Feb. 11–12, 2023, poker recap: Part 2

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By Matthew E. Milliken
MEMwrites.wordpress.com
Feb. 27, 2023

Shortly after 10 p.m. during my $1–$2 Texas holdem session at Wind Creek Bethlehem on Feb. 11, I straddled for $4 and was bestowed A♣️Q♣️ by the deck. The flop was 6-5-A, pleasing me to no end.

The turn brought another ace, giving me three of a kind.

I don’t know what bets, if any, I placed on the flop and turn. However, I know that I checked the river (whatever card it was) and saw my foe, Mr. Red-Headed Morristown in seat seven, snap-check. I immediately bemoaned this action, saying, “I should have bet,” as I turned over my hand. My three aces were good.

Scant minutes later, I got involved in a sizable pot with 7♥️4♥️, which flopped a flush and a gutter to a straight flush on a board of 2♥️3♥️6♥️. The turn was a king; the river was not recorded. I didn’t write down the betting action in this hand, but I know that the player in last position in this three-handed pot wagered something like $20 or $35 after the board was complete. There were two callers.

Feb. 11–12, 2023, poker recap: Part 1

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By Matthew E. Milliken
MEMwrites.wordpress.com
Feb. 26, 2023

On Saturday, Feb. 11, I made my third visit to Wind Creek Bethlehem in the past eight months. It was my fourth overall trip to the casino in East Central Pennsylvania, and it saw me find a third different setting for poker at this particular venue.

On my first trip, a few scant months before the pandemic hit the U.S., poker was located in a room off of the main casino floor on the east side of the building. My second and third excursions to the facility came in July and October of last year. On these occasions, poker had been unhoused.

Instead of being staged in their own room, as is typical at many casinos, poker activities had been relocated to an area on the north side of the main casino floor. Theater-style stanchions had been set up to suggest a barrier between holdem and Omaha and other entertainments. This was the noisiest poker setting I’ve encountered in my still rather limited casino experience. It was particularly annoying to hear part of “Electric Boogie” (“It’s electric!”) play four or more times an hour, apparently to mark each jackpot won by one of the slot-machine players.

Feb. 18, 2023, poker recap

_{^{Photo by Pavel Danilyuk on Pexels.com.}}

By Matthew E. Milliken
MEMwrites.wordpress.com
Feb. 20, 2023

On the evening of Saturday, Feb. 18, I walked to the lodge of a local fraternal organization to play a live poker tournament outside a casino for the first time in nearly three years. (I played in a very low-stakes home cash game in late May of 2021, about a month after I’d gotten my second Covid-19 vaccine. Otherwise, all of my live poker since March 2020, tournament or otherwise, has taken place in casinos.)

The event was pretty well attended, and I had to wait in a short line to check in and pay my entry fee. When I did, I picked up two chips. One was a 500-unit bonus chip that I got for early registration. The other bore a seat assignment on the downward-facing side. I made my way over to table three, put down my coat and knapsack, and claimed seat one, to the immediate left of the dealer’s chair.

The tournament started about 10 minutes after the hour. For the second hand, I was in the big blind. Three players limped. The small blind called, and I checked my 8-7 off-suit.

Vignette: The driveway, the dog and the unclaimed money

By Matthew E. Milliken
MEMwrites.wordpress.com
Feb. 19, 2023

On Saturday, Feb. 11, I was on the home stretch of a late-morning walk when I saw, in very short order, two items of interest.

One thing was an untethered black Labrador retriever sitting calmly at the far end of the interface of a nearby driveway and the sidewalk.

The other thing was what appeared to be a new $10 bill lying on the ground at the near end of the segment where that same driveway abutted the sidewalk.

The driveway, which was on my left, was packed with two large vehicles — SUVs, I guess. When I passed the first of these, I looked to my left and saw an open garage door. I briefly glimpsed a man working on something.

Vignettes: The package that wasn’t there and the checkout clerk who double- (and triple- and quadruple-) clutched

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By Matthew E. Milliken
MEMwrites.wordpress.com
Feb. 17, 2023

I had two odd experiences while running errands on Thursday afternoon.

The first happened when I went to my mailbox, which I had not visited in a few days. I found, as expected, a number of envelopes. I also found three claim slips for packages. However, I’d received notification that four packages had been delivered to me.

I mentioned this discrepancy when I went to the counter to retrieve my three packages. I took out my phone and showed the delivery notification to the workers with whom I spoke. A call was made to the delivery company. The package tracking number was written down. I was told that a search would be conducted and that I should know the results later that afternoon.

The upshot is that the location to which my package was supposedly delivered has no record of receiving that package. I was informed of this in a voicemail message, which also urged me to call the shipping company. However, by the time I listened to the message, the vendor had already emailed me a message saying that “Your package may be a bit delayed” but should be delivered tomorrow.

Three hikes in January 2023 in Southern New York State

_{A view of Sterling Lake in Sterling Forest State Park in Southern New York State. Photo taken Jan. 28, 2023, by Matthew E. Milliken.}

By Matthew E. Milliken
MEMwrites.wordpress.com
Feb. 15, 2023

Aside from a handful of brutally cold days in December and February, the Greater New York City area has had a fairly mild winter. In fact, this January was the warmest first moth of the year in the recorded history of New York weather, which stretches back to the late 18th century [1]. As a result, I‘ve been able to get in a long walk nearly every day with minimal concerns about the temperature.

Most of my walking is around my neighborhood. These local walks don’t require me to drive anywhere, which saves time and cuts down on vehicle wear and tear, gasoline usage and carbon emissions. Moreover, walking on sidewalks and streets generally lets me set a fast pace. Over a recent eight-day stretch, my daily walks on paved terrain involved paces ranging from 14 minutes and 27 seconds per mile to 15:26 per mile. Only two of these excursions, the shortest of which was about 6.9 miles, saw me take more than 15:05 to travel 5,280 feet.

Despite my generally sticking to nearby streets, I have taken a few hikes this year. On Saturday, Jan. 7, I drove for what I believe was my first-ever visit to Sterling Forest State Park in Southern New York State. My friend T—, his pal and I walked around Sterling Lake, which is situated above a long-defunct iron mine. After walking for roughly two miles along a trail that encircles the lake, we came to a land bridge that had been flooded. We turned around rather than traverse the water.