"Boobs is a Genre?"

This post has some poker and some sleaze.

Probably more sleaze than poker.

The sleaze involves men behaving badly.  Actually, there are also some women behaving badly.

We go back to the beginning of my birthday trip, a Saturday.  As usual, I played in the Saturday Deepstack at Binion’s.  It was an unusual tournament run.  I never had a lot of chips and struggled for hours to stay afloat.  Despite never having a decent stack, I managed to play over 7 hours and made it down to the final two tables.  I busted out around 18^th and they were only paying 11.  And until the last hand, I was never all-in with a risk of busting out.  Weird.

The dealer who busted me was the effervescent Denise (see here).  When she came to the table, it was the first time I’d seen her this day, and I was barely there for 5 minutes when she dealt me the busto hand.  I said to her, “You know, whenever you’re dealing, you bust me out.  Whenever you’re playing, I bust you out.”  She laughed and agreed that this was usually the case.

Before that, Joshua dealt me quads.  I had three-bet with pocket Queens.  The original raiser shoved, he was short stacked (so was I, but not as short as him).  I snap-called. He tabled Ace-8 suited.  There was a Queen in the window and by the turn, his chance of a flush was non-existent.  For good measure, the river was the case Queen.  Now the dealer, Joshua (who I don’t recall ever seeing before) had been at the table long enough to have seen me taking notes.  So he said, “Be sure to write down in your book that Joshua dealt you quads.”  He even grabbed his name tag and thrusted it forward so I could see it better.  And yes, Joshua was the actual name on his tag. 

When we got down to two tables, there was a guy with a huge stack who was playing very conservatively, not taking advantage of his ability to bully the table at all. A few of the other players were teasing him about his lack of aggression.  One player referred to him—in good cheer, it seemed—as a “pussy.”  Other players at this all male table would refer to other players—or even themselves—as pussies.  At one point, the guy throwing the p-word around said, “You should go to Target.  They’re having a sale on skirts.”

But somehow, for a time anyway, this gentle ribbing seemed to be bothering a couple of the boys.  To diffuse the situation the guy who had made the Target joke said, when he folded to a raise, “I guess I need to go to Target.  I’m a pussy.”  Then he added, “My wife always says, ‘you are what you eat.”

It turned out, this guy’s wife was nearby, observing.  Not sure if she had busted out of the tournament earlier or if she was there watching the whole day.  But she heard her husband “quote” her and came over to say, “Who’s your wife?”  The guy responded, “Is that like, ‘Who’s your Daddy?”  By the way, this couple was in their 50’s if not older.

The last hand, courtesy of Denise, was Ace-King of hearts.  I shoved and the big stack with pocket Queens called.  One queen and one heart hit the flop.  A second heart hit the turn.  A third heart did not hit the river, and I was done.

I headed over to MGM where I was sent to a table where Abe was playing and Mike was dealing.  Of course I had to say something about that.  “Geez, they put me with you guys?”

Well, this was a Slut Parade night and since it was late, the crowd was already starting to gather.  And the table they sent me to was right in the front, and the 1-Seat right next to the dealer was available.  This is the very best seat in the poker room if you wish to view the fine young ladies who are headed to the club.  By sheer coincidence, I frequently end up in this seat or a seat like it.  Mike always comments on this.  This time he saw I had no choice but to take the proper seat.  “How do you always end up in the right seat?  You don’t even try!”

Mike was voted “Dealer most likely to deal Rob Pocket Kings” (and crack them), so on the second hand he dealt me, there they were.  I raised and no one called.  Before I returned the cards to him, I had to show them to Mike.  “And you didn’t crack ‘em, either.”  He was amazed and of course Abe said, “Well, now I know what you had!”

