honest if I had a fishbowl next to my name on sharkscope, I'd eat a gun

This next quote has no real place, but I thought it was funny so I saved it. A term in online poker that people like to use when winning pots is “ship it”, said when winning a pot. It does sound pretty, well, what?

tbuck27: I almost said "Ship It" and then I remembered I'm not a homosexual

Yes, that’s it. As seen in the first List entry and in part 1 of this entry, The List can show us how we progress throughout the years. This first quote was from April, 2007:

TheFlip2k1: that was ridiculous
obv: thanks for your valued opinion
obv: now shut the fkk up

And the next was just last year, in September of 2009. I wasn’t thinking of the quote above when I wrote this, but as soon as I did I had a déjà vu type experience and had to save it. Sure enough, damn near word for word:

goldgammon: rididuclous
XaQ Morphy: ty for your valued opinion
XaQ Morphy: now shut the fk up

So that’s it. A super long entry, a ton of quotes, and some seriously heavy poker strategy. I hope you found something in here to help you with your game, in one way or another. The next post or series of posts from The List covers the subject of animals. I won’t promise any type of date at all, but I will make a best effort to get it here before 2013. Oh wait, I forgot one last tip. Note taking is very important in poker. You should always take notes on how your opponents play, how they bet, what types of hands they play, etc. etc. I’ve taken this to an entirely new level, and I leave you with this final quote:

XaQ Morphy: I have a new way of taking notes
XaQ Morphy: instead of just putting hand histories into their notes, I'm gonna put the item that I'd most likely to smack them on the head with
XaQ Morphy: so this guy's notes are "tack hammer"

Until next time!

Yours Donkily,

Morphy

The Donkey Manifesto Presents - The List - Poker Strategy part 1

Hello Manifestites! I bet I know what you’re thinking. “Is Morphy messing with us?” “Is this really the 2nd installment of The List?” “Has it really been over 3 years since the last installment of The List?” “What the hell is The List?” “everyoneisouttogetmetheonlinesitescheatmetheresaguynamedvenxwhoworksforstarsftpstolemoneyfrommybankaccountkillkillkillmustkillcan’tlivewithoutthebloodbloodbloodcrazycrazycrazy”. Hey look, RGP’s own Igotskillz is here with us too!

Yes, it’s true, this is the 2nd installment of The List, Poker Strategy. As I’m writing this intro I don’t know how long this is going to be, but to say I have more quotes for this installment than the first is like saying there may be a few retards on RGP. Speaking of the first, for those who don’t know what this is all about, the first installment can be found here. For a quick recap, The List is a culmination of various quotes, mostly from IM chat with various people, some from table chat, and a few misc. quotes here and there that I’ve gathered since its inception in 2005. When I see them I take them and copy them into a file and save them for future use.

I’ve been putting this off for way too long. For a while I had various reasons why I didn’t want to post the next installment, for a while I didn’t know if I wanted to continue the blog at all. A lot of it had to do with poker, I actually quit playing in 2007 and cashed out my roll, blah blah ok yeah whatever you guys don’t give a shit about that. At one point I became really motivated to do it, opened up the text file I had as The List, realized it was going to take a lot of work just to sort the quotes out into a format where I’d be able to start figuring out how to come up with an entry. So here it is. I can’t promise you any useful poker advice here, but I can offer some of the most amusing quotes I’ve either witnessed or written over the past few years. Some of them might be “have to be there” type of quotes, but the important thing is that they were funny to me.

As we last left The List, we were graced by these words from our long-lost friend Muk:

Mukwrm715: thank you i like play the poker

No, that’s not it. This is the one I mean:

Mukwrm715: if i can beat a woman with a penis at cards, i am obviously the best

Err, nope, that ain’t it either. Maybe it’s this one…

Mukwrm715: i am tearing through my stars money like the site is closing down in 10 minutes

Ah yes, there it is. That’s still one of my all time favorites. Muk had some incredibly awesome quotes over the years. I’m sure we all remember this one:

Mukwrm715: so adam ft's in a game he claims no knowledge of, james wins a tournament, and i get beat by a 3 outer
Mukwrm715: looks like things are back to normal

Part of the fun of The List is that I can take quotes days/weeks/years apart and put them together to tell a story. Here’s a nice quick sampling to really kick off this entry:

Mukwrm715: i am looking for something pretty again
Mukwrm715: hello all in, my name is matt
Mukwrm715: that was a cruel cruel joke
Mukwrm715: I just donked off millions of chips
Mukwrm715: i need to go break something

Speaking of breaking something, I think everyone who has ever played online poker has a love/hate relationship with at least one poker site. PokerStars seems to be one of the favorite targets of semi-random shots of hatred. Now let’s make sure we understand where we are here. I’ve never once had the thought or shared the opinions of those that believe poker sites are rigged. Kind of reminds me of a quote:

XaQ Morphy: Losers need to get support from other losers about their losing.

Anyway, what I mean is that while we joke all the time about RiverStars, the turn of a thousand outs, “ooh look, 38o is on special today” and various other ridiculous notions, in the end we are rational human beings and understand how absurd the notion of a site rigging their deal to create action is. By “we”, of course I mean those of us who aren’t total retards and spend their time posting on various online sites whining about how rigged things are. Ahem, anyway…on with the quotes…

XaQ Morphy: you know your day is fucked when you open up stars and the first thing you are greeted with is a big dose of retard

TNL had some, well, interesting things to say about Stars. We’ll see how he progresses in his mission to never play there again.

7/3/2006:
thenutlow: gg stars.. you have had ur last $$ outta me

3/17/2007:
XaQ Morphy: at least it doesn't all of a sudden look like stars
thenutlow: lol
thenutlow: i aint ever playin on that fucking site again
thenutlow: as long as i live
XaQ Morphy: lolol
thenutlow: fuck that shit house

5/8/2007:
thenutlow: thank fuck for that
thenutlow: lemme close that shit hole down and never open again for as long as I
thenutlow: 2 hours

11/5/2007:
thenutlow: well
thenutlow: it was a cheap way to reinvigorate my hatred for that pisshole
thenutlow: i swear
thenutlow: if I ever play another hand of poker on that fuckhole
thenutlow: fucking fuckers

Progress! Such a wonderful thing. Speaking of PokerStars, here’s a random quote from some guy about their Sunday tournament, now known as the Sunday Million:

hazards21: a donk always wins this
hazards21: so if u arent one
hazards21: u dont have a chance

For those who don’t believe it, put google to use and search out Vikidin’s Sunday Million win from last year. Stars had a video of his play and it was one of the most tilt inducing things I’ve ever watched. Imagine a guy who literally never won a single thing, donked away $25k over the course of his poker life, and then binked the $200k first prize through a series of calls with no hand no draw and a never-ending stream of gobbles. Gobble? What’s a gobble? Funny you should ask. The term gobble first appeared sometime in 2006 on RGP in this post by yours truly:

Subject: The gobble

“Nothing drives me more crazy than the gobble. Play NL holdem long enough, cash or tourney, and you'll run into these masters of the gobble, and they will slowly eat away at any sanity you have left with their gobbling gobble style.

There's no good way to play vs. a gobbler, because they are out there to master the art of the gobble. The gobble is the most worthless bet in poker. Nothing is more useless than some gobbler calling a raise with A3o, checking the A high flop, then throwing in the check-gobble vs. some poor shmuck with KK.

The gobble is everywhere. There's the pre-flop gobble, which entices everyone to call and try to bust said gobbler. There's the previously mentioned check-gobble, the "I have 55 the board is QJ9, and I think you have AK" flop gobble, and then of course there's the "I chased my hand all the way to the end and hit it" fucking river gobble.

I'm serious, the best way to take all my chips is to get a team of gobblers at a table, and just have them take turns gobbling my stack away. Pre-flop gobble, check gobble, turn gobble, river gobble, it's all there. Just take my chips, I can lose another buyin. Fucking gobblers.”

Of course most of RGP remained true to form (i.e., totally clueless), and had no idea what I was talking about, so I wrote the following post as an explanation. I trust that my loyal readers out there, both of you, are already well versed in having to deal with the rancid hate-inducing tilt machine that is the gobble.

“It has come to my attention that my dear friends on RGP might not know what the gobble is. The gobble, of course, is the min raise, and to some extent, the min bet. The term was coined by TNL, and completely overused and kicked in the head by me. No doubt FellKnight will be writing a "guide to gobbling" article soon.”

Later in that thread we have this gem, also written by yours truly:

“These fuckers drive me crazy. I'm serious. You guys could stack me, one gobble at a time, and there's nothing I can do about it. Hell, for 1BB I'll call with 3 high all the way to the river."

Sadly enough, the last sentence is damn near spot on.

The origin of the term gobble came from the fabled ancient city of Nutlough, long time ago, galaxy far far away, etc. etc. Either that or it was this quote:

thenutlow: these fucking masters of the cock-gobble are gettin on my nerves

Then again, maybe it’s one of those Matrix type things:

thenutlow: we are in gobbleverse and the only winners will be the min raisers

On the topic of raising/betting/folding, there’s a bunch of quotes I’ve collected over the years that deal with this topic. Most importantly, you should always have a strategy in mind when playing a poker hand. You know, like this:

XaQ Morphy: I will say this...I know what I'm going to do before I make the preflop raise. I set up scenarios...if I raise and he jams, what will I do? That way when it happens, I can contradict myself and do the opposite.

