The Real Slim Doodles - Please Stand Up

While the saga of Doodles had a happy ending, there was still some unfinished business to which I needed to attend.  Determining what happened to the original Doodles was an important task; it would help reduce the chance of a repeat occurrence.

Clues were tough to come by.  A seemingly innocuous comment in the original post left a tiny trail.  Someone with the Bill Reynolds pseudonym made a threat to the safety of the original Doodles and attempted to extract a ransom from me.  Not being one to negotiate, I ignored the message.  But could there be some truth behind the comment?  Prudence would dictate I investigate further.

I traced the IP address of that commenter back to an ISP in Indiana.  As is the norm, ISP’s simply don’t give out customer information to the general public.  I needed to do a bit of social engineering to find out who was behind the dastardly deed.  I have operatives in many states across the country, the Bloodclan is tight.

Within a few hours, I had a name.  A chill rode the length of my spine as some of my suspicions were confirmed.  The party in question was someone I didn’t want to mess with.

Desperate times called for desperate measures.  I was going to have to get this “SnailTrax” person $10,000.  I had roughly $2000 worth of working capital and needed to quintuple it up soon to avoid having any harm come to the original Doodles.  I thought about buying lottery tickets, but then I realized I’m not a scratch-ticket blogger.

I took my two grand to the NL tables at Party.  Unlike Mike McD from Rounders, I knew that putting my entire bankroll on the line at once was risky business.

The first thirty minutes were uneventful, but I did manage to chip up to nearly $2500, still far short of my $10,000 goal.  Another big stack at the table had over $4000, but from what I could tell, he was catching some cards and wasn’t necessarily a player to fear.  Thankfully, when I flopped the nut straight, the big stack pushed with his flush draw and didn’t hit.  I was up to over $5000 - I just needed to double up again.

When I saw pocket Kings, my heart may have skipped a beat.  The big stack had more than doubled up again and had me outchipped by a few hundred dollars.  Big stack was UTG and raised big.  Folded around to me, I re-raised.  Big stack pushed and I called.  When I saw his hole cards, I was heartbroken.  Pocket Aces.

But wait, I’d cracked Aces before with Kings, just ask April.  Sadly, the flop was rainbow undercards and hope for any kind of runner-runner flush suckout was dashed.  The odds of finding the original Doodles was becoming more and more slim with each new card hitting the board.

Paint on the river!  False alarm, it was a Queen.

What’s this?  The pot is heading my direction?  Confused, I re-read the board.  4J9TQ – I had caught runner-runner straight!  I immediately clicked sit-out and couldn’t believe my eyes, my avatar was sitting with $10,368 in front of it.  Doodles had a chance.

****

My operative in Indiana assured me that “Bill Reynolds” was indeed a dangerous man.  With no small bit of hesitation and uncertainty, I completed the transfer to the Party Poker account “SnailTrax.”  I could only hope that my gesture of goodwill would ensure the safety of the original Doodles.

****

Epilogue based in reality:  Mrs_Blood found the original Doodles yesterday in the dryer.  Apparently, Doodles got caught up in a pile of clothes and was washed and dried inadvertantly.  We debated pulling another switcheroo, but ms.Mini was more than aware how clean Doodles had become.  “Mommy, whoever washed Doodles cleaned it better than you!  Feel how soft she is.”

We put the original Doodles into ms.Mini’s keepsake box along with her baptism gown and other memories chronicling her early years.  We’ll tell her the truth when she gets older and we’ll hopefully all have a laugh.  But inside that keepsake box, there’s an old, worn, stuffed pink frog smiling.