Who kicked ass this weekend? You? No. You over there with one hand on the keyboard? No, not you either.

Me! That's who!

We have a friend who is the president of a local charity. The charity was hosting a poker tournament to raise money and our friend bought a $500 seat in the tournament but she doesn't know how to play poker, so she asked me to be her designated player.

And so, at 7:45pm on Friday night, I sat down with 30 people more charitable than I to play a Texas Hold 'Em No Limit tournament.

My strategy can be summed up as this:

1) Play conservatively.
2) Don't be drunk.
3) Profit.

It worked surprisingly well for a while. I managed to merely sip at my beer although people kept bringing me new ones. Other players, the charity president, her husband, they all seemed overly interested in keeping me drunk. Although one might assume that these people wanted me to play poorly and contribute more money to the charity, I think a better theory is that they all wanted to sleep with me. For those of you who aren't computer programmers, it's hard to describe the sexy vibe we put off.

Our table of 7 players managed to have 3 Mikes at it. Briefly deviating from my strategy of being innocuous and wall-flower-like, I graciously offered to go by an alternate name of "Sally". The dealer, unfortunately, found this moniker to be tremendously humorous and referred to me as Sally for the next several hours. I mostly kept my mouth shut after that. So much so that some other players began referring to me as "Silent Mike". I can assure you that this is not a normal state for me.

Players started to drop and soon the 4 tables of players were whittled down to 2. Eventually I found myself at the final table with 6 other players. I eyed their chip stacks and was delighted to find that I was the chip leader. Me! At the final table! All chip leadery and crap!

I had a few good hands where I pushed other players around with my big manly stacks, which I wielded like an erect and dangerous penis. Sadly, and oh too familiarly, I shot my wad too soon. I ended up coming (you won't believe me, but no pun intended) in 4th place.

Still, I was quite proud to place 4th out of 30. I won a prize of 2 VIP tickets to the upcoming Cirque Du Soleil show, but I promptly handed them over to my poker patron, the charity president. It didn't seem right to accept a prize when I hadn't even paid for my seat at the table.

My good will was repaid the following evening when the wife and I hosted our monthly poker tournament. Out of 7 people, I came in 1st.

Ta dah!