Party Like It's 2004
The tire slashing was a rude awakening to everyone – the players, the dealers, Tim, everyone had realized that **** had gotten serious. The look on Tim's face when I finally left that night after talking was unique. It was as if someone had crawled into his bed while he was sleeping, spread their cheeks over his face, and let a nasty burrito fart let go right above his nose. The taste of anger, failure, and frustration was in the air and as mad as he wanted to get, he only had himself to blame for the events that led up to the present day. As for me, this was my stop, I was going to jump ship before it sank or there was a mutiny.
On the day of the game, I went over to Fish's house early to get things set up so there would be no surprises the first night of the game, as well as some of the things you need to know being on the business end. Things such as coloring up the rake, introducing higher denomination chips, how to deal if I couldn't, etc. I drove down the road to his subdivision, and he gave me the gate code to get in. Gated communities were something new to me when I had moved to Florida, and are mostly found in newer parts of the US such as the Sunbelt. In Florida, they were in every town with more than 10,000 people, as well as deed restricted communities. Gated communities gave people the false sense of security, because for the most part, the only place there was a gate was at the front. All you had to do was climb a small hill or jump a 2 foot concrete wall and you were in. You could also follow cars through the gate and get in just as easily. As I drove through the neighborhood I watched homeowners trimming the few plants they could call their own on their small lot lines and bask in their little utopia that was sheltered from the real world just over the hill. Every house looked the same, from the garage, the roof, the windows, and the driveway. This was middle-class communism. In Florida, many of the nice gated communities were named after the wildlife it displaced, for example Heron's Glen or Pelican Pointe probably had some great birds in it at one time, but now you could just cue the Weeds theme song, and voila!
I finally rolled up to his house and saw his Toyota 4Runner (HiLux for those abroad) in the driveway. I knocked on the door and Rad was right there, opening the door with a big smile on his face. I think more than Fish or I, Rad wanted this to happen the most – it was personal for him. He invited me in and I saw what 600k bought you in the nicest neighborhood on the southside of town. I walked in and like most Florida houses, you can see almost the entire house from the front door besides the bedrooms, it just happened to be bigger. A pool outside with sliders and a dedicated game room were the only things that stuck out from your average home. When I did walk outside I was overcome with the smell of rotting garbage, which I realized was the combination of having a house at the end of a canal with stagnant water and low tide. I was hoping no one wanted to go outside when they first came here, it was enough to turn off even a dedicated poker player. It was, however, a very nice house, much nicer than Tim's, and I hoped that smell would go away because being right by the water was definitely a plus. We went to the gaming area and my hopes immediately dropped as I saw Pauly's old poker table, which was fine, but there were metal fold seats and a setup from a $20 poker chip set at WalMart.
“This isn't going to work Fish, we can' have unmarked chips from just anywhere in play. Anyone can just waltz in with chips and add them to their stack.”
“They'll be just fine man what're you talking about?” Rad interrupted, as if he knew what he was doing. He didn't. I explained that I had my chipset in the trunk and cards that wouldn't bend after one shuffle like the Bicycle paper cards he was using. I wasn't going to deal a game with flimsy chips, bendable cards, and finally I had to drop the bomb on them.
“Those seats, no bueno, we HAVE to get rid of them.” I was insistent on the seats. They fought me tooth and nail on the ****ty chips and cards, but had no problem replacing the seats. Fish made a phone call to his buddy at the local gourmet Italian place and this big dude showed up 30 minutes later in a pickup with 10 office chairs and two extra large specialty pizzas. This was by far the best pizza I had on the West Coast of Florida but I never ordered it because it was like $30 a pie. As we set up the chairs, my chips, and I showed them how rake was dropped, when you picked it up, and how to be subtle about it, I felt 1000% percent better than when I walked out the door. I suddenly heard this whining noise coming from the pool area and I thought small animals were dying in his backyard, and I saw some sort of machine lit up on the patio.
“What the **** is that thing?” I asked Fish, thinking it was something to do with his fish breeding setup in the garage.