The next dealer was Brent and I’m afraid the level of maturity immediately dropped to Junior High School level.  As I explained in this post here, Abe favors one particular type of woman—those of Asian background. And Brent is always eager to tip Abe off whenever an attractive Asian woman passes by.  You may recall that, on that New Year’s Eve night, Brent had used the term “genre” instead of “ethnicity” to describe Abe’s preferred type.  Every since then, the word “genre” is all we ever use.  So whenever such a woman (or a group of women) is in sight, Brent or I will say to Abe, “Psst, your genre.”

When Brent saw Abe at the table, he said that he had been looking for him a little while ago.  He said there was a whole “gaggle” of his genre walking right past the poker room.  Abe was disappointed he missed them.

Abe had a bad seat, he was facing me and Brent, and thus had his back to the parade.  But Brent was of course good about informing him whenever representatives of his genre were coming into view.  It was a good night for genre-watching.  No, actually, it was a great night. 

Not only were there plenty of ladies in Abe’s preferred genre, there were plenty of really attractive girls of all types, all builds, all backgrounds.  The one thing they all had in common was that they were all wearing pretty much the minimal amount of clothing they could wear without getting arrested.

I guess another thing they all had in common was that they all had breasts—of varying sizes, of course.  Some of those breasts were quite generously exposed.  From where I was sitting, I could see a lot of semi-bare boobage. 

At one point, a woman with a rather spectacular figure walked by, with a particularly low-cut dress. Before I could stop myself, I blurted out “Holy shit!” loud enough for everyone at our table to hear.

Brent said, “Oh yeah….that’s your genre.”

To which Abe responded, “Boobs is a genre?”

And I replied, “Damn right it is.”

This went on pretty much for all of Brent’s down. Brent would dutifully inform either Abe or myself if our genre was passing by. I don’t remember if we actually played any poker.

But when Brent was pushed out, and while he was waiting to push into to his next table, which was right next to ours, a large group of girls walked by that caught the attention of all of us.

There were about 10 of them, all representing Abe’s genre quite well.  But there was also tons of extremely impressive cleavage on display too.  Brent had time to come back to our table and say, “Wow, that covered all the bases, didn’t it?”  We agreed.  It was the mother lode.

Troy (see here) came to the table to deal.  He promised to alert Abe whenever his genre passed by.

Somehow, despite all the distractions, I managed to get up over $80 at this point without any huge, blog-worthy hands.  Then Troy dealt me 10-9 offsuit on the button.  There were a couple of limpers.  I decided to raise, which is not something I’d normally with a hand like that.  I made it $12.  Only the guy to my left called. The flop was 10-10-x, the x being low.  There were two hearts, and as usual, I was heartless.  I bet $20.  The other guy made it $70, which was about half of his stack.

Hmm.  Did he have a bigger 10 than me?  Or did he have a pocket pair of whatever that “x” was and had thus flopped a boat?  Despite this guy’s ethnicity, which I’ll leave it to the reader to guess, he was not an aggro at all. Still, I didn’t really consider folding there.  My options were call or raise.  I took my time and couldn’t figure out any advantage in just calling, so I said, “all in.” 

I assumed he’d call, because with half of his stack already in, he was committed.  But no, he took a long time to decide.  Finally, after I was getting the idea that he would fold, he called.

There was another heart on the board by the time the river was out there, but when he saw my 10, the guy just said, “You’re good,” and mucked his cards.  So I don’t know what he had.  An overpair (that he didn’t re-raise with preflop)?  A worse 10 than me?  Whatever, it was a very nice pot to collect.

I whispered to Troy, “I don’t understand what took him so long to call, he’d already put in half his stack.”  And he said to me, “I don’t understand why it took you so long to shove.”  I explained I was deciding between calling and shoving.

Then I said to Troy, who always called me “The Rock” back in my 2/4 limit days, “Did you ever think you’d see me raise with 10-9 off?”  He nodded and then said, “And who was it who told you that you should switch from 2/4 to No Limit?”  I said, “Well a lot of people.  But you were definitely one of them.”

