How to lose at poker

So a few weeks ago, I had another painful stomach ache, and feinted again when I got up to the bathroom. Ever since then, my stomache has been acting up lately, hurting whenever I eat food. Mostly stuff that's not particular healthy for me. So lately I've been trying to eat stuff that's easy on the tummy, including soup, vegetables, and staying away from anything fried, or contains grease. I've been taking pepto bismol, and switced to tums, which I think means I'm just producing alot of acid or something. For a few days last week or two, almost anything I ate would cause me intense pain.

My coworker's roommate, Dub, who I also play video games online with, sets up these poker tournaments every 2 weeks at his house. While I'm not particularly good at poker, I have played a bit off and on over the last couple of years with friends. The buy in was pretty cheap, less than $30, and with a very limited amount of re-buy's 1 or 2 re-buy's per game, means you can't lose very much money. They do their own house rules, which makes it really fun. If you take out somebody (they go all in and losse), you get a $5 bounty in cash. At each game, somebody is randomly marked as double bounty, so the person who takes out the double bounty gets $10 in cash. Each person also gets a "Show me chip", which basically means anybody can use their chip on somebody after the hand has been won, and force them to show their cards to everyone. This makes it so you can see if the other person was bluffing or not, which makes learning everybody's style alot faster. The first tournament I went to involved 20 people and two tables. That night, I ended up playing from 7:00 to almost midnight, and I ended up taking out 4 people, and took fourth place, which is where they started the payout. Not bad for my first time at a poker tournament with seasoned pros! I think I took home close to $90 that night! It was tons of fun, while getting to know some new people. Almost half of the players were girls, which surprised me. I was ecstatic that I made the pay out, and had alot of fun and wanted in on the regular weekly emails for poker. But for me, I'm still learning, so I had to concentrate alot on my cards and everyone else, so it was very tiring at the end. I was barely able to keep my concentration or even keep track of what colors represented what denomination. Luckily everyone there is totally honest and helped me out, while giving me a good amount of ribbing.

Two weeks later, I got in on the second tournament, and also did very well, taking out almost half the table, but ended up losing to a Royal Flush (If you're gonna lose a hand, a Royal Flush is the hand to lose it on) and came out third, just making the payout round. Again I made out with almost $70 that night, and left the place totally drained, not able to add 2 and 2 together.

Two weeks after that, I get in on my third tournament, but this is the day when my stomach is really acting up all week. Part of the buy in also goes towards food, which is pizza. Boy that was a mistake, after eating only two slices, my stomach was hurting so bad, I couldn't think, make any judgements, or anything. I screwed up a few times where I could've have taken a couple of people out, but folded instead. To end the game early, I went All In about 5 times with cards that might work. Each time I went all in, I would make the river (Win with the last card). Everyone at the table could not believe I was so lucky and made the river every time, and would start swearing if they were on the opposite end of that. But I was in no mood for celebration as my stomach was now more like a knife cutting through my midsection. I inquired about some sort of tums, pepto bismol or something to help ease the pain. Like a bad hand, they hand nothing. I had stuff at home, but home is about 5-10 minutes away by car, an eternity considering that if you're not at your seat playing when they're ready to play, you automatically get your hands folded for you. I wanted to win, but I wanted it to be over too. Eventually my luck would not last, and my all in strategy would eventually fail me, taking 4th place, no pay out, and one bounty. Of course, my pains were near mortal at that point, so quickly said goodbye, jumped in my car, headed home, and consumed whatever was left of my pepto bismol. That helped alot, enough for me to go to the store and grab another bottle of pepto bismol and some tums to get me through the rest of the night.