POKER
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Ego, wallet deflate quickly
at poker tables in Nevada
RENO, Nev. >> Beautiful. The pot is mine. And it's a big one for this game, about $120. Sure, a third of the chips were mine to begin with, but that's not the point. Three hours into this session of my new favorite game and I'm finally gonna be up for the night.
Two queens in hand, another on the board and she's hanging with a pair of sevens. This, my friends, is known as a boat, or more commonly, a full house. It is a very good thing when you are playing poker. It beats just about everything else.
I am unaware, though, that my boat is the second coming of the Titanic.
I keep raising, but so does the old piece of leather sitting across the table. What can he be thinking? Does this dude just like giving money away?
When I finally realize, it is too late. When you haven't had many good hands in a session and you finally get one, the tendency is to overplay it. And my foolish aggressiveness is going to cost me my last $40 -- and just as importantly, to me anyway, any kind of rep I had gained at this table of poker room regulars of being a halfway decent Texas Hold 'em player.
After he shows me the two sevens in his hand, I slip away as quietly as possible and look for a nickel slot machine to kill some time with. It's what I deserve. I've just blown the last of the $200 I won earlier in the day playing blackjack at the Peppermill Hotel and Casino.
You see, the thing I so quickly forgot is one of the most basic elements of Hold 'em. Those five cards on the table -- the queen of diamonds, the pair of sevens, the five of clubs and the nine of hearts -- well, they're not just mine.
They belong to the old man, too.
The two sevens in his hand plus MY sevens on the table for all to see add up to four. Four of a kind. Four of a kind as in four of a kind beats a full house.
Bad luck you say?
Yes and no.
It is true that you can do the right thing in poker with a really good hand and still lose a lot of money (nobody loses more than a couple bucks with a two and a seven if they do the right thing and throw 'em away). But the truth of the matter is I let myself get into a position of disadvantage because I wasn't comfortable with my surroundings.
I ONLY KNOW one guy at this table, Malcolm Butler. He and I work together two or three times a year and get along very well. That is, until he sits down at the poker table. He remains cordial, but he's not here to chat. He's here to kick butt. And he knocks me and the rest of the table around pretty good.
Malcolm is quiet and efficient, but the rest of the table is a bunch of noisy locals who like to joke around. Some of it's pretty funny, but these are experienced and serious players. So while it seems like a friendly game, it really isn't. Some players use chatter to distract the competition, and after a while I realize that's what the banter here is designed to do. If I knew these people better, I might enjoy it, but I can't help getting the vague feeling that I am a mark here, the out-of-towner who gets fleeced by the locals.
There's no overt hostility. But they are taking my money, and there's nothing I can do about it except leave the table. My ego, though, won't let me. I've convinced myself that my "luck" will turn and I actually know how to play this game. Never mind that I'm totally outclassed in little things like skill and experience and this gang is stealing my lunch money for the next month.
The paranoia gets so bad that I start wondering if they are letting me win a hand once in awhile just to keep me around for laughs.
I'm down to $20 of my $100 buy-in when I win two of the next three hands, but they're small pots, getting me up to around $50. A couple of folds later, and that's when I hit the iceberg.
SOMETIMES I THINK the worst thing that happened to me was when I first played poker at the Monte Carlo in Las Vegas last year. I won a lot of money that day, about $500. But it was a classic case of beginner's luck, plus playing with some people who knew even less about what they were doing than I. A bunch of dummy tourists.
I hadn't played poker since my ratty old Bicycle deck was confiscated in high school, and on that day on The Strip I was still trying to remember what beats what. But that didn't prevent the dealer from giving me four queens on one hand that afternoon, and four jacks on another. In addition to winning those pots, I received jackpots totaling around $300.
Easy money.
I went and had a nice dinner, and then returned to the poker room that night.
Mistake.
The clientele had changed a bit in the three hours since I left. These guys looked like a bunch of characters from "Rounders," or a final table at the World Series of Poker. A bald-headed muscle man with a Russian accent. A couple of cocky young punks. A loud guy wearing what the mainlanders call a Hawaiian shirt who said he was a talent agent from L.A. named Harvey. Harvey wanted to be my best friend. Yeah, right, Harvey.
This crowd had me figured out after about five hands and gradually liberated the Benjamins I'd peeled off my fellow tourists and the Monte Carlo's jackpot fund during the day.
In the end, it was none of the central casting players who did me in. The sweet septuagenarian sipping on chardonnay and puffing generic cigarettes sitting next to me drove home the stake when she filled a straight to knock off my two pair.
So I've learned a few things in my limited casino poker room experience in Las Vegas and Reno.
>> Before sitting down to play, ask everyone at the table to show their IDs. If two or more have a Nevada driver's license, run away.
>> While it's true that if I find $10,000 on the ground I can play in the World Series of Poker, but even $1 million won't let me be a combatant in the World Series of Baseball, I have only a slight better chance of beating Johnny Chan in a hand as I do of hitting a Randy Johnson fastball.
>> And, finally, always check your boats for leaks. Before you get to the river.
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