Saturday, (long, rambling)

Last Saturday I was miserable. The horrible murders that occurred on 11 September really got to me. I had no desire to play poker. I was going to work on my VW. I couldn't. I decided late in the afternoon to go to Connecticut to play poker. At first I was going to go to the Mohegan Sun and play some 20-40 holdem. But for some reason the thought of playing Holdem became unappealing. There is a 20 - 40 Stud game at Mohegan Sun but I don't believe it runs all the time so I decided to head to Foxwoods and play some 15 Stud.


I got to FW's around 7 p.m. I was not in the best of spirits. Thoughts of all those people suffering were going through my mind. And what was I doing? I was going to play poker. I had seriously considered going to New York and volunteering but opted to stay away because the officials there asked that people stay away. Apparently they are inundated with volunteers.


I would like to take a minute here to mention a personal observation. I think Rudy Giuliani is "The Best". Before this happened I will admit that I really didn't like him very much. Don't know why. Just didn't. After listening to this guy I don't believe that another person anywhere could do a better job than what I believe he is doing. What I like most about him is that nothing in his remarks or tone of voice or mannerism displays one iota of politics. He, unlike almost all of the others that I've heard speak, with the exception of George Bush early on, has given me the sense of the human tragedy that this murderous act is all about. He seems to have just put all political considerations aside and gotten down to business. He has my vote as an American hero.


So I get to Foxwoods around 7p.m. Like I said, I'm not in a good mood. I forgot my Wampum Card so I decide that the first thing I will do is get another one. A Wampum card for you uninformed is a card used by Foxwoods to give players comps for playing. They give you one or two points per hour for mid limit games. I don’t remember the exact amount. Each point is worth a dollar in Casino merchandise or food. I always use my Wampum points immediately upon accruing enough for a tuna sandwich. I’m always afraid that I won’t get back to Foxwoods again and I don’t want to get screwed out of my Wampum points. Getting screwed out of a dollar or two is not a pleasant though for an el'cheapo like me. Well, there I am waiting inline for my Wampum card. My head was hung low and my eyes were focused downward on the carpet. After a few minutes I head a voice from behind the Wampum Card counter say next in line please. That was me, next in line, that she was referring to. So I shuffle up to the counter and look up and what do you think the first thing is that caught my eye. Yeah that’s right. There taped to the wall behind the counter was an American Flag. Old Glory, The Stars and Stripes. The sight of it immediately lifted my spirits. But what really struck me was the fact that I was standing in the middle of a Native American owned and operated business located on a reservation. The thought of that is difficult to describe. It pleased me. I instantly saw a bit of irony in such a gesture. Interesting, I thought.


Then I moseyed over to the high limit board and signed up for 15 stud. There was a 20 Holdem game going so even though I wanted to play stud I signed up for that game also. Of course I was called for the Holdem game first but immediately after I sat down and bought $700 in chips I was called for the stud game and moved over to stud without playing a single hand of Holdem. The stud game was typical Foxwoods poker. There were three or four good players, a great player (me), and 2 mediocre’s and a strictly horrible donator. And I played great too. After two hours I was up around $500. But I really didn’t care. The atmosphere at the table was relaxed. People were discussing the attacks on America sure but were the mood was comfortable. Everyone at the table had something in common. We all felt the pain but we were together. Somehow that made a difference. Don’t know why. Just did. The horrible donator was sitting on my left. Perfect. Of course he would turn out to be a likeable guy. He was from Stamford Conneticut. He told me that lot's f folks from Stamford worked in the Twin Towers and Stamfrod was deeply affected by all this. I sympathised with him. Funny how things turn out becuase he also broke my bubble about my feelings about the Native Americans flying the flag. He said "I don't buy it. I think they are just trying to appease the customers". Yeah, you may be right" I said. "But I think you are wrong". I prefered to take the gesture at face value. I decided to drop it and focus on playing poker.


As usual in most poker sessions a drought set in. I didn’t play a hand for almost 2 and one half-hours and it was noticed. My $500 win had been cut to $350 by ante’s and bring ins. It was now about 0130 on Sunday morning. I was getting tired. So I made a deal with myself. If I lose the next hand I play to the river I would go to bed. That way I would still be a winner and could come back in the morning and play another session or play in the Sunday 10 a.m. Stud tournament. Within 10 minutes I picked up 3 live hearts and entered an unraised multiway pot. Things looked good. On fourth street I caught the Ace of hearts and things looked better. Another Ace was high and bet. I called the bet and then called a raise from a late position player showing xx/Ks,Tc. I opted to just call at this point. I wasn’t looking to lose anyone at this point and two players called after me. There were 5 of us that saw fifth street. On fifth street I caught another heart completing my flush. To my surprise the other Ace bet. I raised expecting the K,T to call along with the Ace. To my delight they both called. (I put both of them on two pair at this point. If the K,T had folded I would not have minded. When he called I thought he might have trips) On sixth street we all caught blanks. I bet and both opponents called. On the river the Ace checked and I checked! The K,T bet. The other Ace folded. I thought for a moment and made a crying call because of the pot size and because quite frankly even though I was very sure I was beat I learned a long time ago to call in these situations. It’s the correct play. My opponent turned over Kings full. I said good hand and tossed my cards to the dealer face down.