He said, “Aren’t you glad you switched?”  I said, “Well I am now.  But next time I get my Kings cracked, not so much.”

I left not long after that with over $200 more than I came in with. 

Of course, I spent some time “people watching.”  You can probably guess the nature of the people I was watching.  At one point I was sitting by a slot machine looking out at all the people coming and going.  I noticed a few girls who had stopped right in front of me.  One of the girls had some kind of issue with her shoes.  I see this a lot.  The girls have trouble with the extreme high heels on their shoes.  Considering how much trouble they seem to have walking in them (even when they’re sober), I can’t imagine how they’re able to dance in them, assuming they are.  You often see girls walking around barefoot, shoes in hand.  The later it gets, the higher the percentage of girls that can be seen using their shoes as gloves.

Anyway, this one girl was bent over fussing with her friend’s shoes.  At one point, the shoe came completely off, and then they were trying to get it back on.  Both of these girls had on extremely short dresses, of course.  So at one point, the girl who was trying to get her shoe back on fell backwards, landed flat on her butt, feet in the air.

Of course the girl’s ridiculously short dress rode up, and even though I didn’t want to, I couldn’t help notice something turquoise-colored was now exposed somewhat below the poor girl’s waist.  She appeared unhurt and was laughing at her fall.

But her friend, the one who had been bent over to help her with her shoes, had a different reaction.  She bent down to come to her friend’s aid.  And by that I mean she took one of her hands and moved it over her friend’s somewhat exposed crotch.  This struck me as somewhat unnecessary since the girl who fell was obviously wearing panties (or a thong, more likely)—unless she had dyed her pubic hair turquoise.  Nevertheless, the friend’s hand was now almost shoved up the dress of the girl who had fallen. 

I swear, from the angle I had, it looked like the girl was actually grabbing her friend’s hoo-ha right there in the middle of the casino.  For a few seconds, it more-or-less looked like a lesbian sex act was taking place right there on the casino floor, at least from the angle I had.  I was tempted to yell out, “Hey ladies, get a room!”  Of course, I did no such thing.

To make it funnier, the girl was alternately using her other hand to pull down her own dress, and also using it to pull down her friend’s dress.  Again, the entire time this was happening, the girl who fell appeared both unhurt and not at all bothered by the quick flash of her thong.

The two of them eventually were able to stand up, and wandered in the direction of the club.  But I noticed they had to stop again before too long to make another shoe adjustment.

This last anecdote took place days later, but I think it fits in here better than it will when I get around to reporting on that evening’s events.  Again, observing the folks waiting around to get into the club, I saw three girls together, appropriately (un)dressed.

Girl A was the one with the shoe issue.  Girl B was bent over, working on Girl A’s shoes, much like the crotch-grabber in the previous story had been doing.  Girl C was the interesting one.  She was thrusting back and forth behind Girl B, mimicking humping her friend from behind.  I’m not sure if Girl B was aware of what Girl C was doing behind her, but Girl A must have been. 

This was right out on the casino floor, in full view of anyone nearby.  It was highly amusing.

I guess I’ll point out that the dress that Girl C was wearing was more than tight enough to prove that she did not possess the proper equipment to actually perform the act she was pretending to.

Come to think of it, her dress was almost—almost—short enough to reveal that as well.  But not quite.

Girls will be girls, as the saying goes.  

((6/9/14 - Edited to add:  Ok, here's a bonus to all of you reading this post late, or reading it a second time.  It turns out that the pic I put in my very next post is of a Korean gal.  I found more pics of her.  She clearly fits in with this post's "genre" theme. Like the lady above, a woman who has appeal to both Abe and me.  So here's an animated gif of her in the same dress that she was wearing in the next post  The animation proves the lady is a natural))

 

Dodging Bullets with Pocket Kings

Not every hand where I’m dealt the dreaded pocket Kings ends in disaster.  Sometimes, no one calls my preflop raise when I have them. And then, there’s this time…..