On the subject of having a plan, sometimes our goals aren’t as lofty as the goals of others:

AKQJT9: I'm pretty close to doing soemthing stupid again
AKQJT9: and here it undoubtably comes

AKQJT9 is a really good friend of mine, but watching him at the poker table is somewhat of a conundrum for me. On one hand I want to help him and see him do well, but on the other hand, well, this quote from FellKnight describes it best:

FellKnight: its funny to watch his "omgwe'reonthebubbleihavetosurvive" and his "OMFGTOPPAIR" reflexes do battle

AKQJT9 has a great attitude about it though, as witnessed by this quote:

AKQJT9: I love watching retards try to play poker
AKQJT9: that's why I have a mirror next to my screen

Alright, back to the strategy. In poker there are multiple levels of thinking. First level thinking is what hole cards you have, and that’s where most players live their entire poker lives. Second level is thinking about what your opponent has. Third level is thinking about what your opponent thinks you have. Fourth level is thinking about what your opponent thinks you think he thinks you have, and the fifth level is that one fucking level that Mario keeps getting his ass kicked by those flying turtle fuckers. Err, umm, yeah nevermind. Anyway, second level thinking isn’t a Phil Hellmuthian look into your soul and figure out you have AQ type of thing, it’s putting a story together and putting your opponent on a possible range of hands. Like, umm, this:

XaQ Morphy: "please fold, sir" is a range, right?

On the other hand, sometimes our opponents are a bit easier to read. One day I was watching a friend play and a guy on his table basically never folded. He finally busted him and I said this:

XaQ Morphy: I'm thinkin the only range tex folds with there is misclick

Sometimes we try to entice our opponents to do something that we want and a lot of times that’s accomplished by telling them the opposite of what we want. For example, if we want them to call we type in “fold idiot, fold!” or something to that effect. RGP’s beloved Misst74 sort of got caught here with her choice of words:

misst74: call me bitch

Hmm, I wonder what she really was after? Sometimes no matter what we do it seems like there’s no hope, as this quote described:

XaQ Morphy: as soon as this guy stops hitting every hand, you're due to win a ton of money from him

That was a great night…Fell was playing some guy named slushie on Pacific poker and was getting annihilated. After about 2 hours things finally started to turn his way, and several hours later he busted slushie’s account, winning over $10k from him. Ahh, those were the days. Fell had a way about him that made people listen. Maybe not understand, but at least listen. Eventually someone finally understood what he was talking about:

FellKnight: I FEEL LIKE HELEN KELLERS TEACHER

One day TNL had a massive grudge match going, and was beating the other guy pretty badly. Best way to describe a winning session like that?

thenutlow: am squeezing that bastard like opium is seeping out of its pores

On the other hand, when he isn’t squeezing them, it’s more like this:

thenutlow: fuck me... stephen hawkins runs better then i do

This next one I’m rather proud of and to this day is probably the best compliment I’ve received about my poker playing. Note that the chat came from an observer. I imagine I did something stupid and busted him. Raising is fun!

weirdobob (Observer): i've never seen anyone play so wreckless as you do XaQ

On the other hand, not everyone shares my opinion about raising:

DOWNR: lmao
DOWNR: you ppl who raise b4 the flop are all punk rookies

Of course the opposite of people who raise are, well, a quote would be best to tell it:

thenutlow: you are a horrible infected animal otherwise known as a "nit"

What is a nit, you may ask? The basic definition of a nit in poker is someone who doesn’t give action on the poker table. It’s far more complicated than that though, and the complexity runs fairly deep. There are nits that won’t ever bet without the nuts, there are nits who never ever raise, there are nits who play so few hands you don’t even realize they are there, and many many more types. They are generally bad for the game, but sure are fun to make fun of. We’ll start with what I’ve called the Nit’s Prayer. The back story here is a “token” satellite on FullTilt where the top however many people get a $26 or $75 token that can be used to enter various tournaments. They aren’t very hard and don’t require a lot of skill, but are a good way to watch a bunch of idiots knock each other out while you sit there and wait to have a token handed to you. Or at least that’s what this guy thought. A moment of silence please for our nit friend:

RisingPhoenix10: nice one, keep that up
AtteK: ok
RisingPhoenix10: lemme just ride your coattails to the token
XaQ Morphy: a nit's prayer
XaQ Morphy: dear lord, let me sit here and blind away while everyone else does the work
XaQ Morphy: we thank you for thy fold button
XaQ Morphy: we thank you for thy min raise

On a side note, get a nit who gobbles and you have a truly disgusting specimen of nit. Speaking of nits, RGP is full of them. The way they talk they’ll never put a single penny in a pot without the nuts (the best hand possible), and sit there defending their plans as if it’s the only way to play poker. TNL had a great quote about them a while back:

thenutlow: these fucking nits could flop quads with a backdorr pass to eternal life and figure out a reason to fold

Related to that, FellKnight had a similar quote, about a totally different situation:

FellKnight: these fuckers would need quads with a str8 flush redraw to get it in

Sometimes you just know what your opponents have. The nits sit there all day long checking and folding and wake up and out of nowhere throw in a big bet. This is the reaction I usually have:

XaQ Morphy: holy shit he bet
XaQ Morphy: he must have a royal 8 of a kind

I’ve had friends who play pretty nitty at times. One day while TNL and I were watching one and TNL had the best advice I could have offered:

thenutlow: tell the idiot to get it in

TNL likes to stir up trouble when he plays low level tournaments and often tilts his opponents. The nits there just can’t stand it and love to follow him around and berate his play. His retort?

thenutlow: win lose or draw, i feel good my friend
thenutlow: you on the other hand, are crying like a rabid parrot over a bad beat for the grand sum of $10

Speaking of the grand sum and nits, many poker sites have issues with players begging for money from the rail. These nits are especially annoying because they are relentless in their pursuit of a few dollars. This guy had his future set from the moment he created his online name:

GFY Beggar (Observer): Would any of you kind folks be willing to spot me 5 dollars, please?

Sometimes the retards, nits, beggars and idiots just are too much. Add to that a few nasty bad beats and you end up starting to think like a nit, as seen here:

thenutlow: you know its a fuckin day when u want to just call with the nuts so u lose less

So I have an interesting dilemma. I have so many quotes that there are a full 13 pages of blog entry in MS Word. So far the longest blog entry has been 9 pages. Remember our theme here at the Manifesto, we’re looking for quantity and not necessarily quality (past year aside obviously), so I’m going to split this up into 2 parts. The other part is already written and ready to go, so all I have to do is wait a few days and post it. I’m going to leave this up for a week before posting part 2 of this entry, but trust me, it will be there!

Until next time.

Yours Donkily,

Morphy

The End of an Era

Hello Manifestites! I hope this posting finds you in good health and all that crap. There's a matter that has come up that I feel I need to explain in a little further detail, and what better place than the blog to explain it.

As you may or may not know, I've been a member of the usenet group rec.gambling.poker (RGP) for the past 5 years. I lurked for about 6 months before posting and posted for the first time in late 2004. I originally started reading it for the poker theory and eventually became part of the community that is RGP. There was a time when RGP had it all, good poker discussion, good people, a good feeling of community, a regular online home game, etc. However, over the years it's deteriorated to place that is full of people who can't/don't know how to discuss poker, a slew of political discussions that I don't get involved in, and people who literally can't stand each other yet spend all day posting back and forth, bitching at each other like a bunch of old ladies.

Over the past 2-3 years I've turned RGP from a place of knowledge to my own personal sandbox. I love watching idiots frolic in their own stupidity, and there was no better place to do this than RGP. It didn't even take much, a well-timed post here or there, a tangent, threadjack, all out troll, or just nudging certain people in the right direction. It was great to sit back and watch the fireworks for a while, but lately it's become just flat out boring.

Now, let me tell you another story. There was a poster who won't be named, but as a hint, used to be "the voice" of poker back in the day, whatever day that was. He had been in and out of some life trouble, but late 2008 he spent a considerable amount of time on RGP. Several times he posted a woe is me story and actually got people to send him money both in loans and via flat out charity. There were several RGP home games set up on Stars, and he would literally beg for money to play in them, asking either for loans or stakes, promising to pay back 50% if he won, which naturally he never did.

On November 22nd, 2008, he asked to borrow money from a good friend of mine, FellKnight. Fell loaned him $22 to play in 4 $5.50 RGP games, and Mr. Voice told him he would be paid back within a few days, or earlier if he cashed. Naturally, he didn't. Fell decided to let him parlay the money into a few double or nothing football bets, because Mr. Voice assured him that he would pay back, and somehow the sum became $84 (although the nits on RGP have spent considerable time arguing whether it should be $84 or $88. Who cares.) Still, not earth shattering money by any means, but also not an amount that someone would just brush off. After all, there's a reason for betting actual money, and there's a reason there's a term called a gentleman's bet.

Anyway, to make a long story short, Mr. Voice failed to pay Fell back. He made a near record number of excuses, kept promising a date to pay back, and kept falling through. Fell bugged him for a while but knew that it was probably a pointless venture and that based on the ever increasing woe is me messages begging for money that Mr. Voice posted on RGP, it became pretty obvious that the money was lost.

Back in August, Mr. Voice posted a brag post on his facebook account about how he bought a brand new big screen TV and only spent $150 on it. I decided to troll the shit out of him on RGP, so I posted a congrats message to him on the TV and that if he can afford that he must have paid Fell back already. Mr. Voice told me that in no certain terms was I to get involved, and even went to say that Fell never asked me to post anything on RGP. This is true, but on the other hand, Fell at that point would have said nearly anything in email to get Mr. Voice to pay up so he could be done with him.

