Labor Day PSA / Riverside Poker Emporium & Donk-A-Rama Trip Report

I made a run over to the Riverside Poker Emporium & Donk-A-Rama last night, to meet up with fellow Ironmen Santa Claus and River Joe.  On the drive over (mostly on I-80), I encountered fairly heavy traffic, likely due to the confluence of the Iowa Hawkeyes' first home game today, and the Labor Day holiday.  There was a lot of rather reckless driving, so because I love my readers and want you around to stack off to me for years to come, please be careful this weekend if you are out on the roads:

• Don't be the slowpoke driver in the left lane who causes traffic to pile up for several miles while you fail to pass.  Large groups of cars moving at high speeds with frustrated drivers who are likely following too closely and focused too much on you rather than the car in front of them are a recipe for disaster.  Yes, you may be entirely within your rights to drive in the left lane, and yes, those folks behind you should settle down and maybe not violate the speed limit so flagrantly, but driving isn't about being right or teaching folks about traffic laws, it's about everyone making it to their destination safely.  So, please pass or get over.
• If you are immediately behind a slowpoke driver, keep a reasonable distance between your cars.  Tailgating is an incredibly dangerous way to tell someone to speed it up, particularly at highway speeds, and especially when there are cars or trucks next to you in the right hand lane.
• If you are further back in a line of vehicles waiting for a slowpoke to pass, tailgating is even more dangerous and less useful in resolving the situation.  Chill out.  It can be frustrating, but you are likely still moving along at 60+ mph, so the actual delay to your travels is likely less than 5 minutes.
• If you are coming up on a rolling traffic jam caused by a slowpoke, do not pass the passing line on the right and then try to cut into the passing lane ahead of the folks already in line.  This is likely the most dangerous thing I saw yesterday, with cars repeatedly trying to squeeze into the passing lane, which pissed off drivers who were already in line, who in turn tried to prevent the line cut by speeding up to tailgate even more tightly.  Folks, nobody wins in a high speed game of chicken.  Please wait your turn.  But if someone is rude and tries to cut in line, back off and let them cut.  Even though you're right to be annoyed, there's no need to be dead right.
• Finally, if you pass a slowpoke, there is absolutely no reason to "teach them a lesson" by passing them, then moving in front of the slowpoke in his lane and hitting the brakes.  I saw this incredibly reckless maneuver at least three times, and I'm baffled by what the driver felt s/he was accomplishing while putting a lot of folks in danger.  You've passed the slowpoke.  Time to drive on at your preferred speed.

I can't say I'm completely innocent of all of these practices.  I get annoyed at slowpokes, and probably tailgate way more frequently than I should.  But let me tell ya, working on a number of lawsuits involving bad motor vehicle accidents, seeing photos of mangled cars and gruesome injuries, and reading medical records and autopsy reports, can really drive home the horrific tragedies that result merely because a couple of drivers were more concerned with driving their way than being considerate of other drivers sharing the road.  Just as an example, I'm currently working on a case involving a three semi-truck collision, where one driver died on impact, one driver died after suffering horrific burns, and the third driver (who was not at all at fault) walked away with minor injuries, but has such severe PTSD that he likely will never drive a truck again.

So please, if you are on the roads this weekend, drive safely. 

* * * * *

The poker session itself was rather pedestrian.  I managed to donk off three buy-ins due to the dreaded combination of #runbad and #playbad.  As an example of my #runbad, we were playing short-handed, so I called on the button with 9d3d.  Flop was Jd-9s-3c.  Donkey Kong!  I get it all-in with another guy for about $150 each.  He shows J5.  Excellent.  Turn is ... 5d.  OK, I still have redraws.  River is a black Ten.  I no longer had redraws.  As an example of my #playbad, I was up against the table uber-LAG who had been luckboxing weird two pairs and unlikely straights all night, but also showing off a lot of big two and three barrel bluffs.  I flopped top pair with JT, and check-called the flop and turn, figuring he would fold to a raise, but would keep firing all day with air.  River was a King, and he put out a suspiciously large bet.  I had a feeling he just caught up, but it was a huge pot, so I made the crying call ... and he rolled the King, natch.  Just a terribly stupid play on my part, getting greedy by not raising earlier in the hand, and then paying off the river.  There were tons of other examples of both #runbad and #playbad, but I won't bore y'all or depress myself by rehashing them here.  Bygones.

Despite the hit to my bankroll, I did enjoy seeing Santa Claus and River Joe, who were really the only two entertaining guys at the table, except for the Uber-SVB.  This guy hit at least four full houses and two additional sets in roughly 30 minutes, and got paid off on every hand.  It got to the point where the table was (half) jokingly guessing which set he flopped every hand.

I also had the pleasure of meeting a crAAKKer reader, Ryan, a/k/a "CRM114FGD135" on Twitter and AVP (yo dude, buy a vowel).  Ryan also knew Santa Claus from the IMOP trip reports, and claimed to have learned a lot from my poker strategy posts.  I can only presume he meant he plays exactly the opposite of my style, since he seems fairly bright and also managed to walk out with a rack of red chips from the 1/2 NLHE game.  I vaguely remember doing that once upon a time ....