Professional Losers

This was about a real fun nite of poker from late May.  I was playing with grrouchie .  I did a spot check and it doesn’t appear that grrouch ever blogged about this session.  So I guess at long last, it’s up to me.

There won’t be much poker in this one because there was really only one hand that was worth reporting, and I already did the blog post about that hand (see here).  This is about the fun we had at the table, with the group we had, it was really more like a 2/4 game than a 1/2 game.

Grrouchie had arrived first and was already playing when I got there.  I was called to his table almost immediately.  We started talking about our blogs and one of the players overheard us.  Somehow he got the completely wrong idea.  “Oh, am I playing against a couple of professionals?”

The dealer happened to be my buddy Troy, and he couldn’t let that go by.  “Professionals?” he said.  “More like professional losers.”

Grrouchie laughed but was probably a bit surprised since he didn’t know Troy. I thought it hysterically funny.  I knew it was all in fun, but the player who asked the question (along with his family) acted surprised, saying “Whoa.”  Troy realized it came out nastier than he intended.  “Well, I know him (pointing to me) and I don’t know him (pointing to grrouchie).”  Then Troy added, pointing back to me, “he knows what I used to call him.  What did I used to call you?”

“The Rock,” I said.  He called me that back in my 2/4 days when I routinely played less hands than anyone else at the table.  Then I added, “But I had to give up my wrestling career.”

I of course had to respond to that I said to Troy, “Let’s see if I ever tip you again when I win a pot.” 

“You have to win a pot first.”

“True.   So in five years, when you finally push me a pot, I’ll say, ‘Remember that time in 2013 when you called me a professional loser?  Well that’s why you’re not getting a tip now.’”

In fact, Troy actually did push me a couple of small pots before he left and I tipped him of course, and didn’t even joke about it.

The rest of the night, the player who had asked the initial question referred to the two of us as “losers.”  He would actually address us as that directly, as in, “Nice hand, loser.”  Or, if he lost a pot to one of us, he’d say, “Oh damn, I’m losing to a professional loser.”

The guy was there from Minnesota with his wife and his father-in-law.  The father-in-law was sitting between the couple.  He was teasing his father-in-law a bit but they were all having a good time.   At one point he must have felt he was teasing his father-in-law a bit too much, and he said, “I really shouldn’t be giving you a hard time.  I’ve very grateful to you.  After all, I have my wife because you got horny in 1983.”

The dad-in-law shot back immediately, “Who didn’t?”

The son-in-law said, “I didn’t. I was only 10 years old.”  I must admit, it didn’t look like there was a 10 year age difference between husband and wife.

There was some discussion at one point of grrouchie going to prison and being somebody’s “prison bitch.”  I didn’t make a note of why this came up at the time but now, many months later, I seem to think it had something to do with a discussion we were having about Pittsburgh Steeler’s QB Ben Roethlisberger, who hasn’t been to jail but probably should.  The Steelers are grrouchie’s favorite team, you know.  Grrouchie said he would be someone’s prison bitch for X amount of dollars, but I don’t recall the figure.

There was one really head-scratching hand that didn’t involve me.  Father-in-law raised to $10, another guy called, and a third guy made it $20.  The other two players called.  There was betting on all the streets, but not really all that much, and I don’t recall who did the betting.  The board seemed rather innocuous but the river was a King.  Modest bets were made and called on the river.

At showdown, both the father-in-law and the guy who made it $20 preflop showed….pocket Aces.  The guy between flipped over pocket Kings for a rivered set of Kings.

Huh?

How did those three players not get it all in preflop?

The guy with the dreaded pocket Kings simply said, “I knew I didn’t have the best hand.”

Again, huh?  If he knew he didn’t have the best hand, why call all the way down waiting for his two-outer?  The guy who three-bet the flop said, “Well, I didn’t want to get sucked out on.  Whenever I push with Aces, I lose.”

I dunno.  I think this is one time when he could have gotten Kings to fold if he had played it aggressively.  He might have even gotten the father-in-law to fold his Aces!  The father-in-law offered no excuse for his timid play.

A very strange hand.

The husband bought his wife a massage, and it didn’t take long for a comment about a “happy ending” to be made.  Then the husband decided to have the same girl give him a massage based on the wife’s recommendation.  There was a joke about the massage girl being better than the “girls on Spring Mountain.”  I’m not sure if that was before or after he asked the girl to work his “glutes.”  The wife didn’t mind.  The guy started moaning and groaning as if he really was going to have a happy ending.  At one point the massage girl said to him, “You sleep on your left side, don’t you?”

He said, “How did you know that?”

She said, “I know a lot of things.”

Apparently that was what grrouchie needed to hear.  He got a massage next.  This actually prevented me from getting up and going to the Mens room, something I needed to do.  I was kind of locked in.

The husband was also talking about needed to go, and trying to figure out when the right time to leave the table was. He said there needed to be something like a “poker catheter.”  He suggested that they could have celebrity endorsements.  “I’m Chris Moneymaker and this is the poker catheter I used to win the World Series of Poker.”  And then they could auction off the actual bottle that was strapped to his leg (assuming there was one) on Ebay.

When grrouchie was finished with his happy ending, I mean, his massage, I was finally able to get up and use the Men’s Room.  When I got back, I was surprised to see that he was gone.  I texted him to see if he had busted out.  No, it turns out that his girlfriend (I think this was before they became engaged) was available at the last minute, so he took off.

When a woman came to take the seat that grrouchie had vacated, the husband told her, “The guy who just left that seat left to make a booty call.”  The woman was indifferent to this.

But I did confirm with grrouchie that he had indeed told the family from Minnesota that he left to make a booty call. 

I was about even all night, until the guy paid me off when his Ace-King rain into my Aces (again, see here).  And I left not long after that, having had both a fun and profitable session.