Sometime after all of this I started thinking of a decent way to leave RGP. I was becoming increasingly bored with the vast number of true idiots there, the ones who refuse to let an argument die unless they get the last word in, no matter how wrong they've been proven, the ones who USE ALL CAPS AND RANDOM !! EXCLAMATION !! MARKS !! and open up dozens of different threads, changing the fucking subject line all over the place to the point where you can't even follow their discussions, to the complete nitfucks who offer such bad poker advice you wonder if they've ever won a session of poker in their lives without having the deck run them over. I still enjoyed trolling the everloving shit out of those idiots, but I knew my days were numbered and it was just a matter of time before I closed it down never to open it again.

Sometime in late October/early November I was on an AIM chat with Fell and in a fit of drunken irritation he tried to post a message calling out Mr. Voice as welching on the bet. He failed miserably in posting, but told me that he would post something on the 1 year anniversary of the original loan, if I reminded him. Bam, plan set in motion. I knew exactly what I was going to do, knew who the targets were, and knew that it would create the perfect moment of chaos for my exit and the big GFY to RGP that it's deserved for so many years.

Naturally I completely forgot on 11/22/09 to remind Fell, but I did remember the next day, so on 11/23, Fell posted the glorious "Mr. Voice is a welch" thread. It took 24 minutes for the fireworks to start flying, and by the time I got to the thread I was so amazed at the completely ridiculous comments that were made that I just sat back and laughed my ass off. Then the fun began. It seems the popular choice by the RGP old guard was to defend their friend and say that because he's fallen on hard times that the debt should be completely forgotten. They then turned on me and that's when it became more fun. I NEVER once posted anything about Mr. Voice's condition, medical, emotional or otherwise, except for the fact that he couldn't pay back a debt of less than $100 in a damn year. Instead I attacked those who attacked me.

The best part was when RGP's own village idiot K9way showed up. He has pissed all over RGP spouting the most ridiculous nonsense anyone has ready for the past 3 years, and just never knows when to quit. The only people who don't think he's a true moron are the true morons themselves, and it seems Mr. doggystyle took it upon himself to start flat out making shit up about what I'd posted in the thread. It didn't take long for the game of fetch to commence, and within about 5 posts I had doggy chasing his tail so fast I'm surprised he could sit up straight. I kept this up, posting little tidbits here and there, and then on 11/25 I stopped posting altogether. The thread took a life of its own, and based on the last count I've been told the thread seems to have finally stalled at 213 messages. Howard Beale, eat your heart out!

However, apparently some of these idiots, Mr. doggystyle being one of them, think that they "ran me out" of RGP. First of all, the thought of someone I've never met running me out of an online newsgroup that anyone can post to from anywhere is completely ridiculous. Apparently the timing on my last post and when Mr. Voice actually showed up in the thread was too coincidental for some. I just happened to stop posting before he showed up.

Anyway, I'll end this by saying that no, none of you idiots on RGP ran me out of anything. I made the decision to leave RGP months before that, but had to wait for the right opportunity. The right opportunity presented itself weeks before that thread even existed, and everything went according to plan.

So what next? Well, I won't completely break ties from RGP. I have friends that I met through RGP and I will still talk to them obviously. I'm still available via email at xaqmorphy@donkeymanifesto.com, still on AIM as XaQ Morphy and I'll probably still post a message there whenever I post a new blog thread, depending on how often I decide to post. I just wanted to clear up this little matter of the morons who think I was run off of anything. That still cracks me up just thinking about it.

I actually made some progress towards the next posting of The List. It's taking a lot longer than I thought because of how many quotes I have for this installment. Maybe by Christmas? Maybe not. We'll see. Until next time.

Yours Donkily,

Morphy

Illegal Border Donking

Hello Manifestites! What can I say, 2009 has been a pretty crappy year. My last post was in January, almost a year ago. I had a few things lined up for blog posts and then weird things started happening. I quit poker again for about the 15th time. Our wonderful economy took an ugly turn and the company that hired me on in December did mass layoffs and one day in February I was brought into a room with 60 others and told I no longer had a job. I was out of work for 3 months with the very real possibility of having to play poker for a living, and it disgusted me. Of all the possible professions that I’m qualified for (or not, depends on which side of the joke I’m on), poker is about the last on my list for things I’d like to do. The thought of spending day in and day out grinding against a bunch of retards that are only playing poker because they can’t function in society enough to leave their parents’ basements just makes me ill. Thankfully the poker gods were kind to me and did not let me pursue my lifelong nightmare of having to push buttons on a computer for a living. Instead, I work in IT. Err, wait a minute…

I took a job in May that required over 100 miles of driving each day and although I had a lot of time on the road, I honestly did not run into a single episode of Donkeys on Wheels, despite the long drive and somewhat crazy construction along the way. It’s almost like the collective idiot is working together to make the world a better place. Or something. Fortunately for me things look to be turning around, new job coming up next month much closer to home, poker is somewhat enjoyable lately, and the holidays are coming up.

Anyway, enough about me. A friend of mine had what can only be described as an incredible experience (and unfortunately for him, almost none of it good) earlier this year, and he shared the story with some friends. I read it and immediately thought of you, my faithful readers, who have been checking this site day in and day out just waiting for that next blog entry. I got his permission to edit the story to take out names and specific places, and I have it here for you in all its glory.

As a precursor to this, I’ll say that my friend, who we’ll call, umm, Mr. Q, has had some interesting experiences in his life of less than 30 years. Several years ago he got into a situation where he met a girl here in the US (he lives in Europe somewhere), moved here and married her thinking he could become a legal citizen that way. Well, things don’t work that way for non-Mexicans, so once the US Govt. got a hold of him they deported him and banned him from entry to the US for several years. A while after that he met another girl from the US and one can only surmise that at some point about oh, 9 months or so prior to his story begins, she visited him and a partaking of the secret love dance of the Dawnkeigh took place.

While I did edit the story to take out names and places, I left in the typing/grammar as is. Mr. Q’s native language is not English, so it would have been nice of me to help him out, but I’m not that helpful really, and I think the way its written actually helps portray the story from his point of view. That said, here it is, in all its glory. Enjoy!



“My fiancée is expecting my child very soon, and because of some medical problems and the already very tiring task of taking care of her first child (not mine) she told me that she would like having me around to help. So because of the custody agreement not allowing her to leave the state she was pretty much stuck in her state, I would have to come to her. Her situation would have allowed her to be able to support me financially if there was no other way, and the whole online poker thing means i wouldn't really need a work permit. So that leads to a plan of me just walking across the border from canada,
because frankly there is no secure border there.

The story begins in the end of may, when i cash out some money to pay for a ticket to canada. The flight was in early june, buying the ticket was easy. From there the plan was that my fiancée would come to the airport, grab my luggage, give me a compass and a flashlight, drive to the border with me, spend the night in a motel, and pick me up on the american side to drive to her place. That much for the Theory of it, in practice it all happened slightly different. It started one day before i left home with me sending her some more money for gas and stuff and for having a couple hundred lying around that i didn't want to carry with me. So then we have failure number 1, moneygram failed to do the only thing they do, when she tried to pick up the money she was told it wasn't there. That issue luckily was fixed with just about one hour of talking to some chick at the moneygram place who could not be bothered to even check the receipts they obviously keep before the hour long talk. As soon as she actually did check them the whole issue was fixed within 5 minutes....so there goes a total of about 5 hours for fixing that issue.... didn't need sleep anyway. now it's 10pm on the night before the flight, and i barely have enough time to disassemble my computer to take it with me, make some food, and finish packing before i need to get to the airport. 2 stop flight to my destination was really not bad at all. except for having a 7 hour flight after no sleep for 30 hours and the guy next to you can just not sit still for two minutes. Oh well who needs sleep anyway.

1st airport in canada
After getting off the plane, there obviously was the passport check, then going through immigration. no problems so far for some reason....but wait, then they want to check my luggage. so because of some strange items in my luggage they don't really believe my story, which was just a short vacation in canada.... strange items in my luggage ingclude the computer and some poker books. They send me back to immigration for a more in depth discussion with them. No matter, the connecting flight doesn't leave for 3 hours so why would i mind sitting down and having a long talk with someone. Eventually i changed my story somewhat, telling her that i was going to meet my fiancée who was going to have my child soon.... she still looked very sceptical, told me that she probably shouldn't let me go, but would anyway. Then she said that i would be banned from canada if i didn't manage to leave the country by the date of my return flight, and that there would be a warrent for my arrest. Neato off to airport 2.

2nd airport in canada
Getting out of the plane i obviously looked for my fiancée, didn't see her. turned on my cell phone, called her and heard it ring one time before the battery went dead. No problem, i can just go somewhere, sit down and wait. Eventually i got paged and was told that she would be about 2 hours late. Still not a problem. About 5 hours after my flight landed i was slightly worried.... so I spend a fortune on a coin phone calling her. She had to tell me that the canadian immigration wouldn't let her into the country. Great, stuck in the airport with not enough money to get a motel room and not enough money to get to the border.
I decided to get a cab into town with the little money i did have and got majorly ripped off. I went to subway for some food and ended up paying way too much for the worst sub i've ever eaten. So far canada is going great....

