The Happiest Man in the World, Check-Raising with a Set, and an Indomitable Mongrel
“You’re a
dick. Do you know that?”
The five seat, a paunchy forties white guy in a
Who Dat? tee, glared to his right. His opponent in the four seat was a trim, smartly dressed black man with glasses who looked like Malcolm X. Five had just folded ace-queen faceup on a queen-hi flop and said to Malcolm, Please. Please tell me you had kings or aces. At least tell me I was beat. But Malcolm sat in stony silence until he quietly announced that, no, he wouldn't say any such thing.
"A
dick," Five repeated.
“You can’t insult other players, sir,” said the dealer.
"You know, Fallyn," Five said to the dealer, "a lot of these players belong in the 4/8 game." He glared at Malcolm. "You hear me, buddy? You should be playing 4/8."
Watching their exchange from the ten seat, I was tempted to inform Five about my own
LOLimit adventures. But not tonight. I wasn't in a chatty mood. I returned to a
story on my smartphone about the so-called happiest man in the world, Matthieu Ricard, a cherubic Nepalese monk who’d written that
The search for happiness is not about looking at life through rose-colored glasses or blinding oneself to the pain and imperfections of the world….It is the purging of mental toxins, such as hatred and obsession, that literally poison the mind. This seemed true. And I wondered: was it instructive to inhabit this space with these people—with Five on his fifth Dos Equis, in his second decade of arrested development, spewing verbal vomit at anyone within spitting distance—in order to stare imperfection in the face? Or was all of it just an insidious kind of mental poison?
I turned off my phone and rose restlessly from my seat. Whenever my mind wandered—which happened often—it was usually best to leave. And that was fine: I had almost hit my modest goal of four hours for the night. Three more hands and I'd rack up.
Looking down at two black eights with 1K effective, I raised to ten from early position. Malcolm ($450) and the Five seat ($600) called, the blinds folded, and I checked the K
8
7
flop. Having played maniacally for the last hour, Malcolm struck me as a spazzy thinking recreational—someone who might treat a king as the nuts or, more importantly, barrel off with air. But he checked, too, and Five—whose play was far more conservative than his temperament—bet $25. We both called.
I checked again on the Q
turn and this time Malcolm bet $65. Five turbo-mucked and said, “Again? Do you
really have it every time?”
Having played my hand this way, it seemed like check-calling or check-raising were both options. I decided that Malcolm, having donked into both Five and me, was more likely to have value (KQ/KJ/AQ) or draws that would bet/call (67 or T9) than complete air. And I did, of course, want to play for stacks. So I raised to $150 total.
"Yeah!" cheered Five. "You like that, bitch?"
"Sir, I
will call the floor," said Fallyn.
Ignoring his tablemate, Malcolm brooded in silence. Finally he called.
The river was the 9
, and I moved all-in for Malcolm's last $250. He leaned back in his seat and frowned, glancing from his remaining stack to the pot. Doubt was in his eyes. He was fighting that familiar battle—often a losing battle—when a desire to win overwhelms the inconvenient knowledge that, like it or not, you're beat.
With a defeated sigh, Malcolm finally flicked in a white chip. I showed my set of eights and he nodded grimly. Then, almost as an afterthought, he flipped his hand face-up.
Jack-ten. Just the nuts.
My mood swung from shock to sadness to amusement. I could hear Five, his voice shrill and abrasive, asking Malcolm how the hell he could slowroll someone that ****ing hard.
Malcolm grinned and stacked his chips. I folded two more hands, racked up, and headed for the exit.
Just another day in Harradise.
For some reason, as I unlocked my bulky black cruiser and pedaled through the French Quarter, I remembered a dog I'd met over a year ago. I had been bicycling on that day, too, around a rustic village in northern Thailand. Suddenly I saw him sitting on a hill covered in garbage: an indomitable mongrel who surveyed his domain with pride. Who could tell what this dog had been through? Maybe, judging by his rainbow-colored collar, he lived with an owner who fed him scraps every morning. Or maybe not.
I kept pedaling through the Quarter, smiling to myself as the faces of Malcolm, Seat Five, and Matthieu Ricard flickered and faded. And then there was only the image of that dog, perched on some garbage-infested hill, proud and weary and content.
Last edited by bob_124; 10-17-2016 at 03:28 PM.