I’ll admit it; I was feeling pretty good after my five-day Las Vegas poker trip, which I arrived back in Madtown from late on Friday night. I had taken $1,200 with me, with the intention of taking out more if I was taking a beating at the poker tables. I told myself that, no matter what, I would stop for the day as soon as my losses got to $300. In other words, I hadn't gone to Las Vegas under the delusion that I was going to play poker and not lose. There are a lot more poker players out there nowadays, which is both good and bad. There’s a lot of dead money at the tables now, players who watch a little poker on TV and think that they’ve got hold 'em figured out. Generally, these players lose and lose and lose. Then they break for dinner and come back later, when the losing and losing and losing resumes. I love these people because, even if I don’t get a taste of their money, they leave it behind and it’s out there to get. Amen. The other type of player is the one who saw poker on TV, liked it, wants to play it, but then makes a study of it, going out and buying a few books and practicing on his computer, either with a stand-alone program, or online. These players end up playing thousands and thousands of hands and acquire experience in months that it used to take years to acquire. I, myself, have played about 22,000 poker hands in the last ten months, about seventy a day.

 
The point: I had prepared myself to lose because I was there mostly to work on my game against players, good and bad, from all over, and I figured that losing my roll might be part of that education. Well, I ended up doing pretty well, winning a little over $226, $102 of it in the last four hours.

I drove out of Las Vegas on a high. Then came Saturday. Because I had been gone for the regular Friday-night game, it had been moved to Saturday. As soon as each player arrived, I gave him an official World Series of Poker Program and an official World Series of Poker Souvenir Chip. It turned out that that was only the beginning of my giving. By the time the game ended, I had dropped $145.50 in about four hours. I have never gotten my ass kicked that badly. The most I had ever lost before was around ninety dollars, and that was back in the fall of 2004, and that had been at a game that lasted for over six hours. This Saturday night beatdown only confirmed what I already knew, that the guys I play with are all pretty bad-ass. I can go to Las Vegas and make money from dozens of different players, but my homies? My homies are hardcore, no doubt.

Bert was the most bad-ass of all, walking away with about $126 in profit. My big bro also took care of his business, pulling in about $40 more than he started with. Me? Yeah, I paid out like an ATM, but I was having too much fun to care. I didn’t care because I lost most of my money on some horrifically bad beats, such as being out-boated on the river, or losing to straights or flushes higher by one card, a card that came down at the end. I took five of those soul-destroying beats in the first ninety minutes, and, by themselves, they cost me a little over $100. It wasn’t like the other guys weren’t making smart plays; if you have plenty of outs or a nice made hand, of course you’re going to stay in for the river, and of course you're going to bet or raise when it comes to you. That’s just good business and what smart and aggressive players do: they make you pay when they can. There’s no way to get upset, and my paying out opened up the possibility for some jokes, such as: 1) Okay, let’s make this one $40 antes. That way, I could try to get even with just one hand. 2) After my big bro beat me yet again, I’m going to call my mom on you. 3) Okay, I’ll lose three-hundred and that’s it, which I later amended to, Okay, I’ll lose four-hundred and that’s it. 4) I blame the hat. I had bought this World Series of Poker bucket hat and I was wearing it for intimidation purposes; I guess that it didn’t work. 5) Okay, that’s it, you guys are mean and I want my souvenir chips back.

The truth is, though, that I probably played too many hands and for too long, hands where I had something pretty but the bets and raises and calls all added up to other players probably holding something even prettier. It’s hard, though, to fold a hand that can only be cracked by a few other hands, so I would play them a round too long. These should-have-folded-earliers probably cost me around $75 by themselves.

Poker Problem: What is it with that weird feeling in my left ear?