Eventually subway closes and i decide to have a seat in the parking lot behind it to try and think of what to do. Interestingly enough there was a bar right next door which seemed to be the only thing still open at the time. A couple of guys around my age were playing football in the parking lot and kinda stumbled over me, made me come in. We had quite a long conversation about where i've come from, why, what happened, etc. Eventually they decide to look up phone numbers/locations for homeless shelters and the like and bus companies that i might be able to call in the morning for a reasonably cheap ride somewhere near the border. I end up making the reasonably retarded decision to just go hitchhike to the border right then. One of the guys gives me C$40 that i tried but failed to refuse. I get them to call a cab for me and i tell him to take me as far south on the high way as i have money for (saving the $40, though). So then i'm standing somewhere on the highway at 2am with 80 pounds of luggage.

I decide to get rid of some of the stuff that i won't need anymore, stuff that can just be bought again if needed, like the poker books I had bought with fpps from stars. heavy stuff, big stuff.... and i feel bad for leaving it at the side of the road, but i didn't feel like i had too much of a choice. I certainly couldn't walk with that much luggage, and getting someone to stop, pick me up, and get that much luggage in the car would probably be difficult as well. So the suitcase is now somewhere at the side of the highway, it has an address tag on it in case you find it and want to send it back ;) . I only have to wait about 3 hours before i get picked up for probably not more than 10 miles. Not 5 minutes go by after getting dropped off before the Canadian police pulls over to ask me what i'm doing and where i'm going.

Here we have the difference between canadian and police in my country. The officer who talked to me told me that he had a call out, but if i don't get a ride before he comes by again he will give me a ride to the nearest town himself. In my country the officer would tell you to get off the damn highway because it's not a damn sidewalk.

I actually manage to get a ride from there within 10 minutes, taking me to the same town that the cop would have taken me. He dropped me off at a 7Eleven. I got myself a dr pepper and went on. Unfortunately i had to wait about 2 hours before someone picked me up again. Very nice guy he was, though, he gave me something to drink, some chips, some mini donuts.... he didn't take me all that far unfortunately, probably around 10 miles. From this point on I'm on the road that leads directly to the little border town that i want to go to. Unfortunately there isn't much trafic besides heavy trucks that have the order not to pick up anyone. I end up walking farther than the next guy takes me, and from there i walk another hour or so before the last guy picks me up and drives me for 80 miles or so.

Small Border Town
I don't actually see any houses except for a gas station/motel/restaurant that's on the road to the border crossing. A very nice girl, looking a bit younger than me, is working behind the counter. I ask her how much i would have to pay for a room and she says $39. Clearly i hit the jackpot considering i have $40 in my pocket....unfortunately you silly Canadians and Americans just can't be bothered to include taxes in your prices.... very annoying. After we cleared that up, she tells me that there's a motel in another town that has rooms for $25. She even asks someone if they could give me a ride over there, it just would be a while. A few minutes later she offers to buy me dinner. I would like to say i tried to refuse.... but i was so hungry.... she was serious too, and the food was quite good. Very small restaurant but they made a pretty good burger that i ordered (along with fries) because it was pretty much the cheapest thing on the menu. About an hour after that she asks me if i would rather stay there or go to the other town. I tell her that i would rather stay there and she ends up covering the difference between the 40 bucks i had and the 43.25 or so the room would have been out of her tip jar, then she ends up giving me a $5 phone card on top of all that. I'm enourmously grateful, but she never even gave me her name....Amazing how nice those canadians are.... i would definitely go back any time. Sure beats the hell out of my country. I have to wait about half an hour while they get the room ready for me, and from there i just end up going inside, getting in bed and falling asleep almost immediately for about 12 hours.

I guess you could take everything above as the prologue, now it gets interesting. i get up around 3am, use the phone card to call my fiancée to let her know i'll be starting to walk now, put the phone card back into the room, so that maybe someone else will profit from the genorosity of that girl without her having to pay for another phone card. And off i go to the forest, or what i thought was forest anyway. I walk along the road to the west about 2 miles before going south towards the USA. So far so good, sunrise should be reasonably soon after i cross the border (the border town is about 4 miles from the US border), shouldn't be a problem to just walk south for a while, right ?

Eventually, after my very limited sense for what time it is it should have been akound 7am (i didn't have a watch since my cellphone always took that job) i decide i should be heading southeastish so i don't miss the meeting point. But it's not much of a problem if i don't actually get to the meeting point, it is under 20 miles from the border, so I could just get there, get to some gas station and ask if i can make a phone call.... shouldn't be a problem at all. Most of the walk i didn't really think that i was deviating from the straight line that i was trying to walk. However, it was a pretty cloudy day and in the woods i couldn't see the sun for most of the day. Sometime in the afternoon i was suspecting that i hadn't been going south for a while. At this point i really only wanted to get out of the woods tho, since i had my doubts of getting out of there alive. I still had my bag with another 40 pounds of mostly clothes with me, which caused me to take very frequent breaks after never walking very far. So unfortunately the bag had to stay while i tried to get out of the damn woods. Another thing that made my life very difficult at this point was that the so called woods were mostly swamp. A few times during the journey i felt like i was surrounded by very deep water on all 4 sides and for long hours the path i chose to walk consisted of roots of the trees that i had to step on to stay dry. Dry is said too much, my pants and shoes were soaked pretty much from the very start. The journey through the woods was very interesting, i saw a buck, way too close for my taste, a bear, also way too close for my taste, but they both seemed to be afraid of me. To make the long story short(er), ever since the afternoon i just tried to get out of the woods, maybe somewhere that would tell me where the hell i was. I was certain i was on US side and i thought i was reasonably close to roseau. Eventually i heard big trucks in the distance and decided to just follow the sounds to the road. It took a long time to find said road, it was well after dark when i got there. I decided to follow the road to what i thought was south.

Now here comes the zinger of the whole story. After walking on that road for about 20 minutes i came back to the exact spot i started at. Neato. Now unfortunately i didn't have money, i didn't have that damn phone card, i hadn't had anything to eat or drink in about 35 hours and it was getting very cold. The gas station was open all night, but no one was attending it. Still there was a truck pulling in and i actually begged the driver for some food or drink, but he said he had nothing. I decided that i couldn't just sleep in near freezing temperatures and so i just started walking to the south again. This time, though, i was smarter, or bolder, at first anyway. I walked on the road until i got pretty close to the border crossing, that was closed at night. Only stepped back into the swamp/forest about half a mile away. Obviously i ended up getting lost again..... genius i am. So now i know that my sense of direction in the swamp is totally nonexistant, there's no sun, no moon, no idea where i'm going. I end up trying to sleep some, in wet clothes, near freezing temperatures, but from all the walking and dehydration i felt pretty hot. Still i ended up waking up shaking all over, freezing horribly. No way to get back to sleep. So i end up just standing there waiting for sunrise. Eventually i see the tips of the trees having some sunlight on them and i think i know where i need to go. I get back near the road, and keep walking in the forest about 150 yards from the road, almost never taking my eyes off of it. At some point in the morning i ended up walking about 100 yards before taking a break, more often than not a short nap, because i was too exhausted and hungry to keep going. I had told my fiancée on the phone that if i wasn't there by the previous night i would very likely not make it. Now I'm assuming that i need to get to the meeting point very quickly so i could maybe call her before she's back home 700 miles away, plus at this point i'm so hungry that i don't think i could go much longer. New plan, just walk on the damn road. That actually worked pretty good. I was able to go about 10 times the distance before needing a break. So there i am sleeping on the shoulder of the road when the border patrol pulls up.....I tell him that i'm a US Citizen of course, unfortunately i left my ID at home.... but somehow he doesn't believe me. He puts handcuffs on me, and searches my backpack, so then he finds my passport.

The border patrol apparently has a very lengthy booking process, or they don't do it very often.... took them about 5 hours to finish the whole paperwork. They tell me that they will be searching my hard drives and my cell phone (i still have neither of em back). They tell me that I can request to see an immigration judge that may let me stay in the country, so i could see my daughter be born. (unfortunately i found out when i saw the judge that there was 0 chance of that happening). They tell me that if i request to see the judge it would be about 7 days that i would have to spend in jail.

Eventually they take me to the local county jail and tell me that I would be moved in a couple of days, most likely monday. I ended up getting moved to a larger city jail in another state on tuesday. where i was told it would be a couple of days before i see the judge. It was a pretty nice jail. We only got locked down between 10pm and 6am, there was a day room that 8 cells were attached to. We spent most of the time in said day room. They had a nice poker game going, no blinds, ante 1, going to 2 soon as someone got knocked out, then 3, etc. buyin 1 rahmen noodle. over the whole time i was there i stayed pretty much even. after 7 days i got moved again (4 days after they told me i would have seen the judge), now to another county jail. There i was told that i would be seeing the judge after 10 days. I kinda didn't believe those guys since i figured that it had already been too long so it should be a day or 2 at most.... wrong again. 2 weeks after i got moved to that county jail they took me to the court. immigration court is arguably the worst thing you can go to. There were 15 locals that day. we all got put into one cell. A short time later there were transports from 3 other jails all throwing people into that one cell. One toilet, no privacy, and you get to stay there from about 8am until about 5pm.