My opponent immediately went ballistic. “I want to see that hand” he said to the dealer. I said, "I had a flush, what did hell do you think I had?", and took my cards and turned them over.” Another player said" What in the hell did you think he had"? Please remember my deal with myself. Lose: Go. Well this guy started in on me. “You sit there for two hours and don’t play a hand and criticize everyone’s play and blah, blah, blah,.” It seems that he was referring to a remark I made to him a few hands before. He was in a hand with another player. At the end of the hand he said to the player. “Three jacks win” and mucked his hand. I said humorously I thought “How about 2 jacks”. He took that as criticism. I in fact told him it was a bit of humor and apologized if it sounded like criticism. That wasn’t good enough. He just kept sounding off on me. Your this your that, blah, blah, blah. So finalyy I just blurted out “ you're a f------ Asshole”. And this time the f is not for freakin. Now he started threatening me and asking me if I wanted to go outside. Yeah right, me, I wanted to fight. Give me a break. I'm fatter and older than Sklansky. I only go outside with young girls. I mean I want to go outside with young girls. They don't seem to want the same thing. So, I said “look my car is in the parking lot out there" and pointed to I don’t know where. " When I’m finished playing poker I’ll be out there. I'll meet you then". But he wouldn’t stop. So neither did I. I called him every f’n name in the book. And he, me. Then I got pissed. By this time he was standing up and calling me all kinds of names. So I stood up. Looked him square in the eye and walked away from the table. I walked directly outside and waited. I wanted to fight. I wanted to hit someone. This guy was as good as anyone, I thought. I haven’t been in a fight for a lot of younger years but screw it. A few bruises would be worth it. I waited for about 5 minutes. Give me a break, it was chilly. I hate the cold so I walked back in and back to the table. No, I wasn’t glad he didn’t show up outside, thank you very much! And I wasn’t glad that he didn’t return to the table for well over an hour. He got back just before they picked him up. Remember my deal. Lose: go. I didn’t. It may have been because getting pissed woke me up for a while. I don't know all I know is I was still there when he got back and my soon +500 became a -600. It was 0330a.m..


I was tired. I took out another $260 and made a deal. If I lose this I definitely leave. I take a $960 loss and go, period. Besides, the game had really tightened up by now and there wasn’t much chance of me getting even so I almost left right then. The fact that I would not now have enough time to play a good session after sleeping kept me playing. It reminded me of my days playing in A.C. when I could only play weekends and had to be back to work on Monday. I would force myself to play long sessions on Sundays because I wouldn’t be able to play again for a week. "Dangerous Dan", my best poker buddy in the whole world, used to call me all kinds of idiotic names. said I was Mr. "Tilt" cause I couldn't leave a loser unless I was broke. He was right.


Well at 0530a.m. I was down to $160 and started looking for my last hand. I was resolved to quit if I lost the $160. Soon I found one but to my amazement I won it and now had $300. That’s a pretty good stake for me in a 15 stud game. By 0700a.m. I had $500 and thought "hey a 460 loss is really not that bad." I was going to quit but found another reason to stay. The sun was just coming up and it looked real cold outside. I’m sure it wasn’t but my VW bus does not have any heat so I convinced myself to play a little longer to give O’l Sol time to warm things up. I thought “I’m only 2 hands from being even or maybe just one good hand.” At 0830 I got that one good hand but I was still down $100. I made nines full against two opponents. One guy, a new player to the game, was a donator. I got to check raise him on the turn with my full house. the other player is a decent player when he first starts in a game. But after a good while he starts to play every hand and that's when I go after him. Speaking about the new player. Two hands later I bluff raised him on the river with air and he folded. I am not much of a river bluff raiser but it just seemd to be a perfect situation. He had a small pair showing and I had and A,Q,T,x showing. We all checked sixth street. the other player that had loosened up was also in the pot. When the newbie bet the other player folded and I just went for it. It felt right. It worked.


