The usual players: Ozzy, Bert, Ivan, Jesse, and yours truly. The game is at Bert’s, and he puts out a nice, poker-appropriate spread: cold cuts, popcorn, chips, soda, uppers, weed, and coffee. No, I’m kidding. Nobody was drinking coffee. Man, that's some high-level comedy; it hurts to be this hilarious. Seriously, though, have you ever had one of those nights where you feel like you're playing nearly at the top of your game—not chasing, not over-calling, randomizing your game, betting when you should—but you're not winning many hands? It was one of those nights. I started off okay, and I was never down for the night, so that's something. Still, five times I made top two pair off the flop. Usually, this is a situation that pays off, and you bet accordingly, unless you read that you're drawing against somebody who made a set (holding a pair and making three of a kind on the flop), but that’s unlikely. Each time it came to me, I made the maximum bet, but at least one person went with me. Just about every time, it turned out, I was in the lead after the flop with my top two pair, but somebody always caught up to me on fourth or fifth. It was like this: I was standing at the side of the road, expecting to be picked up for short trip to a nice little place I like to call "Profit Land." I waited and waited, but the vehicle (I'm imagining something classy and understated: a gigantic-ass gold Escalade with spinners and a booming stereo. Also, it has hydraulics and somebody is hitting the switches.) never came. The only time the whole night that my top two pair did pay off was when I hit runner runner for a backdoor straight that wasn’t even the nut straight. Of course, I couldn't bet it up because there were tons of potential hands out there that would have cracked my measly straight.

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Poker Problem: Why must God destroy everything that I love?