Alright, finally seeing the judge, they told me there just is no way I would get to see my fiancée unless i got someone to pay the bond (initially set at $15,000). So at the hearing i asked the judge to reduce the bond, and he set it at $7,500. Unfortunately still way more than me or my fiancée would be able to come up with. So at this point i knew i wouldn't see her and i wouldn't get to see my daughter being born. And i knew that i had just wasted 24 days trying to see the judge when I coulda just told the border patrol that they should just deport me. Now, court was at the end of june, I was told that deportation to my country was pretty quick, i would leave within 2 weeks, probably sooner. The rest of the time in jail i was always thinking i would get deported tomorrow.... disappointed day after day. Finally 4 days later they got me out of bed at 5am, telling me that i'd get deported (they don't tell you until that morning....). unfortunately they took me to immigration court and from there i was taken to yet another county jail. I definitely could have done without that experience..... after 2 months in jail i was strip searched the first time. The food was the worst I have ever eaten and after getting moved to a different cell after dinner i was in a cell that was so cold that i couldn't sleep at all. No matter, Immigration was actually honest and i got woken up for breakfast at 4:25am where i was told that i'd be getting deported after breakfast.

I was given back my clothes (still smelling like the thing from the swamp) and after getting dressed (and letting me sit there for over an hour) they took me back to immigration court where i was given my backpack and everything else that the border patrol took from me, except for my cell phone and hard drives. Then they took me to the airport (state in the midwest US) and 2 people escorted me, handcuffed (glad they took the shackles off my feet at the court), to the gate. They actually took off the handcuffs then. They were nice people. From there i was escorted to an airport in the southwest of the US where we had nice mexican food for lunch at the airport, 4 hour overlay. Had some decent conversations, those people get around a lot, have a lot of stories to tell. Until bording started for the flight to my country they had me under the impression that they would be coming along, but they just got me on the plane and watched so i didn't get back off. Delta airlines unfortunately had very shitty service on that flight and computer problems with the entertainment system (redhat, was rebooting over and over, showing all the normal boot up messages of a linux system). They actually fixed that about 2 hours into the flight.

Back home
Back in my home country there actually were 2 cops waiting for me when i got off the plane. They checked the paperwork, checked if there were any crimes on my record and all kinds of stuff. Eventually they let me go. Now I'm in my country but 400 miles from home, no money in my pocket.... The police suggested that i go visit the church services inside the airport who may be able to help me. They let me call my brother, who amazingly enough was at home, and even more amazingly was able to get me a train ticket home. He picked me up at the train station, drove me to the house where I thought i lived, and started a long conversation. He said that my family didn't actually want me to ever get inside that house again.

Now that very last paragraph requires about this much text again to explain. The short version being that they made some very unreasonable requests about me doing maintanence on this property (owned by my family), which was one of the reasons i had for leaving.... and i didn't tell my family that i was planning to leave.... they weren't happy. The situation is not resolved but right now i have a place to stay.”


So there it is. Completely true, verified, etc. Poker books still unclaimed as far as we know, so if you happen to be walking along the highway next to a swamp, keep a lookout for a suitcase full of books.

A few of you have asked what the future was for the Manifesto. I’m unsure myself. I have been gathering stuff up, and I spent some time organizing The List into a spreadsheet where I can sort/filter out based on subject, which potentially makes writing up blog entries easier. I also have been saving up some rather amusing table chat. I’d say right now I have enough material for 4 more entries which should cover me through 2010 or so. Ok just kidding, I’m hoping to have installment #2 of The List within the next month. Until then, enjoy!

Yours Donkily,
Morphy

Happy Year of the Donk!

Hello Manifestites and Happy New Year! Yes here we are in 2009, which is known in some distant civilizations as the Year of the Donk. If we aren't all wiped off the face of the earth by some global-warming-triggered event, kill each other over table scraps due to the recession/depression, or are smashed into oblivion by a comet or asteroid, we should have a pretty good year ahead of us. In fact, the Year of the Donk may just turn out to be just that. Pull up a chair and see if you agree based on three tales of donk induced donkocity:

Garbage Pickers - I never understood why so many people seem to be driving around all day long just to pick up someone else's garbage. I'm not talking about your every day rummage sales and getting rid of unwanted crap for a quarter. I'm talking about actual garbage that is put into an actual garbage collection location for the purpose of disposal. As some of you know, we were greeted by a nice 3 inches of water in our basement last weekend due to a backed up storm drain. One room of the basement was semi-finished, and we have a lot of stuff down there, so that meant a fun week of removing everything from the room, bleach cleaning the floor, and either cleaning up things we want to keep or throwing them out. This brings a new meaning to "throw out the crap you don't want", and I'll leave it at that.

Among the things we tossed out were a big computer box full of misc. computer parts, electronics, books, gaming hardware and other junk. This was set aside for a rummage sale that never happened, and was just sitting in the basement taking up space. Entire bottom covered with water...dump the whole damn box. I put it outside next to the garbage bins, the box was ruined and soaking wet, and everything inside was soaked. I had a few gig bags for my basses that were ruined, a cheap old bass that I haven't played that I never even bothered to open up the bag and check (although I'm sure it was ruined - water everywhere, inside the pickups, battery compartment, everything), and a 20 year old hard case that was soaked on the inside, so I just got rid of it all. Yet, within 1 day of putting this outside in the garbage collection area, someone came by and took all of it. I suppose they didn't care that they were picking up stuff covered in well, sewer water, and I suppose they don't care that half the shit probably didn't work, nor did they even stop to think why all this "great stuff" was sitting out, soaking wet, in 15 degree weather. I can just imagine the conversation now:

Idiot: look honey, I got me a new geetar!
Idiot's honey: uhh, what's that god awful smell?
Idiot: duhhh, well, I didn't shit myself today (yet), so I dunno, did you let one loose?? hahrhahrhrhrharhahrhar, burp!

And so on. It hurts to channel the mind of the stupid, so I'll try not to do that anymore.

They Took Your What??? - We live on the southwest side of Milwaukee in a semi-quiet neighborhood on a somewhat busy street. We've never had crime problems in the neighborhood, people can walk around at night without issues, and with the exception of the semi-busy street it's just a quiet average middle class neighborhood. There are a lot of city workers in the area, cops, teachers, city workers, etc. because in order to work for the city they have to live in the city, and this is one of the better areas to live in. So, when something bad happens, it's a pretty big deal. We have an alley, and some people also have parking slabs next to their garages. My next door neighbors have 3 cars and a 2 car garage, so they park one on the slab. Well, the other morning my neighbor Greg woke up to find his 2 front wheels missing, and another car down the alley had 1 wheel missing as well. Uhh wtf? OK so maybe I'm just not into the whole crime spree crackhead homeless loser lifestyle where stealing wheels off of people's cars in a neighborhood filled with cops is considered something fun to do. Maybe I've never had it so bad that the first thing I think of when I need some extra money for my crack habit is to go steal someone's wheels off of their cars. But what the hell is going on here, who is going to walk around stealing wheels off of cars? We're not talking great cars either...a 10 year old Altima wagon, and an old Chevy Celebrity or some piece of shit like that. Did one of these losers buy a car with only one wheel? This is amazing to me at least...


Sorry, Umm, Wrong Number - and finally, it's not like I enjoy taking advantage of stupid people, but ok what the hell, I enjoy manipulating stupid people for my own enjoyment. The other day after I got home from work my wife was looking at her phone and didn't look very happy. I asked her what was wrong and she said some guy kept calling her and was leaving weird messages. Sure enough, right as she was telling me about this her phone rang. It showed up as a private number, so she ignored it and it went to voicemail. I listened to it, and well, it was something alright. Imagine a 2 minute long message from a guy with a german/mexican/indian accent using the word "baby" every other word and talking about wanting a dick up his ass. He then ended the message with "I'll call you back in 10 minutes baby" and hung up. While listening to this voicemail another call came in which I ignored, and that went to voicemail with 3 more minutes of the same nonsense. He said at the end of that message that he'd call back in 15 minutes. I hung up and said uhh, ok then, and just then the phone rang. I did my best imitation of umm, someone with a high pitched voice with a fake british accent and answered the phone: "HELLO?!?!?" [click]

Here's where it gets interesting. 30 seconds later MY phone rang, and I didn't get to it in time, but noticed it was the same thing: private number. It was becoming clear now that this moron was given a fake number, probably drooled on the last few digits and was trying every single number in order. My wife's number ends in 35, mine ends in 36, other digits are the same. I feel sorry for the first 34, and what was likely the next 60+ until the idiot's battery probably ran out. Oh but yes, RING, and there goes my phone again. Time to put an end to this:

Me (in best sounding pissed off gruff voice): HELLO.
Donk: HI!
Me: Is this the faggot that keeps calling here and leaving gay ass voicemails on my wife's phone?
Donk: Yes!
Me: [blink blink wtf?!?!?]
Donk: mumbles something
Me: What the fuck is your issue, are you trying to go to jail tonight?
Donk: I'm looking for Maria, she gave me this number
Me: I can assure you that no one named Maria gave you this number, now what the fuck is your problem you stupid fuck?
Donk: no no no no no...
Me: [cutting him off] yes yes yes yes yes listen you moron, you called my wife's number about 10 times and now you're on mine, what the fuck is your fucking problem anyway?
Donk: mumbles something
Me: Ok well keep talking please because all I need to do is either have you call either of our numbers again, or keep you on the line for another 10 seconds and the cops should be at your house within 5 minutes, so...
Donk: [click]

That's one way to take care of it at least. God I hate stupid people. Anyway, I have another story from the place I recently left that should be amusing. I'll try to get that written up in the next, umm, well, in 2009, how's that? Until next time!

Yours Donkily,

Morphy

Are You a Donk or a Donk?

