***
My table was the boring one, the one where the jackpots weren’t getting hit, the one where the inability to battle the turn and rill made entire post-flop play bothersome.
***
***
As the bread and milk channels filled up in the grocery cache, scientists from around the earth prepared to loosen their report on universal warming. The predictions told us that billions of people would suffer from water absences when my son is still living. Chaos and calamity, man-made but wrought by ecology, they will mention.
When I walked back to my car at 3:30am, the amount of money in my pocket didn’t matter. How I played didn’t matter. The fact that I was going to be exhausted in the morn didn’t matter. Those are forever the things I consider approximately when I leave a game. This night, I only noticed the cold.
Future, I thought. Which future is that?
The Jester was back.
He sang Amazing Grace.
While somewhat amused in identifying the culprit, I was more caught up seeing the starting of a dispute between Mr. Jackpot and The Jester. Though they were being silence, I could tell by the looks on their faces, the closeness of their chests, and the rapid movements of their hands, something wasn’t right.
Though it was beneath freezing appearance, he wore flip-flops, baggy shorts, a wrinkled shirt, and an ear-flapped hunter’s crown. He danced with the melody, played air guitar with ping-pong paddles,
shop adidas, and spoke in his own language–one I’ve come to call Boomhauer.
The scream came across the room, a crude but seemingly appropriate rebuke to whoever pissed bring ... to an endthe ladies room floor. I’m not sure why we’d all been using the ladies room, but we had, and it was a muff. The floor was a puddle and littered with periodical towels. A sign hung upon the open tank: “Please don’t put paper towels in the toliet (sic). Thanks, The Management.”
***
Out of the more than 30 people playing and milling around the room, only one of them was a woman. Blonde-haired and beautiful, her innocent face belied her body’s frame. Every masculine eye followed the cocktail waiter as she moved from player to player, checking on drinks, and giving the players whatever they needed to ply their spirits.
Tuesday had rotated into Wednesday. There are those who believe the sun and moon were built on Wednesday. Mickey Mouse told us, “Wednesday is Anything Can Happen Day.” To me,
air force 1 hight, it still felt like Tuesday.
The roads were deserted. I wondered as I drove through green light afterward green light. If in truth that had been the final poker game, why any of it would have mattered? There are two varieties of poker players. There are those who play for the money and there are those who play to feel what it’s like to crush the other lad.
***
Every word of this is true.
He sat in the ping pong ############## and put his fingers ashore the guitar strings. And then anything namely came out of his jaws was explicit, perfect, and beauteous.
***
“Should we standstill the action?” inquired the re-raiser. I agreed we should but said I wasn’t moving from my seat. One thing I like about this particular room is that the dealers are top notch. They are always calm, clever, and on top of things. I’m never worried about the game going astray. The dealer this night was no different. He paused the action but kept his seat to keep an eye on the money and cards.
I could not understand a word he said. Even if he was standing 5 feet away and speaking slowly, he was as incomprehensible in speech as the action at the table was in terms of real poker. But every now and then, he would get up from the table, go over to the side of the room, and start playing guitar. His voice was muscular and, suddenly, like Mel Tillis’ transformation from stammering doofus to country crooner, The Jester was an artist,
DC shoes, a bard, a minstrel.
And then a voice. An impossible to understand voice.
Because that’s the entity. In the end, we can’t take the money with us. And whether the sky namely falling, why do we even bother apt activity?
The smiling man in the priceless suit says my town will refrigerate over before Thursday. The wild-haired scientists say my world will fall into global warming chaos shortly after I die.
Curses and cheers were louder than the music. Money, chips, buy-ins, set-ups, and tips went back and forth with scowls and sighs. There were those fighting opposition the end and those driving the bus toward oblivion.
If it were the last game on Earth, the money wouldn’t matter. And that made me wonder if there is some spiritual or atavistic absence in man to win in the end. Do we believe, even now we don’t consciously acknowledge it, that we will be rewarded on the other side if we can testify our worth, certify our competence to all over a winner?
A cheer erupted from the table closest to the door and somebody yelled, “Jackpot!” The man in the one-seat held a suited 6-9 and made his ten-high straight flush to conquer the high-hand jackpot. The male who runs the game announced how much the one-seat had won. Everyone acclaimed and cursed their wrong fortune.
