Garthe’s Little Magic Trick
So another season has begun. After my lackluster performance in League last season which led to me dropping back down to D2, anybody looking at the current standings might be wondering by what magic I’m still doing up there in D1. It’s all in the wrist.
Well OK, it has nothing to do with my wrist. In fact, almost nothing to do with anything I did at all. It’s as simple and pathetic as enough people just quitting the league after last season. In the group of people to drop from D1 to D2 last season, I was second from the top. There were 2 people who didn’t show up for league Sunday morning so that meant that the top 2 losers from that group of losers got bumped back up to D1 to make an even multiple of 4. Hardly the coolest way to stay in the league, but I guess it works. I don’t even see any asterisk next to my name with some, “He’s really a loser but finagled his way back into this league for this season anyway. We’re kicking him back down this season for sure though” sort of explanation. So let’s keep this on the down low, eh?
Of course, I’ve hardly taken much advantage of my nice save with a -26 to start off the season. The first game, we were all within a few points of each other on the last hand, my turn as dealer, and some jerk drew a 2000/4000 hand barely dropping me down to 4th for the game. I got myself back to positive with a big win in the second game though and was starting to feel like I might make something of the day after all when the 3rd game started off with one guy winning the first 3 hands in like the first 6 draws each time, one each from the other 2 players and one self-draw. Big ones too. Never one to recognize when I should maintain a low profile, I decided to go after him which got me the same result it got the other 2 players except I threw 2 even bigger hands.(Very similar to the way I killed myself at the World Series, by the way) By the end of the game, we were all negative but I was the most and was right back where I started after the first game. Another small minus in the 4th game and I’ve dug myself a nice little hole already in the first round of league play.
So that puts me in 35th out of 44. It looks as if they haven’t decided yet how many players will be moving up and down from each league but if last season is any indication, I’m right on the border again. Of course, all it would take is positive scores for the rest of the season as the negative scores get bigger. And I’m starting to see that league play is really that sort of game. It’s not a place to be going for it, rather, it’s a game of protecting what you have. Next month I’ll be protecting that -26 like it’s a new surf board. Man I need a new board. And now for my next trick…