Hello Manifestites! I bet you've been wondering if your fearless leader has left you. Never fear my loyal readers of the donk. I am here and well, albeit short on material, and even shorter on patience and motivation to put things together. I know I owe you the next entry for The List, and I've actually totally ignored a few Donkeys on Wheels possibilities, but fear not, I have not left you. Today's entry features one particularly inept donk, a few games of what I like to call workplace babelfish, and even my mom trying to make the blog. Actually now that I have it written out it will likely move into more than one entry, but I liked the workplace babelfish line so I decided to keep it. Anyway, go grab a nice tall cool glass of stfu and listen juice, and well, stfu and listen. Onwards!

As some of you know, I've been working in the IT industry for a gruelling 15 some years. Recent jobs have had me working a lot with Citrix and VMWare, and running the server environments for large companies in the Milwaukee, WI area. I'm at one of those now, a large manufacturing company with nearly 1500 servers located around the globe. I get all sorts of issues that come up, but I've managed to trick people into thinking I'm one of the smarter members on my team (not very tough considering some of the competition), and as a result I get all the "special" issues to deal with (read: crap sandwiches).

I'd like to share with you some chats I've had with a guy we'll call Pat because, well, that's his name. Pat is a pretty stupid moron of a donk, but we won't let that get in the way of his goals to apparently be the most clueless person possible. He somehow managed to get his co-worker Bill (mentioned later) fired, and inherited all the shit that this other guy did, and of course doesn't know a fucking thing about it. So his default course of action is to blame it on us. (We're called the Wintel team by the way). Favorite phrases of his are "I don't know anything about this, Wintel has always handled it for us" and "uhhh, vmkdfmmfkdlj; ". Most of the stuff we get is all tracked in a ticketing system, and even though were *supposed* to be considered tier 3, we get all sorts of ridiculous shit sent our way. So here's the notes in the ticket I receive:

Need to have someone to shut down processes on Server237 and Server238. Do not restart the process, but shut it down.

Seems pretty simple, right? Sure, but dear Pat, WHAT FUCKING PROCESSES DO YOU WANT SHUT DOWN YOU MORON??!?!? Uhhh, sorry. You guys aren't as far along as I am. So I pull up my IM program and decide to see how badly he wants to piss me off today:

Morphy: Hi Patrick
Pat: Hello
Morphy: for this ticket, what processes do you need shut down on Server237/238?
Pat: dcm on 238 and background processor and websphere on 237
Morphy: are you the app owner for these servers?
Pat: yes, I just don't have remote access yet, Bill was gonna do it, however, he has left for the day

Great, for a quick translation: the guy who knows wtf he's doing left for the day, and asked this retard to handle it. We get requests like this all the time...the application owners want to do something to their app that likely will fuck it up for all future use, and want us to abet them in their donkness. Wonderful. I don't know what these services do and frankly I don't care. But I know that sometimes these guys reboot the servers during their work, and a standard Windows service when set to automatic will start automatically (neat, huh?) at boot-up. So I try to get more info from him. I'm already logged into the server remotely and am starting to look for whatever it is that he's talking about.

Morphy: ok, are they services that start up? Do you want me to set them to disabled? If so, who will take care of getting them started up again?
Pat: Yes, we will correct everything after the tad db get restored tonitr
Pat: tonite

What? Did I just ask an either/or question and he answered yes? That surely can't be right. Not sure wtf the rest of his line was supposed to mean, so I ignored it. Meanwhile, I'm looking at the services on the server and don't see anything even closely related to whatever the fuck dcm is supposed to be. Remember, I don't really care what the app is on the server or what it does. That's not my job. My job is apparently translating moron into English...

Morphy: ok, by dcm do you mean the DCOM Server Process Launcher?
Pat: The Kronos Data Communications apps
Morphy: do you know what the process and/or service name is?
Pat: It should be running on the task bar
Morphy: let me try logging onto the local console
Pat: ok

Ok, ignoring the fact that he's calling something with the initials KDC "dcm" I actually managed to get something useful from this. From what he's saying, it's not a "process", it's a program running on the task bar (yes, I realize that this will spawn a "process" but I'm trying to simplify this for those who don't care). I'm logged in remotely (via remote desktop or rdp) and I don't see anything running. There's about a 2% chance that there's something running on the local console that I just don't know what the "process" name is in the list of random shit running on a Windows box (box is just a name for server). So I go to logon to the local console of the server which through the wonders of modern technology I can still do from my desk...

Morphy: I didn't see it via rdp
Pat: On Server248 ?
Morphy: 238
Morphy: should it be 248? the ticket said 238
Pat: yes

There it is again! Well, not as bad this time, but he's still going out of his way to be as vague as possible. Keep in mind that we have 1500 servers in the environment and while I'm simplifying the names here for the purpose of the blog entry, the servers are just numbered sequentially so we'll have like file001/002/003 etc. then apps001/002/003 etc. and there's no meaning to the number other than to separate it from the others. So server 237 could be a totally different app than 238. I could shut down 237 by mistake and take down something major whereas 238 is the one that really needs work on it. I hate it when the people who own the apps don't even know the names of their own goddamn servers, but that's another discussion. So here we go, let's try to find out what the fuck server he's talking about before I wind up shutting down an app on the VP's personal torrent server or some shit.

Morphy: is the other one still Server237?
Pat: Server237 contains Web/Application/Background Processor, they all need to be shut down
Morphy: and the other server is Server238 or Server248?
Pat: yes

Fuck me, he did it again, for 100% certain this time! Are you fucking stupid or just a moron? Yes? Great! Go fuck off and leave me alone then ffs!

Morphy: yes? which one is it?
Pat: 248
Morphy: ok I don't see anything in the task bar on Server237...so I'm going to need the exact names of the processes and/or services that need to be shut down
Pat: It may have been shut down already, in task manager, are there any apps running?
Morphy: no
Morphy: on either server
Pat: I just logged into the the s/w is running on 237

klakjdsl;fkajsdfl;kjasdf WTF? If he just logged into it then what the fucking hell am I doing bothering with this shit? Jesus, this guy is a fuckin moron. Ok fuck it, one last try and I'm done...

Morphy: ok then I'm going to need the exact names of the processes and/or services that need to be shut down
Pat: Kronos should be the only thing running, so you can shut down everything

Hmmm, I wonder if this will work...

Morphy: do you want me to shut down the server???

Nah, there's no possible way that he's going to start out asking to shut down a program on a server and agree to having me just power the fucker off. These people don't have remote access to power them back on. I do of course, because I have ZEEE POWERRRRRRRRR MUAHAHAHA err, sorry. But this fucker doesn't have any access to the datacenter where the server lives, and even if he called up the operations center, they wouldn't do shit for him either. Now it's a game, I just want to see if I can get away with this...

Pat: Yeah, as long as the TAD db isn't loaded on that box
Morphy: I don't know what that is
Pat: Thats the Kronos Dev Oracle database

The what? The KDO TAD db WTF SOL PDQ STFD STFU GFY and GTFOH???

Morphy: how would I tell if that's on either of these servers?
Pat: Its loaded on (name of some Unix server that we don't support)
Pat: So we can just shut down those 2 boxes

Jesus Christ, he's gonna let me shut the servers down isn't he? This is great, and I'm actually paying attention now and sitting up at my desk. I need to ask one more question though...

Morphy: ok, and how will you get them turned back on?
Pat: Yes
Morphy: So just to confirm, I will power these boxes off right now. I'll notify the GOC not to page out any alarms. You will then take care of bringing them back online. Is this correct?
Pat: Yes

YES! YES IS THE ANSWER TO EVERYTHING! Oh boy, what a moron. I mean, I could sit here and correct him. I could tell him that when I ask a "how will you do this" question that "YES" isn't even a fucking possible answer to it. Or, I could copy/paste the chat to the ticket, shut down the servers, and send myself a copy of the chat to post to my blog later. I don't suppose you guys have guessed which route I'll take? Boom, servers down, noted in ticket, and I contacted the GOC (uhh, global, umm, operations, cookie? err wait, center, yeah that's it) and told them to put those servers into blackout mode which ignores any alarms coming from them. Then I left early for the day, hah!

Of course every story has a happy ending, right? Yup, Bill comes in the next day and SPRIZE! can't get to his servers. So he contacts a guy he knows on my team who we'll call Tony, cause that's what he tells me is the name of his alter ego. I won't go into my thoughts on people who feel the need to use alter egos to post things online. Err, ummm, nevermind. Anyway, I of course sent Tony the chat above so he was able to laugh at Pat with me, and I'm sure he knew that the next morning Bill would be getting a hold of him anyway. Here's that chat:

Tony: hey bud
Morphy: hey
Tony: my buddy bill is pissed
Morphy: hah uh oh, why? lemme guess, they finally figured out they have no way to power the boxes back on?
Tony: lol here his chat:
Tony: Bill: tony buddy ol' pal
Tony: mmmmm
Bill: I cannot remote or into Server237
Bill: it looks like 248 as well.
Bill: wtf
Tony: blame that on pat,, he had morphy shutdown both dev servers
Bill: shutdown
Bill: that idiot
Tony: yes said he would bring them up.. hol don i'll send u the sm
Bill: Do I need a ticket to get restarted?
Bill: sorry I will hold on
Tony: y..
Tony: read email.,. what a dork
Bill: yes ticket?
Tony: y
Bill: k. tks
Tony: morphy will be pleased
Bill: great
Bill: screw it I will email pat to create the ticket
Tony: lol
Bill: I am going home now and will deal with it on Monday

And there we have it. Since then we've had Pat runins monthly or so, where he doesnt' know wtf he's doing, how to ask what he needs, or anything. I'm pretty sure this fucking guy has a map at his desk for how to get to the bathroom. His latest was knowing 3 months in advance that a security certificate was going to expire, then waiting until 2 days after it expired to put in a production outage incident. Hopefully management will realize what a moron this guy is and get rid of him, or throw him off the building, or something. Or maybe I'll find a new job and quit. Hmmm...that sounds pretty damn tempting. Until next time.

