In poker news, after all the traveling and other bullshit with the holidays, I decided to play some tournaments this weekend. Saturday I woke up and decided to play the $9 Guaranteed Quarter Million Qualifier. I played decently well, and hit a couple good hands and managed to win a spot in Sunday’s Quarter Million Guaranteed tournament. I was extremely ecstatic about this finish because I finish 7th out of 315, which is the biggest tournament I’ve ever played in. It was quite a confidence boost too. I’ve been sucking somewhat lately, so it was nice to feel good about my poker skills again. So the tournament was on Sunday. As is the case every day, I couldn’t sleep on Saturday night, so I stayed up playing San Andreas until around 3am. I had a 8am soccer game by the airport, so I stumbled out of bed at 6:50 to make it in time. We beat the crap out of a shorthanded team and I scored an amazing goal from 25 yards out that I attribute to my new bubblebee socks. I came back home and passed out for a few hours before playing the Quarter Million Tourney. When the tournament started with 1417 people I was a little intimidated, but I was feeling pretty good about my table. There was a guy four seats to my right that would call any time I had a good hand. A couple nice flush hands and I was doubled up, and chip leader of my table. Then the guy directly across from me started hitting hands like crazy. He busted out three people which definitively better hands and bluffed out for a whole lot more. He was doing a tremendously good job of bullying the table. I did my best to avoid going head to head with him. Two hours into the tournament, There were only 500 people left and my chip stack was a little over the average. Then the trouble started, I got into a bad situation with a flush draw that didn’t work out against the bully across the table. Unfortunately I couldn’t convince myself that he actually had a hand and I called a huge raise on the river that I shouldn’t have. That took me down to 900 in chips, with blinds at 100/200. Luckily I picked up some good hands and got myself back up to 3000 in chips, when it finally happened. I hadn’t gotten a good pocket pair all day, so when I got KK UTG, I raised it up to 1200. Everyone folded except for the button, who thought about it for a long time and then finally raised all in (with more chips than me). I thought about it for a while and then decided that I really needed this to work out and went for it. Of course I had run into AA and the board didn’t help. I finished out the tournament in 374th place. It was disappointing to not have made it into the money, but it was definitely a good learning experience for me. It’s made me anxious to continue playing larger tournaments in hopes that my no-limit play will get better.

In a recent conversation with an acquaintance that I haven’t seen in years, an awkward conversation about my company ensued. I’ve been trying to put together what all went wrong and here’s what I’ve come up with.

First off, unless I know you fairly well, don’t tell me about getting turned down after interviewing with my company. There’s no good way to respond to that. “Gee, sorry we didn’t like you. Maybe you don’t interview well.” Or I could respond with a little more bite to my response. “Well, as I remember from college, you’re a moron. I’m actually surprised you managed to get an onsite interview in the first place.” I’ve actually had this happen multiple times. The worst part though, is when someone is fishing for a job. For some reason, people who are fishing for a job (usually with very obvious desperation) do two things wrong: They spend half of their conversation with me complaining about how bad their current job sucks. “I have to work overtime all the time and I don’t get paid enough and the fluffer only comes by every two weeks.” I guess some people think that if I feel sorry for them, then I’ll be more likely to give them a hand at finding a job (pun-tastic!). Not true. The other thing they do, that I can’t quite explain, is they insult my company. It always goes the same way: “I’ve been trying to get into your company for a while.” “Yeah, we have a pretty rigorous interview process.” “Well, I think you guys have some pretty bad age discrimination. I know a guy who was older that got turned down by your company.” Once again, a.w.k. What the fuck am I supposed to say? Oh my god, my company discriminates? ” I have worked for my company for five years will blindly leave the company because you heard from some guy (who probably heard from another guy) that my company discriminates! I haven’t seen you in four years, but I completely believe you. I’m going to march down to my office tomorrow and submit my resignation.” Or maybe I wouldn’t do something so forceful. “I’m going to fix this right now. Give me the name of the guy who got turned down and I’ll make this right. I’m sure his emotions weren’t playing a part in his statements after he got turned down for a job!” It’s not always age discrimination that people accuse my company of; otherwise I’d start to be concerned about it. It’s just always something. And while I won’t say that my company is perfect in every way, we actually have a more fair process for interviewing/hiring than I’ve seen at any of the previous companies that I’ve worked for. That’s not to say that people don’t fall through the cracks. We make plenty of mistakes (and I’m just speaking about the stuff I know about), but they are mistakes and not discrimination. What people need to realize is that interviewing is a human process . Mistakes will be made.

As an aside, just in case she happens to read this: I’m not talking about you Ann.