There was a couple with Eastern European accents at the table.  I think they might have been Russian.  That was my guess anyway.  The wife was only a little bit of an aggro, but the husband was basically a maniac.  He was very aggressive, so I’ll name him after another aggressive Russian and call him “Putin.”  His raise to limp ratio was about 90% to 10%.  And he didn’t fold very many hands preflop.  He also straddled every chance he got.

Against a guy like this, I’ve learned you have to call some of the raises with questionable hands.  So in the big blind, when he raised to $10 and three other people called, I called with 10-6 soooted.  The flop was Ace-Ace-6 and no one bet, not even Putin.  Another 6 on the turn gave me a boat and no one called my bet.

I think Putin was away from the table when a very tight player raised to $12.  I had Ace-King hearts and just called.  If it had been Putin that had raised, I would have three-bet, but not this nit.  The flop was A-10-X, all clubs.  He bet $22.  I decided to call and see one more card.  I thought a pair of Aces might be good.

The turn card was another club and we both checked.  The river card was yet another club and we both checked.  He turned over pocket 10’s for a set of 10’s.  Well, on the flop he had a set of 10’s.  Now he had a flush, same as me.  We of course chopped up the pot, it was kind of funny.  And bad luck for him to be sure.

I had another hand against this same player.  I raised to $8 with pocket Aces, he made it $27.  I made it $70.  He tanked for a long time and then folded.

Then I had Ace-9 offsuit.  I raised to $8 in middle position.  Another player called and then Putin made it $32.

Hmm, he was aggressive, but I hadn’t seen him 3-bet a lot.  In fact, he was capable of folding preflop to a raise, which was one of the reasons I raised with such a marginal hand.

I had to assume that this time, Putin might actually have a hand.  I assumed he had A-Q, A-K or a pair of 10’s or better.  I saw no point in calling and risking my stack.  If I caught an Ace, I could easily be outkicked, and if I called and the other guy called, we’d be playing for stacks.  I folded.

But the other guy called.

The flop was King-King-x.  Both players checked.  The turn was an Ace and the first player shoved.  Putin called in a nano-second.  He had the bigger stack: the other guy shoved with about $150, if memory serves.  Blank on the turn and the other guy turned over Ace-Queen.  Putin only had pocket Kings, for flopped quads.

Even maniacs—even Russian aggros—get monsters occasionally.  The guy next to me, who had watched the whole hand play out, couldn’t believe it.  He kept saying, “Why do you shove there when only one King beats you?  He didn’t have to do that.  Why did he do that?”

I didn’t want to say anything in front of Putin, but I knew the answer.  They guy had seen Putin being super aggro all night and figured he might be weak there.  But he failed to realize that he wasn’t 3-betting with garbage, in fact he rarely 3-bet.  A lot of his range there had Kings in it.  Still, I could understand his thinking to some degree.

The guy who was bewildered was new to the table and hadn’t seen Putin being a maniac for a long enough time for him to understand.

Now, that hand is not what the title of this blog post refers to.  I’m getting to that now.

Not long after this hand, I found myself with pocket Kings myself.  A guy raised to $10 in front of me and Putin called.  I made it $40 and both the original raiser and Putin called.  The flop was Queen-8-2, two spades.  My Kings were both red.

I had started the hand with around $160, so the pot and my stack were about the same.  Since I got the flop I wanted (well, I would have preferred the flop Putin had gotten when he had pocket Kings), I was prepared to shove.  But the original raiser was first to act, and he put out $50.  Putin folded.  I shoved without hesitation, and the other guy snap-called (he had me covered).

A 10 hit the turn (it was not a spade).  Another non-spade hit the river (no pair).  I showed my Kings.  He showed Ace-Jack of spades.  Phew.  He flopped the nut flush draw and turned a gutshot for good measure.  Of course, I had two of the Kings he needed to complete Broadway.