So now I had $860 and it seemed to me that that was enough. A $100 loss is only one hand so why not go? But outside it still looked cold so I decided to play some more. Well as fate would have it I picked up a hand an hour later and at 0930 I had $1057 in front of me making me a $97 winner for an all night session.


Now I guess you thought that I would quit and go home. Well you are wrong. I quit all right but instead of going home I signed up for the 10 a.m. tournament. I am a gluten for punishment. Oh, one other thing. Before I left the table I walked over to my f’n nemesis and said, ”If it’s all the same to you I’d like to forget what happened earlier”. He put out his hand and said he was sorry and that he didn’t know what the heck came over him. It’s not funny but I wonder just how much if any September 11 had to do with it.


Just before I started playing in the tournament I spotted “The Prince” a frequent 2 + 2 poster. We talked for a few minutes. He introduced me to a friend of his, Pierre. They had come down from Montreal for the weekend. We talked about September 11 for a little while and then about how our weekends were going. Then Pierre went and played Holdem and The Prince and the Pauper (me) went and played in the tournament. I busted out early and left for home. I hope(d) the Prince faired better.


Vince

Great post Vince. I had come to this forum just now to post a "should we shut down this forum?" post. Obviously we shouldn't.


Thanks,


Chuck

woulda done...great to have you ack vince these are world class posts...gl

"almost as good as spm"


Thanks I needed a compliment.


vince

Hey, nice to see you again Vince.


I also liked meeting Jonh and Mary.


I busted in the stud tournament with about 4 tables remaining. I played a hand really bad and that's what I deserved. Lady luck came to help later in the hold'em game. It was a nice week-end.


I will see you at FARGO.


And BTW, great post.


Nicolas Fradet (ThePrince)

Interesting post. My response starts off nice, but gets kinda pissy when I get on a roll and start going off on the bin laden crew. Hopefully it won't get censored! If it does, I will re-post with the offensive words bleeped out!


I HATE losing out on my hard earned comps too. I spent two days in the tropicana before I moved to cali eating and spending the points I had accumulated and hadn't spent.


The indian casino posting the american flag. A little TOO ironic.


I have to admit, I have never really been especially patriotic. I don't HATE our country, I of course like it. But I am kinda cynical, and just not the kind of person who is filled with pointless patriotism all the time. Until last tuesday. It's one thing to be cynical about a country where the biggest problem of the day is the stock market being down 12 points. But it's quite another when you hijack our planes and use them to blow up our buildings and over 5,000 of our people. Now you've screwed with our country, killed our people on our turf.


I visited new york city many times when I lived on the east coast. I have been in the WTC on a weekday during the day. New yorkers ain't so bad really, their reputation is not really well deserved. I don't want them killed by some middle eastern psychopath with a grudge against us that was probably drilled into his head since he was a child. I wonder if all the people over there that hate us so much have any clue what REALLY goes on here, or if our support of Israel is all they ever need to hate us forever. Personally, I don't really even care about Israel. But I don't want them DEAD. Just like I don't want dead iraqis or dead afganis. I like people better when they are ALIVE.


So while I am not Mr. Patriotic American, I kinda like it here anyway. And now you've fucked with us on our turf. Now you've pissed us off. Now you are gonna pay. I'm all for going to all ends of the earth and hunting down these assholes like the dogs they are. Actually, I like dogs. These men are far below that. And calling them men is a stretch, REAL MEN don't rely on cowardice as a weapon. So go on Mr. Bush, use your blank check to kick some ass. Show us what Texans are made of. I lived in texas for 15 years. One thing about texans, they have balls. Big, cast iron huevos, with extra rancheros sauce, draging on the ground behind them. Mr. Bush, show us what you got. I ain't a Bush fan. I wanted Gore (up until that whole ugly florida thing, but lets not go there...). But now I like Bush better. And I am sure Mr. Bush has a couple. Use them. Use all that fancy schmancy hi-tech equipment we paid bzillions for to go over there and bring back bin laden's head on a post and parade it through new york city. We'll figure out if he's guilty later, for now, we just want to see him good and dead.


Then we can hunt down the rest.


So it seems I got a tad bit angry here. Like you did with Mr. Angry at the table. I would sure like to pummel some jerk who desperately deserves it, and I would give him a couple extras for last tuesday. But I actually hate fighting. And violence. Tear em up with well thought out words. That's my best point. And Vince's too.


Dave in Cali

"I like people better when they are ALIVE. "


Amen.


Vince

Finally, a description of a typical Vince Lepore session of poker.

dd

Chuck,


Shut down the Vince forum and I'll never post again.


Mary

Mary,


If that's long and rambling, what's short?