Though the chamber was big, it suddenly seemed full.
***
Whether it was the female in the green tank top, the game of poker itself, or the bunker mentality, the lady’s actions seemed to be the merely thing fastening the players to their seats. Would yet that she could stay, the eight-way pots in hands that have been heaved and re-raised to 20 times the big blind might equitable reside in a locale we could cry sane and real.
She sat down voicelessly afterward to the game’s landlord. Though she’d been going her ass off for the quondam eight hours, her face still looked clean and peaceable, if I were you a little distressed. It was as if she knew what would occur if she left, but she knew she had to go.
The parabolas north and south met in the medium over Greenville, South Carolina. One began over the northern states and sagged down across the Mason Dixon line. The other crept up from the Gulf of Mexico. Even with the TV sound muted it was clear the weatherman was effective us to expect something akin to apocalypse. Then he shrugged his elbows as if to say, “But hey, whatta I know, right?”
The air was unremarkable first and foremost. Even when I called a short-stack’s all-in and hit runner-runner to breast his made under-boat, I found no pleasure in it. My opponent, whatever, looked afflicted, as if the s
mall amount of money he lost would somehow change his hereafter.
Like most disputes, this one was finished nearly as soon as it started. Mr. Jackpot, still steaming, walked back into the poker area. The Jester was apparently gone. And, frankly, that had me worried.
The Jester spoke through a mouth of rocks. Though always talking, he might as well have been speaking in tongues, a fanatic of August Busch and whatever other different manufactured pharmaceuticals he’d found that day.
Although there were thousands upon thousands of greenbacks on the table, nothing seemed to matter much to the players anymore. Raises of any size were called in 7 or 8 spots. Pot-sized bets were called with abdicate. Chips migrated back and ahead, fashioned into huge fortresses, and broke as with quickly. Sodom, Gomorrah, and Skull Island had nought on the confusion inside that little room.
I’m not sure any listened me, because, repeatedly, someone in the room had shifted. The testosterone-level was at its pinnacle. In what is constantly a kept poker room, players were battling in any way they could. Men with crazed looks and violent yells were clashing in a savage dance of doubles ping-pong, slashing the air with their paddles, dance with each point, cursing at every loss. At some point, a free-weight bench had been put on the other side of the room and grown men were betting on how numerous times they could settle press 150 pounds. Now not longer in use as a poker table, the blank felt behind us became an arm-wrestling mat and players were testing their strength with the right and left weapon.
The Jester’s table was different. There was life, wish, and laughter. The jackpot had given the table a differ morale. Out of the turn of my eye, I saw almost everyone at The Jester’s table stand up in no time. Not involved in a hand, I stood and went to take a look.
I’m going to go to a poker game.
I saw back to discern my first ace-paint in an hour. Because I’ve been made to understand ace-jack is gold, I raised the straddle to $20. The player to my left min-raised. The player in the ten-seat who had proven himself ambitioning to play whichever 2 cards to a re-raise, called. I knew I was back but, hoping in one hand and puking in the additional, darted out my call.
The door at this game is held firm behind a deadbolt. The skylights are covered in black plastic and the parking lot is dark. It’s both a bunker and a shelter. It protects the players from eyes that shouldn’t see and it is a location to hide from the other world–the world where real jobs, real families, and real friends stay. Someone has to recognize your face to let you in. When you go out, the door locks behind you.
My jacket, still at home, would have done little to shield me from the frigid air. In my car, I turned the radio to the first station I could find and dragged out of the dark parking lot. In my mind I’ve built poker up to be a private test of punishment, will, and comprehension. I knew from the past seven hours that I had exhibited none of those traits.
“All it takes is one phone call,” I said, assuming everyone knew what I meant.
The horn wailed with the hard rock on the radio and I went home wondering when I would sit down at a poker table again.
I kept telling myself I ought leave. Still, I couldn’t stand. Though I was having no amusement, I felt like I was bearing witness to something resembling the last poker game on Earth. This must be what it will be like, I thought. When the bombs are dripping or the ailment is scattering, this is how people will play cards. They will throw chips at each other with abandon, fight for no reason, and bundle out their worldly disgust on whoever is closest to them.
That’s when the screaming began.
Half the room followed the yelling and ran for the front gate.
