Champagne Parties and Caviar Dreams

If you’ve been to college, or are just a devoted follower of fraternity wisdom, you’ve probably heard the saying, “Beer before liquor, never been sicker”. Early on in my collegiate poker career, I coined a saying of my own: “Beer before poker, never been broker.”

Which is a shame, because gambling and alcohol are vices which go together so comfortably, like marijuana and White Castle cheeseburgers. Most of my best memories of Vegas aren’t actually memories at all. They start with a cocktail before dinner, then there’s a flash where I’m sitting at a poker table in the bowels of some dirty casino, and then nothing until I remember staggering out the next morning with a rumpled dress shirt and a dazed expression as the blistering Vegas sun beats down like the vengeful eye of an angry God.

Good times.

I used to love going out drinking with friends in college, then sneaking away at the end of the night to go to an underground NYC poker club and playing, hammered, until dawn. For some reason, drunk John thinks he is excellent at getting people to fold to his big bluffs. Also, drunk John thinks people in underground NYC poker clubs fold, ever. He is wrong on both counts. So most of these late night excursions ended badly for our intrepid hero.

Hence the adage, “beer before poker…”

Yet after years of consistently negative feedback, I still frequently found myself on Full Tilt late at night, inebriated and playing 60/55/5 and being stunned at the calldowns opponents would make. (“Sure, two pair is good THIS time, but FYI I could have EASILY had a runner runner straight there, rounders6969, if that IS your real name!”).

Eventually I instinctively settled on a compromise where I would play much lower stakes if I logged in drunk. It wasn’t as thrilling when I won, but, well, I didn’t win often anyway. This low stakes rule became a sane policy that I never wavered from.

Except one night, I was in the midst of a hellish downswing that had been mutilating my 6k 200NL bankroll and sent me through that most hated practice of the poker player, moving down to lower stakes. (Shudder) Oh the continued shame of playing pots half as big and winning money half as quickly as you know you would be winning in a just and merciful Universe, the Universe you were living in back when you were winning at higher stakes!

So that night, after being out drinking and lamenting my luck to be in this UNjust and indifferent Universe in which we all find ourselves, I was back in the apartment and opened up Tilt and Stars to see just how far I had fallen from my 6k baseline. I was disheartened by what I found. Pokerstars had around $1,600. Full Tilt had a lousy six hundred bucks.

Fuck it, I decided. To hell with my “penny-ante poker while drinking” rule. I am going to play until both of these accounts are at the next thousand-dollar mark, or bust them both trying. I fired up two tables of 600NL.

And that is the last thing I remember.

I awoke the next morning, still fully dressed and lying on top of my covers. In waves, the events of the previous night returned to me, culminating in my gambling decision fueled by alcohol and rage, (which is on the short list for the worst kind of decision you can make). Shitshitshitshitshit. I nervously crawled to my computer and checked my balances.

Pokerstars: $2,033.68
Full Tilt: $1,089.10

Success. Against all odds and logic, success. I couldn’t believe it.

At first I was just incredibly relieved. But after it sunk in that I had just had my best day in a month while blackout drunk, I felt like King Gangster Pimp the Awesome. I even had to coin a new phrase:

Drinking and winning is the best kind of sinning.