Brent was dealing and he said, “Wow, Robert, you dodged a lot of bullets!  He had a great draw there.”  He did indeed.  In fact, Brent mistakenly declared that I was actually the underdog on the flop, but that wasn’t the case.  But it was close.  Pretty amazing to me that I had such a good chance of being outdrawn with my jinx hand and the guy missed.

I was now up around $160 to the good.  But I kept playing and that wasn’t a good thing.  My stack bobbled up and down for a while and then took a pretty big hit.  I had “big lick” (6-9) in the big blind and the flop was 6-7-8, two diamonds.  I didn’t write down the details, sorry.  I was too pissed afterwards.  But I called a bet on the flop, then bet out on the turn when a 5 came.  Then I called a bet on the river when a third diamond hit.  Ugh.  I was in third place.  One guy had flopped the nut straight with 10-9, and the guy who won the hand—Putin I believe—caught his flush on the river.

So I ended up leaving just a tiny bit ahead, despite the big hand with Kings.  Sometimes, it’s not the dreaded pocket Kings that get me. There are a lot of ways to lose in this damn game.

I best explain the picture I’m using for this post.  Since I named a character “Putin”, the most obvious thing would be to use a picture of the actual dictator of Russia, Putin himself.  But screw that.  I’d rather post a picture of a much better looking Russian—famed tennis player Maria Sharapova.  That’s close enough, right?  I mean, what would you rather see, a picture of Putin with his shirt off, or a picture of Maria with her shirt off?

Sadly, there are no known pictures of Maria with her shirt off. But she's not actually wearing a shirt in this pic, so it will have to do.

"We're All Male Strippers"

On this night, I thought I ran into the biggest asshole of all time, but the next night, I found out I was wrong.

Oh, he was definitely an asshole, I just found out that wasn’t quite as big of one as I had originally thought.

But as usual, it will take me awhile to get to him.

Before that, I was playing poker with Jeff Bridges, a guy who couldn’t keep his hands off me, and a couple of well-dressed drunks.

It wasn’t really Jeff Bridges, of course. The guy didn’t even look like him.  Except he did.  Sorta.  Imagine Jeff Bridges with long black hair and a baseball cap (worn the right way).  But mostly the guy sounded like Jeff Bridges.  At least, he sounded like I recalled Jeff Bridges’ voice sounding.  His voice definitely made me think of Jeff Bridgers. Alert readers (do I have any?) will recall I once almost played poker with Jeff’s brother Beau (see here).  Except he wasn’t playing poker, he was playing blackjack just a few feet away from my poker table.  But that was really Beau Bridges.

“Jeff Bridges” really wasn’t Jeff Bridges, but he was a funny guy, an amusing guy, a bit of an odd duck.  But entertainingly so. He was very friendly and said hello to every player as they came to the table.  There were no ladies at the table for most of the evening, and that was true when a guy sat down and Jeff said, “Welcome to the table. We’re all male strippers here.”

I can assure you, looking over this table, no one, male or female, would be hoping anyone there was going to take their clothes off.

The Jeff added, “Except me.  I’m a whore.”  And then, pointing to me, he said, “He’s my pimp.”

I just cracked up.  Other than saying hello when he welcomed me to the table, we had had virtually no communication up to that point.  I guess I was oldest person at the table, which was likely the reason he chose me for this, um, honor. 

Then he added, “I would totally bend over for him.”

Gee, thanks, “Jeff.”  No chance of that happening, ever.

The guy to my immediate left was getting on my nerves.  Aside from the fact that he was a rather aggressive with his preflop raising, and the fact that he was wearing a baseball cap backwards (see here), he couldn’t keep his hands to himself.

I don’t think he was into me.  He just was in a hurry.  The first time I noticed it, it was preflop, the last guy in front of me just checked and I was looking at my hand to see what I wanted to do.  I guess I took all of two seconds before I felt a slight tap on my left arm.  Huh?  Was it him?  Was I imagining it?  I let it go.