“It's prime rib in my Ron Popeil oven.” I had never seen one of these in person, but I had watched the infomercials at night when I was a kid over and over. Sure enough I went out there and this juicy cut of prime rib was just rotating on the squeaky bearing – this thing was probably 20 years old but still running. I guess those things were well made after all.
The biggest test of the night, however, was about to happen. The anticipation of seeing who was really going to show up, the promises and the deals that were made, people who were willing to cross over to the other game, that had to happen. You can have the nicest setup in the state, but without the players in the seats, there was no fuel in the Ferrari, as my dad used to say. As game time approached, we had 3 players, then a black Mercedes, a BMW Z4, and we were at 5. As I was outside vaping, I saw a platinum colored Escalade roll up – not the dumpster fire that Tim owned, a brand new 2016 that looked sharp as hell. I was thinking “good, we can start now we have 6” when all 4 doors opened and out came 4 guys dressed like they just left the country club, and they probably had. I was introduced to the guys and with all the new names here, I knew it would take a game or two, but all these guys seemed pretty cool, were clearly loaded, and I had never seen them in a poker game before. Joe, Fish's restaurant friend showed up, and we were ready to take off with a full table and one waiting. I even started to text a few friends that wouldn't normally come to home games and explained there was 4k on the table, and more people were on the way. Mike's raking tendencies had made their rounds around the city and most pro players wouldn't play in the game unless there was a huge +EV reason. These guys were splashing around like it was 2004 all over again and I wanted to give up the deck and jump in myself. When I took a break, Fish was a terrible dealer and would get less hands in an hour than the EPT, as well as forget rake, but it was still excellent. There was another ring at the door, and Peter and Flynn showed up ready to play. They had come from Tim's place, where there was no game, and wanted to get in as well. As fishy as they were, they had one buy-in and were guaranteed to go on the books with their playing style. When we had new players who were 100% cash ready to play, we didn't have time to entertain window shoppers, especially ones that were abusive to players.
Very few times have I dealt a game where the players literally didn't want to go home and I had to tell them it was game over. These guys were all lawyers, finance guys, the best type of player to have at a home game. It was 830am on Sunday, and after dealing for 14 hours with just a few breaks, the cards were blurry, the chip colors were all the same, and I couldn't count anymore. I had been getting texts from Tim during the night that were in phonetics and were basically threatening to kill me, to which I responded, “With a katana sword? I can outrun that.” It was one of the best nights I had dealing cards ever, with the only better night being the $4k pot where Bookie had given me a $300 tip just for the one hand. We had about 5 bookies at the table, and the other 4 players had a dream game to play in. Where these people came from, I don't know, but I hoped they came every Saturday. Peter and Flynn ended up staying most of the night waiting for a seat, and during that time, Greek was trying to get paid on some oil he had sold Peter. It was $50 and Peter was hoodwinking him on it, it was given in good faith and Greek wasn't the type of guy to be assertive about it. Near the end of the night, I told Peter that if he wanted to come back to the game and play, that he had to bring $500 plus the $50 he owed Greek, he wasn't going to put money in play without paying off debts to people at the table. Peter was so unaware of he fact that he was a floor in a local cardroom, and his image outside the room was really important to keeping his job. He couldn't owe players in the room money and talk **** to them at the table just because his boss wasn't down his neck. He agreed, but something told me he didn't have the $500 to bring to the table, so we wouldn't be seeing him that often.
I went back to the condo, and Nicole was visibly upset.
“Where the **** have you been all night?” She asked in a tone that sounded like she wanted to accuse me of something.
“Dealing, what else do I do on Saturday nights?”
“I didn't see your car at Tim's last night, the WHOLE night.”
I tried to explain that the game had changed, and I had told her this. We made an agreement that she would not come to the games because it was just a bad idea – she was better off hanging out by the pool or visiting friends. Not this time, she was looking for blood. She thought I went and visited an ex, and was losing it – her past two boyfriends had cheated on her, so why not me? I had no energy to argue, and as she was smoking outside on the patio, I just locked her out, took a shower and managed to fall asleep to her banging on the door.
Some people just have to learn the hard way.
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