I was getting no action. I was bored. Something in my head pushed $25 into the pot, an open-raise in a straddled pot with the beat (7-2), both cards red. The flop came 77Q. We went check, check. The turn was an ace. My opponent led, I raised. He called. The river was a seven. My opponent put out a blocking wager, I raised anyway, he called reluctantly. I didn’t wait for him to table his hand. I turned over the pummel, shrugged as if to say, “Whatta I know, right?” and silently stacked my chips in agreement with the table’s tribal prayer of “Ham-mer, ha-mer, ham-mer!”
She tapped her watch and said just barely loud enough for me to hear it, “Looks like it’s about that time.”
***
After four consecutive green lights, I finally saw a red one in front of me. I moved my foot to the brake, but ahead I could press down, the light changed to a flashing yellow. Confused, I looked to the left and accomplished I was passing by a practice crossing. The trails ran parallel to my highway so I didn’t must stop. I proceeded to pedal toward family. When I looked back up, I saw the light of the freight train coming down the pathways in my way. I could only think, “How proper.”
By the time I left the room, I forgot this even happened.
“Who has a dick so short they can’t hit the ########ing lavatory?”
It was visible that the discussion between Mr. Jackpot and The Jester had devolved into something that threatened violence. I didn’t go watch. This would be the third time I’ve been witness to violence or near-violence in a poker room and I know the number one rule: Protect your chips.
“I can heave that weight with my dick!” came a scream from cross the room.
***
Every ounce of instinct told me to leave. Poker is a beautifully structured game, but there was nothing in the basis of this room that made me feel silence. It was a wave of adrenalized warfare that bore no resemblance to everything I’d seen. The poker game had degenerated into something hideous, full of animosity, resignation, and acquiescence. Now, having witnessed the agreeable luck of others who acted the same, no one would fold. Every pot, no matter how tall it was raised, was a kin endeavor. Players were purposefully ignoring rules of poker ceremony. They willfully mis-called their hands. They slow-rolled their victors, hatred in their eyes with every flip of the cards. Players would verbally admit to check it down against an all-in opponent. By elucidation, poker is not a friendly game. This one, however, was mean.
The chips in the middle of the table sat in piles of green and red, an extraordinarily big pot that made up much of the wealth at the table. The flop was all middle cards with two clubs. Two players were already all-in and Mr. Jackpot was meditative. Finally, he called, production the unattached pot bigger than his jackpot winnings for the night.
He tabled 56 of clubs, for an open-ended straight paint and cheap club paint. One opponent turned over pocket kings. The Jester did not reveal his cards but I saw them as he peeled them up. He held A7 of clubs for the nut flush paint.
This story originally arose at Up For Poker in January 2007. I’ve been thinking about that night a lot recently. What I learned more than four annuals ago seems more relevant with every passing daytime, so I judged to republish it here.
The drama was over immediately. A red four on the turn and no club on the river pushed the plenary pot to Mr. Jackpot and his straight.
People had formed a seated ############## around the ping-pong table and were keeping score for the insanity. The Rolling Stones pounded through the spokesmen, booze was pooling on the ground, beer cans and empty plastic shot cups littered the blanket.
That did it. Like the destroying of the seventh stamp, like Richie Valens’ plane going down, favor that late night call call to tell you somebody is dead, a line had been crossed. Nothing would be the same, even now we couldn’t immediately figure out the distinction.
When the ten-seat made two mini pair to hammer my top pair, I didn’t even attention. I don’t like folk leaving an underground game angry, The Jester had visibly done so, and I said for many to the human approximately me.
July 2--RWBS American Spirit 5k
July 5-21--WSOP, Las Vegas, NV
December 4--Las Vegas Half Marathon
The room had been coiling for 3 hours and I didn’t expect to ascertain a seat while I was buzzed in. The parking lot was full and the room was noisy. I was startled to find the two-seat by the second table open. I slid my money to the seller and moved myself down on an uncomfortable chair.
My brain was numb and it took me three trips to the motorcar and back into the house to obtain everything I needed to take with me. The wind was frigid–cold enough to reserve the drinks in the garage icy and cold ample to prompt me that I’d forgotten my jacket. I didn’t go back, instead choosing to shiver my path down the black highway, hitting every ruddy light as I sped–late–toward the underground room.
***
DC shoes| If it were the final game aboard Earth
Linear Mode
