"If you can't spot the sucker within 20 minutes of sitting at the table then the sucker is you"

This past Saturday night after work I played poker with a couple guys in the neighborhood. 4 guys, $20 to start, nickel, dime, quarter chips, nickel ante, dealer calls game. Simple enough math even for me. Somehow I stumbled the one block back home over icy sidewalks with nary a dime in my pocket. How did this happen?

Of the other 3 guys playing one was an OK player and the other two needed the games explained to them repeatedly. One had a chart in front of him listing the hands which anyone who has lost to Kendra knows is a particularly stinging beat. Things started off smooth with a couple of games of 5 card stud. Small bets and hands of two pair taking the first pots. The chatter was typical guys playing cards with no women around and therefore can not be repeated in this forum. I won a pot or two early and felt like I had an early read on the players at the table. Then I tried to be cute by seeing if I could bluff the guys by not taking any cards in a game of 5 card draw. It worked on two but the other guy made his flush to the ace and so I got unlucky. After that I kept winning small pots and losing the big ones, always a bad scenario. You feel like your doing well but your stack is shrinking like the rain forests.

While we are playing we are also enjoying some tasty mixture of tonic and vodka. I’m not sure what these are called but they agreed with me tremendously. After 2 or 3 of these adult beverages and a particularly bad beat in 7 card stud when I my full house was trumped by one that was a bit fuller I started to notice the alcohol becoming acquainted with my blood stream. The embraced like old friends and immediately started dancing through my body in an effort to see as much as they could before the night was over. After a couple more hands and enumerable inappropriate jokes there was introduced to our table a peach beverage with Chinese writing on it. Had I known that this bottle was to be my undoing that night I would have stayed away, but hind sight is always 20/20 and fore sight was in the low hundreds for me that night. I had a shot of the smooth peach beverage and then lost the rest of my money in 3 successive hands. I was then given a bigger portion of the peach beverage as consolation as well as a couple dollars in chips to play out the night with.

To add insult to injury the host then brought out his collection of Jones Soda Holiday pack and we took a shot of everything from Turkey and Gravy to Pecan Pie. Seemed like a fine idea at the time but again looking back that was pretty gross. At about 2:30 we decided to count up the money and call it a night. I had turned the couple of bucks into $16 but gave it back to the guy who fronted me. I grabbed my coat and found me hat, hit the door in seconds flat and made my way stumbling and sliding across a sheet of ice on the sidewalk. I crossed the street to my side and then zig zagged the half block to stop sign and then half more to my house. I didn’t fall once, a point I only make because of the sheer miracle of it. Came into the house to meet an angry Kate and spent the rest of the night in the bathroom as my body had a disagreement with the alcohol and so everyone had to leave.

Not a good night, not good at all.