Question of the Day: Do You Buy Specialty Clothing?

One of the best hands in No Limit Texas Hold-em: pocket kings. Cowboys. It’s a real monster. However, it’s quite vulnerable to middling hands such as Ace-Six offsuit. So the thing to do is to raise– and raise big. That way, you charge your opponents to see a flop. However, if you raise big every time you have a good starting hand, your tactic will become quite obvious to everyone seated at your table. They’ll just fold because a large raise from you means aces or kings. Not a very profitable habit, long term. How to combat this? Variance. While two kings are vulnerable, they aren’t that vulnerable. Maybe 20 percent of the time you want to just check your monster and limp in. Here’s the problem: how do you know when 20 percent of the time is? Solution: a watch with a sweeping second hand. Huh? Jump.

Of course, the point of the watch is that the second hand would sweep around and this would make me a trickier, more deceptive (and richer!) poker player. I guess I didn’t think hard enough about the “Made in USSR” part engraved on the rear. Just 22 hours after I talked the guy down from $76 plus tax to $60 out the door, the watch stopped working. I was pissed off, so I banged it against my desk. Suddenly the second hand began sweeping. Yup, that’s right– just like the Mir space station in Michael Bay’s Armageddon, a few good whacks gets the gears going again. I believe this is known as the “Brezhnev Method.” What on earth does any of this have to do with cars? Well let me tell you.

As you know, I do a lot of driving. My own car is a manual. Most of the press cars I request are manuals. I’ve become pretty good at heel-&-toe (where you mash the brake and the gas at the same time with your right foot while downshifting). Obviously, big clunky shoes don’t cut it. Sometimes you miss the throttle all together– or worse– get your foot caught under a pedal. Not only embarrassing (if you have a passenger) but dangerous, too. Lightweight, thin shoes are par for this particular course. Of course, any time you get into specialty anything, you’re talking $$$. Not that I’m a cheapskate, but wandering around in driving shoes kinda brands a big “dork” on your forehead. So what did the ever-so-creative consumer (me) do when he realized his cross-trainers were the wrong tool for the job? Wrestling shoes! Brilliant, right? Only $40 at any sporting goods store and I could wear ’em to the gym. Perfect. I’m so smart, etc.

Then came the day when I was actually at a track and I had to stand in the completely support and padding-free wrasslin’ boots for ten hours on hot asphalt. If I had a chiropractor, he/she would’ve slapped me. Just yesterday I received my second pair of Pilotis: orange and black Prototipos with a “heel-&-toe reinforced lateral side of the right shoe.” I can hear you screaming “Dork!” from here. And I don’t care. Now I’ve just got to convince my girl that spending $250 more on fire proof underwear for the outside possibility that I might get to split $1,500 in nickels five ways is a “smart” investment. You?