But a bit later, I had pocket 8’s preflop and was deciding if I wanted to raise, and if so, how much.  Suddenly this clown tapped my arm again and said, “It’s on you.”

Now I was pissed.  I don’t have a thing about people touching me, but if someone’s gonna touch me, I’d prefer it to be a hot girl instead of some chubby guy wearing his baseball cap backwards.  I said, in a harsh tone, “I know!”  He said, “sorry” and I hoped he had gotten the message.

But it only lasted so long.  It was an hour or so later.  By this time, he was now straddling my big blind every damn time.  He hadn’t been doing that when I started, but now he was doing it religiously.  You all know how I love straddles (see here).  Even though this wasn’t the button straddle, it was maybe worse because he was to my immediate left, and his UTG straddle was taking away the possibility of my ever seeing a flop for free.  Putz.

I should have gotten a seat change or a table change, but for a good while I was doing pretty good at the table and I am loathe to move when I’m doing well.  It’s not like I’m the first poker player to be superstitious.  So I stayed and hoped he’d either leave or stop doing it since it never paid off for him.  But he kept at it.

Anyway, this one time, the dealer was just about to start dealing when he did it again.  He tapped my arm, this time to remind me to put out my big blind, which was on me.  Why was it so important for him to remind me to post my blind, when that’s the dealer’s job?  Because he wanted to make sure I posted it so he could put out his straddle.  And for that he had to touch me?

What made this time worse was that he distracted me from a particularly pleasant view.  You see this was a Friday night, a Slut Parade night, and I had the best seat in the house to watch the fine young ladies making their way to the club (OK, so I guess that may possibly have been another reason I didn’t ask for a seat or table change).  And just as he tapped my arm, a couple of young ladies wearing the shortest, tightest and low-cut-est (did I just coin a word?) dresses I’d ever seen had come into my view.  I was just about to focus on them when I felt the jerk tap me. I looked to him to see what was going on and by the time I looked back, the girls were hidden from view by some fat guys.  For that alone, I should have killed him.

Then there were two very well dressed young guys who made it clear they had tickets to the club that evening and planned on—what’s the polite way to say this?—making new friends.  For at least the night, that is.

But these guys knew that the price of drinks at the club was steep, so they were getting pre-drunk on the free booze that they could get while playing poker.  They got drunker and drunker and although it didn’t affect their play, it did affect their language—and the volume of their voices.  They had to be repeatedly warned about using the “f-bomb” and they made some rather tacky jokes whenever the cocktail waitress came by to refill their cup holders.  She was a good sport about it.  One of the guys kept telling us that if he lost his money playing poker, his two kids would have to go without milk.  Like that would be our fault.

As I said, I was doing pretty well for awhile. Without getting any particular noteworthy hands, I had worked my $200 starting stack up to just about $300.  And then…..well, I had Ace-Queen offsuit, under-the-gun and I raised to $8.  Two players called, one of the well-dressed guys who had less than $100 and a totally unmemorable fellow who had about $200.  The flop was Q-Q-X, two spades (I didn’t have a spade).  I led out for $15 and they both called.

The turn was a red King and I bet $50.  Well-dressed guy with short stack shoved….it’s not all that much more than my bet.  Unmemorable guy with about 2/3’s my stack shoved as well!

WTF?  Did the second guy have King-Queen?  Or had he slow played pocket Kings?  Was he shoving with just the flush draw?  On the turn?

I snap shoved.  The pot was two big relative to the bet I was facing to fold now.

I knew I didn’t want to see a spade on the river, but the King of clubs that actually hit the board didn’t appeal to me much either.

Ugh.  Short stack had Queen-Jack.  I was ahead when he shoved, but now he was in the same boat I was in (so-to-speak). Queens full of Kings.  Which was no good.  Bigger stack had King-10, both spades.  He flopped the flush draw, picked up a pair of Kings on the turn (to go along with the pair of Queens on the board), and sucked out on me by catching another King on the damn river.  Runner runner.  True, he had a lot of outs.  And he friggin’ hit one of them.

