Champagne Parties and Caviar Dreams

My last post was about the second worst bet I ever made. Now it’s time to talk about the single worst gambling move I ever made. It took place in an underground NYC poker club.

“Underground” is an ironic term for these places. They’re usually in a converted third floor apartment. I haven’t been to one in years, and I kinda miss it. They were the closest I ever came to feeling like I was in “Rounders”. The first time I ever went to one, you had to press a buzzer and look into a camera before they let you in. It was just like Mike and Worm walking into the Chesterfield, except instead of Famke Janssen waiting inside the door, there was a gigantic, mean-looking bouncer. He patted us down for weapons, and I mean really patted us down. He got to know me better than a lot of my girlfriends. I can understand it though, I was pretty intimidating, if you’re intimidated by pale, skinny college sophomores. Nevertheless, being checked for weapons before going to gamble late at night at an illicit New York City poker club made me feel like half a badass.

My college poker buddies used to talk about the clubs a lot. There was Play Station, which I never went to, which was supposedly pretty big but you had to know someone to be let in, there was Straddle Club, which became my club of choice but has long since been shuttered or moved to some location unknown to me, and there were a couple others whose names I’ve forgotten. I probably played in about four or five different ones. They were never around very long. They changed addresses and phone numbers often, got busted by the cops pretty regularly, and got robbed a little less regularly.

Besides the cheap thrill of doing something a little illicit, these clubs were the easiest way for me to play live poker, and even though my total online hands outnumber my total live hands by a hundred to one, I still prefer playing live. I just find it more fun to sit behind felt, shuffle clay chips and drag pots by the armful. It’s more visceral and tangible to me than numbers on a screen.

Problem is, I usually only went to these clubs after a raucous evening, arriving more often than not in a less than optimal state to gamble effectively. This led to a number of bonehead plays in these clubs: bad bluffs, bad calls, way too loose pre-flop play, etc. But one move stands above the rest, and is indeed the most boneheaded gambling move I have ever pulled.

I had just arrived at the club this particular night and had probably only played about five hands so far. I was sitting at 2/5NL with $500. The table seemed typical for a club like this, which is to say, full of loose, bad players. I was on the button, and I called a raise with A4s along with about three other players. Four or five of us saw a flop of 23J. There was a medium sized bet and two calls so I overcalled hoping to hit my gutter. The turn was a king. The EP PF raiser checked, a thin middle aged blonde lady to his left checked, and the CO, a heavyset man of about thirty, bet about 110 into a pot of 200. For no real reason at all, I decided this was a good pot to try and pick up with some aggression, so I raised it to 300. Maybe I thought I could represent a flopped set or KJ, maybe I thought it was a decent semi-bluff if my Ace outs were also clean, I dunno. It was late, I was more than halfway drunk, and I wanted to bluff.

The PFR folded and then, out of NOWHERE, the thin lady in middle position shoved over the top. The CO folded, and as it was back on me I remembered why it wasn’t a good idea to bluff in big live multiway pots. When I saw it was only 30 more to call the shove, I remembered it was also important to keep stack sizes in mind when you made bets.

Eh, fuck it, I thought, it’s 30 into about a thousand. Maybe I’ll hit my five. I drunkenly shrugged and called.

The river was another Jack. Oh well. Without waiting for the action to get to me, I said, “Nice hand. I missed.” and tossed my hand into the muck.

At once, the table exploded. “What the hell are you DOING? It’s not on you yet! Don’t you know your hand is dead now!” they exclaimed.

I was a little surprised by their reaction. “Relax guys. I had ace high. She overshoved in a big pot. She’s obviously got me.” I said.

The CO looked at me with a raised eyebrow and said, “Dude, she has been doing ridiculous nonsense. All. Night. Long.”

I turned and looked at the lady. I now saw that she had a confused, faraway look in her eyes. It was the kind of look someone has their first time they’re a shooter on a craps table, nervous, unsure of themselves, constantly asking, “Okay, now what do I do? Was that good or bad? Why do I want to roll a four?”

“What’s going on?” she asked.

“He mucked his hand. You have the only live hand left, so you’ve automatically won the pot.” said the dealer.

Clearly still confused, she turned over her hand. A six and an eight. Eight high. Nothing. No draw, no pair, no nothing.

This time I exploded. “Eight HIGH?! What the HELL just happened here?!”

The table was in hysterics as I just stood, slack-jawed, while the dealer pushed a thousand dollar pot to the still befuddled lady. A pot that I had won with ace high, and that I had thrown away with a casual flick of my wrist, for no reason at all.

The lady left the table four hands later. To be fair, that was about a half hour later, because it took about that long for the table to stop laughing at me.

Even now, years later, I will sometimes flick my wrist as if mucking a phantom hold ’em hand. It is the slightest of gestures, barely noticeable. And I will think to myself, “There it is. A thousand dollars. Poof. Gone.”

And then I’ll think to myself, what the hell could she possibly have been thinking? Why call preflop? Why call that flop? Why, in God’s name why, bluff (?) shove for thirty dollars more with eight high on that turn?

And then I’ll think, and how on Earth did I possibly find a way to be even dumber than her?

That flick of the wrist remains the worst gambling move I have ever made.

Note: I know I’m pretty new at the whole blogging thing, but I really kinda like it, but it is hard. Each post ends up twice as long as I thought it would be and takes four times as long to write as I thought it would, which is why I don’t update as often as I like. Nevertheless, it makes it more cool and all the more remarkable when I see Tommy Angelo just nail it and make an awesome blog post in four lines.