Yours Donkily,

Morphy

Morphy's Fish Tank

Hello Manifestites! Last post I believe I was roll building. Yeah, I had an issue where a supposed friend of mine busted one of my accounts (yes, my fault for giving the password out, no need to discuss that), and I lost all interest in playing for a while, so I cashed out what I had on the other site I play on and left poker again for a while. I got a rakeback a while back from FullTilt and have been playing on that. At this time it's unknown whether or not I'll continue playing, as the trust I had in this person was crushed. Enough about that...

I do have 2-3 blog posts coming, and I'll just say "soon" for the timeframe. One is the way overdue next installment of The List post, and the other is a collection of IM chats I've had at work that have to be seen to be believed (but not necessarily understood!).

However, the reason for this post is to announce a new blog I started. I'm starting up a new fish tank and have never had a chance to document a tank from start to "finish"...I hate to use the word finish because a tank is a living, evolving thing, but it's the best word for it at this time. So I bring you:

Morphy's Fish Tank (http://morphysfishtank.blogspot.com)

Enjoy, and until next time!

Yours Donkily,

Morphy

Random Donk Chat

Hello Manifestites! Ahh, it's summertime. Time for the great outdoors, air conditioning, sunburn, kids screaming in the backyard pool, bugs, and the humidity. Oh the humidity! It's also about time that I stop fucking around with my poker game and do something somewhat serious. Yes folks, it's roll building time!

Thanks to our wonderful soon-to-be communist government and their UIEGALMNOPWTFSOL law that they passed, the financial side of the online poker world has been turned upside down. Neteller stopped serving US customers, and many of us cashed out our rolls and have been screwing around since then with no real bankroll to play on. It's a very tough grind coming up from quarter and dollar levels to try and play for anything meaningful. It's just too easy to say "hell, it's only $500, see if I can double it up quick" and dump it all on one table hoping to get lucky (that is, not get KK vs. a flush draw), then end up quitting poker again out of disgust. I do have to say, I have the most experience at quitting poker than anyone I know! So I'm happy to say that at least for the time being, I'm out of the true donk levels and am working up a nice roll.

Of course the trip through the land of the donk is a tough one, and on a site like Bodog, can be a true test of patience and willpower. Add to that the Bodog bug that allows you to bypass the swear filter, and it can be well, more fun than it should be. The following are various random chats that I've had over the last 2 months or so while rebuilding. I save them to a text file in case I might ever use them or just get a laugh out of them. Time to clear out the file and share it with my faithful readers (and all you idiots who read this out of sheer hatred towards me so you can post on RGP how pathetic I am. There's a special place in my heart for you morons). Here we go!

In the hand prior to this chat, I had 64 on the BB in a NLHE game, checked preflop, no one bet on the flop, hit trip 4s on the turn and busted some idiot who couldn't bet top pair:

hartdog63: omg sick call
armorbill: how do you even stay for flop with 6 4
DOKTER DONKEY: me?
armorbill: yea
DOKTER DONKEY: well sparky, it's like this
DOKTER DONKEY: no one raised
DOKTER DONKEY: and I was on the big blind
DOKTER DONKEY: so I hit the button labeled check and WHAMMO, the flop was dealt
DOKTER DONKEY: pretty incredible huh?
armorbill: sorry d i c k
Duck12: that is the ******est comment i've ever heard
Duck12: don't do that again
Duck12: i feel gay just reading it
DOKTER DONKEY: well I'm sorry, ask a retarded question, get a retarded answer
Duck12: yeah armor don't ask retarded questions
DOKTER DONKEY: it's very likely he can't help himself
armorbill: he even stayed after flop
DOKTER DONKEY: I did?
DOKTER DONKEY: oh yeah
DOKTER DONKEY: you mean when it checked around and no one bet?
DOKTER DONKEY: pretty fuckin hard to imagine I didn't fold, isn't it?
armorbill: what an *******
DOKTER DONKEY: asshole?
armorbill: yep
DOKTER DONKEY: I'd rather be an asshole than a complete fuckin idiot such as yourself
armorbill: you are
DOKTER DONKEY: and so are you sir

Ahh yes, the truly clueless at work. This next one is a great example of how acting like you're mad gets people to lose IQ points as they dig themselves deeper into the stupidity that is their own mind. It starts out innocent enough:

DOKTER DONKEY: it's a wonder alright
DOKTER DONKEY: fuckin idiot
onedaywonder: lol
onedaywonder: who

Sigh, they never will get it will they? This was a PLO hand where I held the Ace of whatever 3 suits were on the board. I made a pot bet on the river knowing that they can't have the nuts because I have their card. Naturally that doesn't stop them from getting in with the 17th nuts or whatever this idiot had. Note that throughout this chat I'm actually laughing my ass off, and I bet he thinks I'm about to go on a neighborhood shooting spree:

onedaywonder: u make a terrible play and get mad at me
onedaywonder: now thats funny
DOKTER DONKEY: ahh yes, and the guy calling with the 9 high flush made the good play?
DOKTER DONKEY: and I'm not mad
onedaywonder: it was obvious u did not have a flush
DOKTER DONKEY: just merely calling you a fucking idiot
onedaywonder: u would have bet it on the turn
DOKTER DONKEY: why would I do that?
onedaywonder: well if i'm an idiot what does that make u
onedaywonder: lol
DOKTER DONKEY: good question
onedaywonder: i guess u are re.tarded then
onedaywonder: lol but stay mad i find it hilarious
DOKTER DONKEY: I'm not mad you fuckin dipshit
onedaywonder: yes u are u made a terrible poker play and instead of owning up to it all u can do is take it out on
onedaywonder: me
onedaywonder: sad and pathetic
onedaywonder: lol
DOKTER DONKEY: I knew you didn't have the nuts
DOKTER DONKEY: so I made a bet that someone with half a brain could never call
DOKTER DONKEY: which leaves you where?
onedaywonder: and i knew i had u beat
onedaywonder: thats why i called
onedaywonder: lol
DOKTER DONKEY: no, you knew you had a 9 high flush, and likely the drool all over your keyboard proves it
onedaywonder: your bet was obvious u don'tbet the pot if u have the flush
onedaywonder: u make a value bet
DOKTER DONKEY: I'll keep that in mind
DOKTER DONKEY: ty for the tip
onedaywonder: u lost u made a bad read get over it
onedaywonder: u have already refilled atleast twice now
onedaywonder: that says all we need to know about u
DOKTER DONKEY: there's plenty more where this came from
onedaywonder: stop crying
onedaywonder: try another hobby
onedaywonder: maybe spades suits u
onedaywonder: lol
DOKTER DONKEY: care to play headsup for your roll there champ?
DOKTER DONKEY: all 77.35 of it?
onedaywonder: since there are no heads up tables i say no
onedaywonder: lol
onedaywonder: and now i only have 77 b/c i beat u in a hand
DOKTER DONKEY: no one is sitting on 10/20 on table Atlanta
onedaywonder: your anger has gotten the best of u
DOKTER DONKEY: I'll put 1k up against yours
onedaywonder: lol
onedaywonder: what does 1k have to do with our conversation anyway
onedaywonder: u lost
DOKTER DONKEY: I'm sitting
onedaywonder: u made a bad play
onedaywonder: it happens
onedaywonder: calm down
DOKTER DONKEY: come join me champ
DOKTER DONKEY: waiting
DOKTER DONKEY: still waitign
onedaywonder: lol i never said u were out of cash just the fact that u've had to refill twice already is
onedaywonder: an indication of how u play
DOKTER DONKEY: it is?
onedaywonder: and u will be waiting a long time if u think i'm gonna sit down and play for 1k

Whew! I'm the worst headsup player in the world, so this idiot just passed up on a free $1000. Sure am glad he didn't sit down, or well, you guys wouldn't be reading this.