That left me with about $100.  A definite cooler.  I did something I should do more often when that happens—I took a break.  I hit the Men’s room, walked around the casino, sat down by a slot machine and just tried to relax.  That’s poker, I told myself.

I didn’t think about this at the time, but now that I’m writing this up—how do you feel about his play?  Was it the right move to shove on the turn?  Should he have just called? 

When I got back to the table I added another $100.  And soon thereafter I got into a hand against Jeff Bridges.  The dealer was Michelle, the one who never pushes me a pot.  I had Ace-9 of spades in the big blind.  Jeff opened for $11 and a couple of people called behind him.  I would close the preflop action so I decided to call.

The flop was good, if you consider flopping the nuts good.  It was Queen-high, all spades.  I couldn’t decide between completely slowplaying it and betting out.  There was a good chance that Jeff wouldn’t c-bet on a monotone flop.  I compromised by betting small, $20.  Jeff made it $50 and the other two folded.  I put out $100, which was actually a bit more than he had left.  He called.

I showed my hand and said, “You need help.”  He flipped over the dreaded pocket Kings. One of them was the spade but no amount of spades could help him this hand.  He didn’t get his runner-runner boat (or quads) and I had stacked Jeff Bridges—with Michelle dealing, no less!

There’s some poker blog out there somewhere that talks about what a bad hand pocket Kings is.  I guess Jeff needs to find it.

The last hand I’ll talk about was the hand with the Asshole, which I was only peripherally involved in.  I limped in with Ace-7 of hearts.  Four or five of us saw the flop.  It had one heart, and a 7.  There was also a 5 and a face card.  Someone made a small bet and I called with my middle pair.  There were four people still in the hand when the turn card was revealed, another 5.  That didn’t help me at all, and I was done with the hand.  But no one bet so I was still technically alive to see the river.

I don’t recall the river card but it didn’t help me.  Asshole led out for $30-$35.  And everyone promptly folded.

This did not please the Asshole.  He was actually livid.  “Damn. Nobody calls! Not one of you?”  And he slammed down his hand face up, which was pocket 5’s. 

Trust me, I know how frustrating it is when you have quads and don’t get paid off for them.  Still, you would think a guy could handle it with a little more class than that.  He was actually screaming at us.  “How does not one person call me there?  Not one!”

Meanwhile, I realized that for his quads he qualified for the high hand bonus, which meant he would get to pick an prize ball that would be worth between $50 and $1,000.  I even said, “high hand,” although of course the dealer had noticed it too.  He called it out for a floor person to confirm it.

The asshole wouldn’t shut up about how bad it was that no one called. He seemed oblivious to the fact that he had earned a high hand bonus—although what I learned the next day indicated to me that he indeed did know about the promo.  Which kind of makes his behavior even more inexcusable. 

He was still ranting and raving about no one calling when Nancy, who was working floor this night, came over, saw the quads, was told it was Seat 3’s hand and asked him, very nicely, “You want some money?”

Asshole replied, almost screaming, “Yeah I want money.  Of course I want some money!  I’ve got kids.  Of course I want money.”  He practically bit Nancy’s head off.  He was so rude and nasty, I only wished there was a way to deny him his bonus money.  And I kind of felt sorry for his kids right then.

And after finding out he was going to get some bonus money for his quads, he still kept complaining that no one called him.

Asshole.

As he left the table, I whispered to the annoying guy next to me, “The only thing worse than a sore loser is a sore winner.”

There are 100 prize balls in the hopper.  I think well over 70% have either $50 or $100.  I’m pretty sure that only one has the biggest prize, $1,000.

Nancy led Asshole over to the hopper and a few minutes later, I heard him whooping and hollering and the shift manager announced, “We have a lucky $1,000 winner.”

