man what A ****ING COINCIDENCE!! i also have such a sick story,
I'm at the Bellagio.
The game of poker has taken a large piece out of my ass and has never given it back. But, I am a self-loathing, self-destructive, delusional, alcoholic, glutton for punishment. And, a few brief moments of genius have eternally clouded my judgement. Thus. I readily and steadfastly forget my one or two or three thousand moments of foolhardy, and focus on the one time I correctly folded two kings preflop to a little, old lady in a brim hat.
I decide to download a poker tracking application at the beginning of 2015. There are no more clouds clouding, just reality dishing.
I'm sitting at a no-limit table. Doyle Brunson—the Godfather of poker—rides by on his scooter. He rolls into Bobby's room—a room, separated by glass, in which men play poker where pots regularly exceed the average American's salary per year. It never gets old seeing that man scoot by. Eighty-two years old and still in full control of his mental faculties.
I entertain myself on my tablet, waiting for playable hands in preferable position. I'm up $200. I've already stacked the old man to my left once. His top two against my set. He's currently tilting.
I raise to eighteen dollars in late position. Turns out the kid in front of me already raised to twelve. There's some confusion as to my intent. I tell the dealer my intent was to raise. I made a mistake and accidentally re-raised. If my raise is more than half the original raiser's raise than I have to raise. If not I have to call. Either way, I don't care. I let the dealer do the math.
A fifty year old Swedish man starts to chime in. I think he's under the impression that I'm trying to take back my raise and just call. I'm not. He likes hearing himself talk though. He's playing table captain. I see a lot of this in the low limit games. People who have figured out the game just enough to play decent, and decide to voice their opinions to let everyone know how good they think they are. They throw poker terminology around, tilt their necks and cock their shoulders in swag-like fashion, and discuss hands afterwards in attempts to appear relevant. "I put him on a flush draw."
I decide to shut the Swede up quickly, by telling him he sounds foolish. He tells me I too sound foolish. Quite the elementary reply. I search for a specific word to mock him with. Quick-wit don't fail me now. "Touché?" comes out as a question. No, that's not the word. Unfortunately, it won't come to me until tomorrow. Damned again by delayed-wit. Oh well. Next time. "Ditto" was the word.
The last time I played, a young kid was playing table captain as hard as I've ever seen. He was so obnoxious the dealer and the floorman finally told him, "Just let us do our jobs, please." I was sitting too far away from him to shut him up myself, but I had a hankering. The older I get the more I embrace conflict. Later, I look up and the kid is staring right at me; I guess I have a presence. He acts as if we're playing heads up and he's studying me, mimicking the professionals he's seen on television. He's a pure clown. I raise my brows in a whatever-type fashion and go back to watching Conor McGregor videos on YouTube. I have a feeling that today I'm more talking to that young kid than I am to the Swedish man. Transference.
Twenty minutes later, I pick up pocket nines. I limp in with most pairs, hoping to flop disguised sets. I limp. The Swede raises to twelve. He's too loose aggressive to be a winning player, but he's been lucky so far. The old man to my left calls. I call. The flop comes Q, 9, 7—two clubs. The old man leads out for forty dollars. I just call with my set. The Swedish man raises to $110. The old man pushes all-in for $200. With straight and flush draws possible, my hand can get cracked pretty easily. I dislike putting large sums of money, compared to the blinds, in before the river. Fate has done me rather dirty in the past. But. It has to go in. I have $512 in front of me.
"All-in."
The Swedish man thinks for a minute. He has me covered. Like gravitational pull, I usually lose to these types. Oh well. He eventually calls. The turn produces a third club. I go from having the second best possible hand to the having the twelfth. Still doesn't mean I'm beat, but any flush now beats my set. The river pairs the board, and I jump back up to having the third best possible hand with my full house—nines full of sevens. The tilting old man to my left has top pair. No good. The Swedish man shakes his head. He has king, ten offsuit. No good. He put $512 into a pot chasing a jack that never came. Yikes. I win a $1200 pot. Transference.
The Swedish man plays a little longer and then kind of slinks off. He should of stuck around because I get drunk and start running bad and playing bad and spread most of that money back around the table. Eventually, I realize I'm not playing well and decide to leave.
The couple next to me have expressed their fascination with Doyle playing in the next room over. I ask them if they want to get a picture. They're thrilled. Nobody just walks into Bobby's room and asks for pictures. It's akin to asking an NBA player for a photo while they're sitting on a bench in the middle of a game. But, I'm the purist of lunatics when intoxicated.
I cash out at the cashier's cage. And, head back towards Bobby's room. I wave at the couple to get their camera ready, just in case. The odds of this happening are less than one percent, but I make my move. Doyle is looking over a menu and wants absolutely no part of my shenanigans. He doesn't even bother to look up, but I can see disdain out of the corner of his menu-purveying eye. I love him even more for it. I exit excited more than embarrassed, crack a joke with the disappointed couple, and head home for the night.
I go onto my poker application and plug in my paltry $110 victory. Paltry, comparatively speaking. That's it for the year. I've lost $1727 over fifty-three unique sessions, but all things considered—the self-loathing, self-destruction, delusion, alcoholism, gluttonous behavior—my PPR (profit as a percentage of money risked) is only -12. The average PPR of all players around the world is about -25 which means I'm still playing above average. One profitable week and I could be even. My delusion also allows me to take into consideration the three hundred free cocktails ($450 market value) that I've drank, the twenty free meals ($200 market value) that I've consumed, the forty dollars in cash that I earned with my players card, along with the fact that Doyle Brunson and I are well on our way to becoming best friends (priceless). And, one—or, at least I—could easily say, 2015 wasn't all that bad of a year.
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