Chips on table 13!

My last session at the Riverwind was an odd one. I sat at a table with two people with whom I’ve played before. One I’ve written about – limping like a pro and in nearly every pot – who was a chatty, knowlegable, expert and who informed us as to just how much he hates to play big pocket pairs like aces or jacks. Why raise them up when “they just aren’t a favorite against random cards?”

The other was at my table the week before. He sat across from me and was a solid player – a slab of granite. I avoided getting involved with him unless I had something with which to play back at him. He was happy to take full advantage of our knowledgable expert. As was I.

Then there was the dealer who sits on Pauly’s face.

She carries a copy of Pokerplayer Newspaper, lays it across the seat of the dealer chair and sits on it. I have yet to muster up the courage to ask her why. I could understand if it were a player chair. The week before, someone pulled up a player chair and made note of the tidy little pee stain on it. That completely put me on pee tilt.

Now I’m keenly aware of when people leave – or don’t leave – to smoke or to go pee. Then one starts to wonder just who at the table might be clad in man-diapers.

Ewwww. I just grossed myself out.

This session I was up and down and up and down and up… I’d nearly tripled my buy-in when I received a call from my favorite lover of equus asinus. I could only chat for an all too brief spell before my battery beeped its death toll.

I returned to the table where we’d received a new player in my absence. A brush was nowhere to be seen, so I slid a stack of reds over to him in exchange for the black chip on the felt in front of him. I’m nice that way.

I took a big pot off our resident expert when my two pair transformed into a boat on the river. I bet out all the way and he cold called all the way, then was disgusted when I turned over the winning hand. I heard him mumble “I had her until the river…” Then he said to me “Nice catch.” Yeah, right, mister – you let me get there, dimwit.

But, I kept bleeding my stack back. Why? Because it’s hard not to play when more than half the table limps in before you and you’re “priced in” (gawd, I hate hearing that at the table…) to play any two cards you’re holding. Then you catch a bit of the flop and you just have to play on…. dumb.

But, not as dumb as THE dumb hand of the night. The five seat bet out on the flop and the dealer said “The bet’s one-hundred-twenty five.” The five seat went pale, looked down and picked up the black chip that was peaking out from five reds on top of it. “I didn’t mean to do that!”

The dealer looked sympathetic, but said, “The bet stands.” Any chips going past the line are commited. The five seat was crestfallen. The six seat immediately called. There were no other callers. He flipped over his pair of deuces, which were nicely coordinated with the deuce on the board.

The five seat said, “I need a five, please, please a five…” It didn’t come. The pot was pushed to the six seat. “This is the stupid seat,” whined the five seat. “I’m in the stupid seat.” The guy in the one seat said, “Man, if I’d done that I would’ve had to go smoke a pack of cigarettes or something.” The rest of table was silent, but secretly glad it wasn’t them that’d made such an idiotic blunder.

I was the dumb-ass in the five seat.

The black chip I’d traded a stack of reds for earlier had gotten mixed in with the few chips I was using to cap my cards. I acted too quick in my attempt to steal the pot. Suffice to say, I will never, ever again have a black chip in my stack – that is, at the current level I’m playing (yeah, right, like you’ll ever get beyond the baby pool….).

Cynical. Yes. Very.

To my credit, I didn’t tilt. In fact, I was rather calm about the whole debacle. But, I did manage to bleed most of my remaining profit away. I finally threw in the towel and departed with a profit of $25.

Yes, it was an odd session indeed.