Are you kidding me? A f***ing jerk like that and he wins the biggest prize?  The most underserving winner in the history of promos.  A one-in-a-hundred shot.

When he came back to his seat, he said to the table, “Well, you’re all forgiven for not calling me.  I won a thousand bucks!”

We’re forgiven?  Wow, thank you sir.  I can sleep well this night.

F you!  The last thing I wanted from this schmuck was his forgiveness.  How about an apology?  Especially to Nancy, who actually got screamed at for telling him she was going to just give him money.

Nothing worse than seeing reprehensible behavior rewarded. Life just isn’t fair.  Yeah, I already knew that, but I didn’t need to see the message brought home so vividly.

Anyway, it took a while for them to process the paperwork and bring Asshole his thousand bucks.  And as soon as they paid him off, he put all the chips (mostly $100 chips but a couple of hundred in $25 chips—no redbirds) in his pocket.  Nothing wrong with that.  I just wondered how he could forget to pass a few of those green chips (if not a black one) to the dealer who gave him the quads, who was still at the table dealing when he got paid off.

So, a couple of things.  The fact that he didn’t tip the dealer—or so I thought—made him the world’s biggest asshole in my mind.  In fact, that was originally going to be the title of this post, “The World’s Biggest Asshole.”  But….but….well, I’ll get back to that.

Now, I didn’t say anything about him not tipping the dealer. I am of two minds about that.  Tipping is really a personal decision, and I sure hate to be confrontational.  It’s really none of my business if the guy doesn’t tip.

Or is it?  I felt guilty not saying anything.  I felt bad for the dealer, who is a real nice guy who I’ve known for a long time from the room even if he hasn’t yet done anything to earn his own blog pseudonym. A few seconds later, Asshole got called into the 2/5 game.  I considered going over to him even after he moved into the new game and asking if he forgot something, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it.

And I felt really shitty about not saying something.

What say you?  Do you say something in that situation?  I mean, I assume he had tipped the dealer when he dragged in the pot, but since—as he was only too eager to point out—it was a small pot, he probably didn’t give him very much.

Grrr….it bothered me all night and the next day while I was working.  My one consolation was the scathing blog post I was going to write calling him the world’s biggest asshole.

I decided that because he was such a jerk, I was going to find out his real name and use it here, not giving him a pseudonym.  First name only.  But let’s say his name was Joe.  I was going to call him Joe Asshole. I knew I could probably find out his name because he signed the form, and maybe the shift manager would remember.

So the next night, I asked Nancy, who was working floor again, if she remembered the guy and his name. She didn’t remember his name.  So when the shift manager walked by, I asked him if he remembered.  Nope, he didn’t remember.  But I’m glad I asked when I did.  Mike was dealing and he actually knew who it was (he was not the dealer who gave him the quads).  He knew his name because he is apparently a 2/5 regular!  I didn’t recognize him, but that’s because he doesn’t usually play 1/2. 

So I learned his name and then when I bitched about him not tipping for his high hand, Mike told me that I was wrong. He assured me that the asshole did indeed tip for his high hand!  Apparently he had tipped the dealer from his stack before getting the thousand bucks.  Shit, I was feeling guilty and being mad at this guy for no reason.

In fact, later, the dealer who had given him the quads came to my table and I asked him directly if the guy had taken care of him.  He confirmed that he had.  He said he gave him “a few bucks.”  I assumed that it wasn’t the most generous tip he’d ever gotten, but he had gotten something and that made me feel better.  No doubt if I had said something to him about not tipping, I would have had my head bitten off, and maybe even deservedly so.

Ok, so the guy is just a garden-variety asshole (for the way he reacted when no one paid off his quads) and not the world’s biggest.

So I want to publically apologize to Asshole for thinking he was a much bigger Asshole than he turned out to be.  Sorry, Asshole.

Anyway, it was a strange night of poker.  I never completely recovered from the cooler hand, even after stacking Jeff Bridges.