Last night, Bert kept his pimp hand strong, and he put us in check the entire game. Every time one of us got uppity, he put the smack down with a quickness.  

The night started off horribly for me. I bought in for $100 so that I wouldn’t go short-stacked if I took a few beats. Strategically and psychologically, there’s nothing worse than playing short-stacked. Most nights, even if I’m not getting paid off, a good part of the hundred will last until the end of the session. Well, after an hour last night, I was already down forty, and it kept going to hell from there. By around eleven, after two hours of play, I was down to fourteen dollars and I was getting ready to buy in again because I’m not going to bitch out and I won’t stop until the game stops, no matter what. Word.

What Is This, Some Kind of Joke?: We’re playing Omaha, about three hours in, and I pick up my hole cards to find A-A-K-K, one of the big slicks being suited. If the other big slick had been suited as well, this would be the best possible starter hand because then I’d have a shot at two different nut flushes to my aces. As it is, I’ll be drawing to one nut flush, one nut royal flush, the nut straight, two nut fours-of-a-kind, two nut boats, and two nut sets. In other words, the world is mine, and I should expect the checks to rain down. Before the flop, I bet the max, and the other four players stay in. The flop comes down, and it completely misses me: no ace, no king, no high straight draw. The only possible hands that open up are medium-to-low straights, and a flush away from my suited big slick. Still, the board doesn’t pair, and there are no made straights or flushes. There’s a possibility that my pairs are leading, so I bet when it comes to me. We drop a player and fourth comes down, again missing me by a mile, but opening up both a made flush and a made low straight. The best I can hope for now is that an ace or a king comes on fifth, and I make a set. The problem is, though, that it’s already likely that a set would get cracked with what’s already on the board, so I’d be looking for four outs out of forty-four cards, a one in eleven shot, just to make a hand that I’ll have to pay for with fourth- and a fifth-street bets and/or calls just to get my ass kicked at the showdown. When Jesse bets in front of me, I don’t have to think long and hard to know that I have to fold. I don’t even get to fifth street with the best Omaha starter hand that I’ve ever had or that I have ever seen in all of my years playing poker. At least I didn’t pay extra into the pot, but that’s barely any consolation.

Bad Beat of the Night: But my A-A-K-K beat wasn’t even a bad beat. In fact, it was a good lay down, and I got much props for cutting out early like I did. The bad beat happened early in the game, and it hurt like a mofo. I’m holding 5-7 unsuited, which isn’t much of a hand, but nobody bet it up on the draw, so I stay in for the free flop. The flop comes 5-7-2 rainbow. I have top two pair, and two shots at hitting one of the four cards that gives me a boat. It comes to me, I bet the $2, Bert calls, everybody folds, and he and I are heads up. The next card, a jack, doesn’t help me, but it doesn’t help toward a straight or a flush. Bert might have paired a jack, but I still think I’m in the lead. I check it, though, to get Bert to pay into the pot ahead of me, which he does. I come over the top with a re-raise, and Bert calls for a total of four dollars each on the round . Fifth street comes down, and, life is sweet, it’s a 5, giving me a 5-5-5-7-7 boat, nearly an unbeatable hand. This time, I come out betting the max, four dollars, Bert re-raises the max, which is starting to make me nervous, but I re-raise the max as well. I think my last play gets Bert thinking because he only calls my last bet. When I turn over my cards for the boat, I’m sure that I’ve just won this monster pot, a total of$36, until Bert turns over 7-7, making his boat 7-7-7-5-5. He had led me the whole way. When I had two pair, he already had three of a kind. If no help had come for either of us on fifth, I’m sure the showdown wouldn’t have been as expensive as it turned out to be. I still would have lost, but I wouldn’t have taken such a big hit early in the game. At the end of that hand, though, I actually saved $4 because Bert could have raised instead of just flat called. The only reason I can think of for why he didn’t was that the jack coming down on fourth may have led him to think that I was holding pocket jacks and had made the J-J-J-5-5 boat. If he had bet the last $4, I would have had to call.

After Bert beat me like a disrespectful ho, he had what every poker player wants: an early lead so that he can use his stacks as weapons and as leverage, putting everybody else on the defensive and then revealing vulnerabilities in our strategies and in our characters, vulnerabilities to be exploited mercilessly. I, on the other hand, became gun-shy and, like a nitwit, stopped betting when I should have bet, limiting the size of my pay offs and letting the other players catch free cards. I did get my head together eventually and started to make a minor comeback in the last two hours, managing to get back most of the eighty-four that I had burned through earlier in the game. By the time we called it quits, at 1:45 a.m. (I had to work the next day), I was only down $21.50.

Poker Problem: How come I never get to bestride the narrow world?