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08.24.06
Every Bad Idea Deserves Fudge (Vol. III)
posted by Absinthe | 3:48 PM
(Latecomers may want to read Vol. I and Vol. II first.)
So we’re at Binion’s, it’s two in the morning, and for some reason we’re signed up for the night-owl tournament, the result of going with option D when options A, B and C (which were, granted, slightly mad in their own right) were rejected on account of… come to think, there wasn’t any particular reason they were rejected. Like most ballgames, all hands of poker, and some homicides, they just happened that way.
The structure of the Binion’s tournament does allow for some small amount of play, provided you take the rebuy (an extra 1500 in chips for what, once you’re in for the penny, is a paltry sum) and don’t get tricky and hang yourself early on. Spaceman and I draw the same table, but only for the first few minutes – before long a new table consisting of alternates is opened up.
Probably a third of the field ends up being “alternates”, a term usually used to describe people who want to register but can’t be seated at the start of play because, well, there’s no room. Here, though, it means people who have wandered through Binion’s at some point between two and three ante meridien, happened upon a tournament in progress and decided they’d like to play it as well. They do generally seem cheerier than the people who’ve bothered to show up on time, and there’s probably a life-secret or two that could be extracted from this realization.
But not by us. We are there to play poker. We have cabbed all the way downtown in the middle of the night to play poker in the (debatable) nativity of tournament poker. This is a game that should be an easy nut to crack for us hard-bitten types. Otis is a crafty veteran of the felt. I am a wily tournament donkey. Spaceman has some hefty recent cashes and a style that should serve to bludgeon the locals into submission. Wheaton is… Wheaton is on Team PokerStars.
As it turns out this will do all of us no good whatsoever.
I’ll say in advance that it’s reasonably certain that poker at Binion’s is not rigged. But there’s a creeping paranoia about the place. We are here by choice, it’s true, but the tiniest moment of clarity (which unfortunately will not come until the dawn) reveals that we have made this choice precisely because we are in the grip of a certain kind of madness. We are not well. Subconscious awareness of this fact begins to beg all sorts of uncomfortable questions regarding the mental well-being of our neighbors, driving one inevitably toward an existential crisis: why are we here? Since no reasonable answer is forthcoming: paranoia.
This is a feeling of such intensity that, within the first hour of the tournament, I will fold (eventual) quads and be glad of it. Against a lunatic’s UTG limp (he’s a donkfish who will, of course, outlast all of us and actually make money) and an EP raise, I look down in the SB and find 33. I don’t have quite the right odds to call for set value and the raiser is one of the more reasonable players at the table; I could well be crushed. I decide to look for a better spot.
UTG calls the raise. Flop comes 233, two clubs. UTG moves all-in, a massive overbet of the pot (which is his wont; he appears to have no understanding of odds whatsoever, though he does know how to count his outs; we all know this because he announces how many he has every time he calls a bet, making it pretty easy to put him on a hand). When the raiser folds UTG flips over the ace and five of clubs, for the gutshot straight-flush draw, my gloom at seeing that flop is replaced by an eerie lightness; there is no doubt in my mind that the four of clubs would have come out on either the turn or the river. This is magical thinking at its worst.
Shortly thereafter I call off all my money when I flop top pair no kicker in the big blind, knowing it’s good. With players yet to act. I know it’s good and at the same time I am resigned to the knowledge that this is the last hand of poker I’m going to be playing tonight. Sure enough, the SB who’d overbet the pot had nothing but the ass-end of the open-ender. He caught it on the turn and I was drawing dead.
First out, by the way. I don’t know who’s winning the last-longer but I know it’s not me. A while later it’s neither me nor Wheaton. Nor Spaceman. All we can do is stand around and cheer for our hero, Otis, who somehow makes the final table while the rest of us stand around praying for him to double up or bust. More than once I have to restrain myself from jumping over the rope around the elevated “TV table” setup and shoving his chips into the middle myself, not because we want to go home but because it’s obvious that he doesn’t have enough chips left to fold anything at all. But he will not be moved; he will play his game his way despite our implorations.
At just shy of 6 in the morning, he will go out in 7th. Six places pay. He’s the bubble boy. We are leaving empty-handed, all of us down the tournament buyin, plus the bonus, plus the rebuy, except for Otis who’s made sixty bucks back from the last-longer (minus the price of a couple Snickers bars). We’re slinking out of downtown as losers, with nothing to show for our efforts but bleary eyes, pounding heads and the realization that there’s no hope that tomorrow will be a better day. It is tomorrow, and even though the drive from Binion’s to the Rio brings us to shinier quarters, nothing’s going to change the fact that tomorrow looks ugly.
Sometimes the price you pay for a thing is the thing itself. The mercifully slight hangover that’s causing a minor throbbing at the backs of my eyes as I draw the curtains as tightly as I can, it’s of a piece with the drinks I had with new friends at the Tilted Kilt, the illicit thrill of what amounted to a backstage pass to a tiny piece of poker history, a cab ride I’ll never forget (would that I could).
I went downtown to play poker and left with an emptier wallet, a bruised ego and the nagging feeling that I’d lost something along the way. The ego healed before we got back to the Rio, and the paranoia left me by the time housekeeping called, at 3pm, wondering if I was ever going to get out of the way and let them do their job. The money, meanwhile, remains lost. I could try to reclaim it, to grind it out of the hands of all those lost souls trapped at Binion’s after midnight. But I’d have to go back to do it. And, well, you’ve just read this story. You know how it ends.
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Topics: Poker | 2 Comments »
August 25, 2006 at 12:13 PM
A post well worth deactivativing my computer’s minimal protection from the myriad identity theives and porn peddlers lurking in the underbrush beside the e-way.
Gabriel Garcia Marquez would have loved this post. It’s one Buendia short of a completion, but you won’t find me complaining. Magical Realism indeed.
August 26, 2006 at 10:50 AM
Iak, you truly exist upon the precipice of opulent verbosity. R, I can’t possibly imagine the swing of emotion from folding your 33, seeing that you would’ve flopped quads (extreme depression and loathing) to seeing what UTG ass-tard picked up (extreme relief and happiness). Good and lucky laydown. Also, how early into things was your time with Jesus? I’m watching the episodes…do you know when it’s going to air? If you find out, let us know.