onedaywonder: lol but it obviously makes u feel good to be there
DOKTER DONKEY: figures
DOKTER DONKEY: make a bad call, win $10, talk shit, and can't back it up
onedaywonder: if u are such a high roller then calm down i made a great call and u are so upset over u can't say
DOKTER DONKEY: I'm not upset, I already said that sparky
onedaywonder: nh and move on u got to your panties in a wad
onedaywonder: its sad
onedaywonder: yeah u are not upset u just felt the need to call me out
onedaywonder: lol
DOKTER DONKEY: yes, you're a fuckin idiot
DOKTER DONKEY: do we need to go over this again?
onedaywonder: lol
onedaywonder: take a deep breath
DOKTER DONKEY: take notes or something, try to keep up
onedaywonder: maybe go walk around outside
onedaywonder: cool off
DOKTER DONKEY: now why the hell would I want to do that
onedaywonder: b/c u are upset no matter how many times u deny it
DOKTER DONKEY: I'M NOT UPSET YOU FUCKIN MORON
onedaywonder: lol
onedaywonder: take a deep breath
onedaywonder: smoke some dope
DOKTER DONKEY: man you idiots have no sense of humor
onedaywonder: this is just a 50 dollar table pro
onedaywonder: relax
DOKTER DONKEY: only an idiot would want an opponent he thinks is on tilt to relax
onedaywonder: no u are calling everyone at the table an idiot
onedaywonder: wow
DOKTER DONKEY: therefore you are a fuckin idiot
onedaywonder: lol
onedaywonder: i'm here to pass thetime
onedaywonder: not trying to pay my bills
DOKTER DONKEY: I would hope not
onedaywonder: when someone makes a great call against me i say nh
onedaywonder: i dont cry about it forever
DOKTER DONKEY: if you were to make a great call I would have no problem saying nh
onedaywonder: lol
DOKTER DONKEY: I'm sure you'll get your chance
onedaywonder: u got outplayed
onedaywonder: just accept it
onedaywonder: move on
DOKTER DONKEY: but when you make a call like that, it's not nh
onedaywonder: don't get so upset
DOKTER DONKEY: it's "OMGIGOTAFLUSHDRAW"
onedaywonder: u tried to buy the pot
onedaywonder: it was obvious
DOKTER DONKEY: I made a bet that any thinking player would fold to
DOKTER DONKEY: so again
onedaywonder: i guress your fragile ego got damaged
onedaywonder: sorry i called
onedaywonder: i would have folded if i knew it would upset u like this
DOKTER DONKEY: you should be!
onedaywonder: lol
onedaywonder: i must say i have enjoyed making fun of u tho
DOKTER DONKEY: you what now?
DOKTER DONKEY: sir
onedaywonder: i don't really like to embarrass people but u deservef it i guess
DOKTER DONKEY: you have a lot of work to do if you think that was making fun of someone
onedaywonder: see u around donkey
DOKTER DONKEY: ahh yes
DOKTER DONKEY: run away with your monster profit
onedaywonder: lol
DOKTER DONKEY: go upstairs and brag to your mom about your big win
onedaywonder: relax take a deep breath
onedaywonder: u will feel better
DOKTER DONKEY: lol
DOKTER DONKEY: you don't get it do you?
DOKTER DONKEY: what an idiot
DOKTER DONKEY: so how are the rest of you idiots doing tonight?

Well that was fun. A few days later I sit down at some table, and the first thing I see is this:

doug11667: i know this riiged ****** gonna win
doug11667: ****er prolly plays 4 bodog
doug11667: *** you
doug11667: rigged site bot
V47Y5: nh
doug11667: not playing this s ass s no more
doug11667: blo me
V47Y5: we'll miss you

Well I couldn't resist joining in, so I decided to throw in a few lines here:

DOKTER DONKEY: look, a talking bot!
V47Y5: as will my bankroll
doug11667: i tell efgveery one bodog rigged
DOKTER DONKEY: I don't think efgveery one will believe you
doug11667: come to baltimore birtch ]
doug11667: i bweat the shii to oua your ass
doug11667: muthhha ***er
doug11667: leave you bleeding in the street
doug11667: punk ass *****
doug11667: I light your dog on fire
doug11667: and chop his head off
V47Y5: why would i want to come to baltimore if you were going to "bweat the shii oua" my ass?
doug11667: take you that long to respond who re e
doug11667: little ****
doug11667: c uu n t
doug11667: hope they pauy well in china
doug11667: little *****
doug11667: ch iin k

Well well, someone has some anger management issues. Whereas in the chat before this it should have been obvious that I was just stringing the guy along, there's a real possibility that this guy is going to go break every crayon in his crayon box after this episode. About two weeks after the chat above (remember, when he said he would never play there again), I saw him on a table:

DOKTER DONKEY: hi gl
DOKTER DONKEY: what's your name?
doug11667: doug
DOKTER DONKEY: hi doug, very nice to meet you
doug11667: ya u too
DOKTER DONKEY: you aren't gonna light my dog on fire if I beat you are you?
doug11667: hmmmmm
doug11667: was that u

My guess is he's still on the site somewhere, losing money and lighting things on fire. Hope he has some fireproof dog food!

This next donkerlude happened at a PLO table. Nothing like using the chat as your personal venting area. This guy has some issues for sure:

eligatorblood: play holdem..this game is like flipping coins
Batence: i know
Batence: but in holdem
Batence: i get even worst beats
Batence: these days
Batence: its a ****in joke
Batence: 2-3 outers there
Batence: crack my hands
Batence: today
Batence: i push all in
Batence: no i get one ****** to push all in with 9 6 off suit
Batence: and i have kings
Batence: and i have a flush draw and a better hand
Batence: everything mate
Batence: and at the river he caught 6
Batence: the non spade 6
Batence: bodog is seriously ****ing with me
Batence: lately
Batence: and i just want to break even
DOKTER DONKEY: a lofty goal indeed
Batence: if the people didn't get so lucky on me
Batence: i would actually be quite ahead
DOKTER DONKEY: funny how that works
Batence: here the worst hand wins

Unfortunately he took my little snipe remarks to mean "hi, I want to be your friend forever, please share all of your bad beat stories with me." Well fuck that, let's see if I can annoy the shit outta him:

Batence: the other day man
Batence: i am in a tourney
DOKTER DONKEY: right now?
Batence: i push all in AA against KK 10 10 and AQ
Batence: the AQ won
Batence: with 4 cards to a flush
DOKTER DONKEY: did you win it?
Batence: i hit my ace by the way
DOKTER DONKEY: how much did you win?
Batence: no
Batence: i had a set of AA
DOKTER DONKEY: you know a flush beats a set right?
Batence: yeah
Batence: but mate
Batence: he caught 4 cards
Batence: he had AQ
Batence: not suited
DOKTER DONKEY: well holdem is a 7 card game you know
DOKTER DONKEY: you get 2 hole cards
Batence: against AA KK I TT
DOKTER DONKEY: and there are 5 community cards that all players share
DOKTER DONKEY: and you make up your best 5 card hand from a combination of those cards
Batence: whatever man

Seems like that did the trick. "Whatever man." Hmm, wonder if he learned that from my 8 year old?

Batence: i hope for once i will get lucky with the worst hand
Batence: just once
eligatorblood: should happen eventually
Batence: because people are doing it to me all the time
nigmeplz: if u play bad u will lose more
Batence: i losse with the best hand EVERY TIME
DOKTER DONKEY: not really the strategy you should be going for
Batence: what strategy shoud i be going for mate
DOKTER DONKEY: well I think I speak for all of us when I say one that involves much less whining

And that was that. The rest of these are just various short clips:

maclindoors: such a set up hand
DOKTER DONKEY: yah the biggest part of the setup was making you call a raise with 4 high

This next one was a hand I posted to RGP. I had T9, flop 978, he shoves KK in for a 4x the pot bet, I call, river my straight, and bust him. I couldn't think of anything better to say, so this was it:

h82bukid: lol
h82bukid: true to your name
DOKTER DONKEY: shut up idiot

Here's two random chats from a guy who really has some issues. These happened a few weeks apart:

PhippsJ: well i guess we know who the table idiot is here
DOKTER DONKEY: the guy who has filled up the chat talking to himself?
DOKTER DONKEY: or the guy whining about a bad beat?
GonzagaJere: I know! The guy with a small stack!
DOKTER DONKEY: I was in the pool!!!
DOKTER DONKEY: oh


PhippsJ: your like the 5 foot 5 guy at the bar trying to pick fights
PhippsJ: and everyone just laughs at
DOKTER DONKEY: yup that's me
DOKTER DONKEY: except I'm 5 foot 10
DOKTER DONKEY: and have a blackbelt in dawnkeigh-do


Random comment:

drb64: you pros must be bored being on a small dollar table like this
DOKTER DONKEY: I like to watch retards frolic in their natural environment

This next one was interesting. The player here is a regular at $2/$4 NL and up, and while I don't think he's the greatest player, I used play him fairly regularly a year ago or so and he sure seemed like a winning player to me. One day he shows up on a 50c/$1 PLO table and is playing like a true idiot, so I had to ask him wtf was going on. Needless to say the chat was destined to end the way it did:

DOKTER DONKEY: lol well done there champ
DOKTER DONKEY: was gonna ask why you aren't playing 300 max anymore, but now I know
chump_status: this is his chick
DOKTER DONKEY: you must be really good looking

This next fucker kept posting $3 big blinds and would time out when the action got to him, folding his hand. At least he was honest:

DOKTER DONKEY: hey threeaaas, how much have you lost so far by posting a blind and timing out?
ThreeAAAs: my fault man
ThreeAAAs: 10 dollars

I have no clue what this is in reference to:

grobux: i had 22
DOKTER DONKEY: if you had 22 that was the worst raise in the history of the last 3 hands

And finally, against a typical "maybe if I bet more he'll fold" player...I was in the $2 small blind with J3 and called $1 since the odds were plenty. Flop was AQJ84 and I check/called bets that got bigger on every street. I somehow managed to beat my opponent's 3 high. How did I know, you may ask? Easy, and remember, TYPING IN ALL CAPS MAKES THINGS LOOK FUNNY:

DOKTER DONKEY: NO BLUFFY BLUFFY 4 U
The Nubster: lol
The Nubster: nice call
DOKTER DONKEY: TY
DOKTER DONKEY: I READ INTO YOUR SOUL
DOKTER DONKEY: DIDN'T SEE ANYTHING, SO HIT CALL

That's all for now. Until next time!

Yours Donkily,

Morphy