I met Bill Gardner at one of his son Steve's poker games. Bill was a genuinely nice, friendly, and funny man.

I played poker with Bill once every other month or two for most of the last four years. It wasn't long before he became the player I respected the most. He was in his eighties, and had trouble reading the cards. He never had trouble reading the situation. I could never read Bill, and I doubt that anyone else was able to read him consistently. Anyone who failed to take him seriously as a player quickly came to regret it.

It turns out that Bill had played poker for a living when he was younger. He had played with some of the greatest Hold'em players in history, Doyle Brunson and Amarillo Slim, back when even private poker games were illegal in Texas.

I'll remember the way Bill would say he had a "straight, straight to the deck!" as he showed the person he'd just bluffed the two worthless cards he was holding. I'll remember how he would sometimes say he was "selling his rooster" when he went all in. And I'll remember that, regardless of whether the cards fell his way or someone else's, he always just enjoyed playing. He was fun to be around, and a challenge to play against.

Steve had scheduled his monthly game for the day Bill died. Steve decided not to cancel. Bill loved poker, and wouldn't have wanted Steve to cancel. Steve played well, and won the tournament. That would have made Bill happy, though I'm sure he would have rather raked all the chips himself.

I would have rather had it that way, too. Rest in peace, Bill.

When you go all-in with pocket queens, get called by pocket jacks and ace-trash, the guy with the ace will hit the ace, and the also hit his six, just to rub it in

When someone goes all in with pocket eights and a short stack, you raise all in with pocket tens, and get called by queen-deuce suited, and king-queen, a queen will hit on the flop, because it doesn't rob you of your dignity unless you lose in the least likely way

Then there was the one about slow-playing pocket aces, but I already knew that one... or didn't

Fate stomped my testes

Well, looks like the new version of BlogEngine.NET is incompatible with the almost, but not really, groovy themes installed with previous versions. So it's this boring one, until I bother to create a new one, or just remember that css bores me, and wait to download a better one. Or maybe I'll learn silverlight and make a truly awesome theme that no one will ever see because they won't download silverlight. Or because they have too much self-respect to read my blog.

This one displeases me.

mostly because I felt like saying something, and facebook's status limit was too small. Call it a triumph of facebook's lameness over my lazyness.

Don't pretend you're not impressed