16 December 2005

For starters, I feel like hell. It’s the last day of work before a nifty little three-week vacation, and I feel like fucking hell. The poker game’s scheduled to be held at Bert’s, but then I get the call from Bert, inventor of the Bert Classic and rule consequentialism, informing me that the game's been moved from his place to my big bro's.

I had felt so out of it that I had thought about not going to the game at Bert’s. The entire year, I'd only missed one game, and that had been because I had been in Vancouver, being an art-nerd with one of my buddies, but I didn’t think that I’d be physically able to play, much less drive myself the thirty miles that I’d have to go to get to Bert’s crib.

But now I don’t have a choice about going. First, while my big bro is, technically speaking, the host, I do all of the hosting, which means setting up the table and chips and getting drinks on ice and snacks on the official snack table and making sure that everybody is generally comfortable. Secondly, my big bro never arrives to anything on time, ever, which means that there’ll be a lot of pissed off dudes waiting outside his front door for him to show up. I should say here that I have a real need for punctuality and it would burn me up to know that people might be left hanging by any member of the De Luna family.

All of the above means that I’m trapped into having to go and that I'll have to be the one who has to set up. Thankfully, though, I have about two hours for a nap before I actually have to get on the road. So I’m lying there, everything aching whenever I move even a little, which means that I don’t sleep at all. I keep looking at the clock, doing the math that you do when you don’t really want to get up, trying to figure out what’s the latest that you can actually get out of bed.

Have you ever been so sick that every little thing that you manage to pull off feels like a great victory? Getting out of bed is a victory. So’s getting to the car. Driving to my big bro’s is like the first time that I climbed Half Dome. I get everything set up and then I put my head on the table, waiting for the players to arrive and for the world to both stop spinning and stop punching me in the brain.

Finally, little by little, the poker crew filters in and the cards go in the air.

Who Doesn’t Love a Sports Analogy?: Have you ever seen those triathletes whose bodies are breaking down as they're approaching the finish line? At the end, they're just going on guts and instinct. They know that they have to get to the finish line and that the pain will end when they get there. Last night, that was me. I knew that I wasn’t going to play my best, that I was probably going to pay out all night, but I was going to play to the end, even if I had to drag myself across the finish line.

My Boys Are Ruthless: Here’s the thing: I was crazy-sick, and it was easy to tell that I was crazy-sick. Usually, I spend the entire game bitching about my crummy cards and making stupid jokes, but I was the quietest that I've ever been at our game. Also, usually, my head's not resting on the table in-between hands, but I spent more time looking at the felt than at my fellow players. Also, one doesn’t usually find me praying for death’s sweet and loving and merciful embrace.

So it’s quite clear that I’m pretty sick and generally out of it, but did anybody say, “You know what, homie, you look like shit and your game’s gone sideways. Maybe you shouldn’t play. Go lie down?” Nope. They had spotted weakness and they thought that it’d just be better to take my money, probably in the hopes of taking my mind off of how badly I was feeling, and you’ve got to respect that. Not even my big bro said to call it a night. That’s just cold, but business is business.

The Losses are Staggering: The dream is gone. I had gotten so close only a few weeks ago to making that grand that I had been chasing all year, having been only $7.75 away, but then I took my second-worst beatdown of the year and bled out $113.50. Then, over three weeks, I fought back and got within $31.25 with three games to play. $10.50 a night for the rest of the year gets me up into the four figures. I don’t even have to have great nights to make that kind of money. Play only premium starter hands, win a couple of pots each night, and then protect my stacks. It was right there.

Instead, the nightmare scenario plays out and I have the worst poker night of my life. I drop $181.50, an astounding 18.73% of what I’d earned for the year.

Now I’ve got basically two games in which to win $212.75, which means that I’ll have to average about $106.50, and I’ve only had five triple-digit nights the entire year, and only one since the beginning of March. One three digit night in nine months and now I need two in two weeks. The dream is dead.

I should have stayed in bed.