So I was at the Vic the other day minding my own business in the £2/5 No Limit Hold’em game when all of a sudden traps 7 and 9 get about £600 each into the middle on a 9 high flop with two spades.
Now, the player in seat 9 is a young aggressive player (let’s call him a YAG from now on) and naturally, being young and aggressive, he had raised preflop. The guy in the seven seat was an older gentleman who had limped in and then called the YAG’s raise.
Like I said, they got all the money in on the flop and when all the dust had settled the YAG turned over the K-J of spades to reveal that he had made a flush on the turn, whilst our friend in seat 7 tabled the monster that was J-9, top-pair-jack-kicker on the flop which was now no good of course.
OK, pretty standard so far, nothing unusual I think you’ll agree, but here’s where it got interesting. Seat 7 now just sat there in utter disbelief and started giving the YAG a big old staredown. I mean, if looks could kill, ooh boy. It was a perfect combination of astonishment and a filthy, tut-tutting glare. And it seemed to carry on for ages. At least five minutes, which as you all know, is a looooong time in poker.
It went on so long I was tempted to ask the guy if he was pulling up or leaving, but I thought better of it. There was an awkwardness that filled the whole table. There’s nothing worse than when some ice cream has done his money in the game and they just stay sitting there. A poker player who has gone skint and hasn’t the means to refill the tank immediately is possibly the most redundant thing you can have at a poker game. Kind of like a limp dick at an orgy, know what I mean?
Let’s Talk About Sex
Seeing as I’ve made an analogy of a sexual nature wasn’t it Freud who claimed that riffling chips was just a gambler’s substitute for masturbation? For some reason, I’ve always thought that the card room was a seething hotbed of unleashed sexuality. All that testosterone and controlled aggression. Think about it, one average looking woman just has to sit in a game and every guy in the room is craning their necks to have a good look and then drooling hopelessly. After all, they hardly ever meet any women at all, being that they spend their whole time in the poker room.
At the risk of embarrassing myself I remember a middle-aged woman who was a regular in the Vic and who I used to play a lot of tournaments with. One day I suddenly noticed how well manicured her hands were and found myself strangely turned on by this. Yes, that seems pretty twisted doesn’t it? Fetishizing the hands of a woman who was probably old enough to be my grandmother. But these are the kind of sick games your mind starts to play on you once you have spent 90 percent of your time in the poker room.
Unlike online poker you’re only playing one game so once you’ve folded - which playing poker involves a lot of, unless of course you are a total Charlie Chuckaway - your mind can’t help but wander. Yeah I know you should be observing the game and all that, but unless you’re Phil Ivey or something it’s almost impossible to remain so focused. I recall some kid in the poker room at the Wynn multi-tabling on his laptop whilst sat in a £2/5 game; that is definitely a player who learnt to play on the Internet.
Now that I think about it, playing poker involves an inordinate amount of not playing; I mean, what kind of a game is this?! You’re supposed to throw your hand away and not play?! I mentioned Phil Ivey and it’s obvious now why him and all his pals love all the props - nothing to do with the fact that they are complete sickos (that goes without saying really), it’s more to do with anything to pass that huge yawning, gaping chasm of time until the next hand.
In fact, I’m surprised that six-card Pot Limit Omaha isn’t more popular as most people I’ve ever played that particular variation with find it hard to believe that one would fold before the flop. I mean, y’know, you’ve got six cards in your hand, that’s what, about 128 combinations of different Hold’em hands right? Ya gotta see a flop, don’cha??
Anyway, back to the guy who wouldn’t leave his seat even though he’d done his money. I’ve seen this sort of thing happen in tournaments before when players have gone broke, but stay sitting in their seats. Usually they are novices who haven’t played much before and they don’t really understand that that’s it. Nobody cares anymore, you’re brown bread and it’s seat open! After all, everybody else is playing nine-handed and we’ve gone short now - our blinds are gonna be eaten twice as fast! And so on.
Actually, that reminds me of an old nit that is temporarily out of action who used to refuse to play seven-handed because that wasn’t enough players for him.
However, once again I digress, so back to the poor slob who had had such a poker injustice handed out to him in the £2-5 game at the Vic. Eventually he gathered his things and got up, slowly walking away, but never once taking his eyes off the YAG. By now the kid in seat 9 had had enough and asked, “What mate? Can I help you?” to which his hapless victim replied, “How could you do that?!?! I’d been playing really tight all night long!!”
It was kind of tragic to see such a bad reaction to getting cleaned out. I have to assume that the loser in question hasn’t played much poker at all. If he thinks that not playing a hand for several hours gives you the right not to go broke then he’s in for a nasty surprise.
When The Going Gets Tough, The Tough Get Going
Whilst I was in the game I heard a good story about a Vic regular who was playing in a game when a new face ended up getting ironed out in a hand. The Vic regular, being the helpful kind of guy that he is, went into his pocket and lent this stranger £200. The stranger now did the lot in the very next hand and got up to leave.
“Hold, on,” said the regular, “You owe me £200.”
“Tough!” said the stranger and walked off!
Even more of a rubdown is that when the regular started calling for staff to help him out this guy coolly walked past the main desk and said, “Honestly! You can’t trust anyone these days.”
Poker Bustouts
All this stuff about goings on at the Vic serves as a nice prelude for a documentary I caught on Pokertube the other day called Poker Bustouts. This was filmed around ‘04, I’m guessing, and features a bunch of railbirds and nippers who you would only recognise if you had ever spent time playing poker in downtown Las Vegas. I know I have definitely crossed paths with a few of these characters in WSOPs gone by.
Cowboy, for instance, is an old geezer who any visitor to Vegas should recognise, especially if you have ever found yourself in a low limit Omaha High-Low game. At one point this philosopher of the felt makes the wise observation, “There’s no shame in being broke, only shame in staying broke.” Considering that all the interview footage with Cowboy takes place outdoors near the bus station downtown, which leads me to guess that Cowboy’s home is one of several park benches near by, he should know all about always being broke.
The most famous player featured in the film is Tomer Benvenisti who made the final table of the WSOP when Moneymaker won it. He regales us with a story about sonome railbird who started fetching him food and drinks whilst he made his way to the final, basically becoming Tomer’s personal valet in the hopes of remuneration should his chosen master take down the Big One. Naturally this fella exercised good judgement as Tomer did indeed reward him with some of the 5th place prize money. By the way, Benvenisti seemed happy to do so. In fact, at one point, he went so far as to say, “Without railbirds, there is no game.” Er… really Tomer? Isn’t that going a little too far?
As you can tell this documentary doesn’t exactly reflect the, ahem, glamorous side of the game, but nonetheless is well worth watching. Besides being pretty hilarious it’s actually a true representation of what it’s like when you decide that all you are going to do is poker.
Note that I didn’t mention anything about being a professional, although many of the desperadoes featured would classify themselves as that. Which is fine of course, although it does remind me of something one of the wealthier recreational players at the Vic (not to say that this guy doesn’t spend just as much if not more time than most of the pros there) once said to me many years ago - “When you tell me someone is a professional poker player I picture somebody who leads a hand to mouth existence, know what I mean?”