Money Hater

I just sent the following email to an online poker site that has been jerking me around for over a month with regards to cashing out my money. I hope there isn’t anyone there at all like me, because if there is I’ll never get my money.

Dear Sir,

I appreciate your email and your assurance that “there will be no further delays in your cashouts, no matter which method you choose.” Unfortunately there are indeed more delays, for when I just requested a check I got a long note, the first few lines of which say…
The Request a Check option is not currently enabled for your account. Players wishing to enable the Request a Check option must first provide proof of their identity and verification of their address.

I am now assuming that you people are simply fucking with me, as the incompetence you have exhibited throughout this entire ordeal is so prodigious that it simply must be synthetic. No group of nonretarded humans could ever fuck anything up on such a massive scale without doing so intentionally. I still want and need my money so please tell me, when does the joke end? What do I have to do to help move things along? Do I need to slip on a banana peel and spill my drink on myself as a group of onlookers giggle at my misfortune? Does someone need to throw a pie in my face, or hit me with a cold fish while I sit on the toilet? What is it? Just tell me and I’ll do it, as it is clear that this is a game where I must jump through many absurd hoops before you will see fit to release what is rightly mine. I anxiously await my next task.

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When people get stuck in games, they do absolutely amazing things. It is almost as if they are transformed into an entirely different person and player. Some get really grouchy. Some get bitchy. Some mumble to themselves incessantly. Some berate stupid dealer who kill them and ask for set up. All play worse. Some play very bad. Some play super bad. Some defy description. For all of these reasons, I love it when little gamboooolers get buried in a game. They already could never beat me, but now they are on tilt and thus the gap between “them ever beating me” and “never” has defied all that is currently understood about time and space and somehow gotten even wider.

Today a little gamboooler got himself stuck in my 30/60 game. He was winning when he first sat down, but has had some ups and downs since then. He is extremely bad. He is not the worst ever, but he is always in the discussion whenever it is time to compile Top 10 Biggest Idiot lists.

This little gamboooler found himself up about $300 after 3 hours of play and some +/-$1,000 swings, and so it was time to get out of there with a win. (It is vital to win. If you only leave when you are up, you never lose. Duh.) He grabs some racks and begins the racking up process, but takes his big blind. Time for one more round. 9 more hands and he will be but a sweet memory.

I lament his leaving but don’t really pay much attention to the next 9 hands. When it comes time for his BB again, he unracks his chips and takes it. This pleases me. As he unracks I see that he is not up any more. In fact, he is now stuck $400, and there is no leaving when we are stuck. No sir. It is time to get our money back, and this little gamboooler gave it his best shot. He made some straddle. He ran stupid semi-bluffs when drawing dead on the turn, but then would spike the river and pay off the 3bet. He got tortured. He battled hard though and should be an inspiration to all those who espouse the “must win” creed, for although he left stone busted, he did not leave stuck.

I busted in the 3rd level of the 2nd day. I had a shot, but couldn’t fade the 15bb drop, which is a vital skill if one is going to win a limit tournament.

The day started rather stressfully, because we had a hard time getting a cab and then the traffic was awful. What should have been a 5 minute trip took 20. My buddy and I joked that even though it was only actually an 11% chance that I’d be in the BB, we both knew that it was more like 89% since it was me. Sure enough, I get there a minute too late and miss the chance to defend my big blind, and in the process concede 3% of my chips. Wonderful.

3 hands later I get A4o in the hijack and open. The button coldcalls, and the BB calls.

Flop comes AT3 with 2 spades.

I bet, button calls, blind folds.

Turn is a red ace.

I bet, button calls.

River is a red 8.

I check, button bets, I call.

My suspicions were immediately confirmed about what this guy had when he hesitated as I called. He tapped the table and said “King high.” I decided not to torture him and just opened up my hand. My guess is that he was shocked to see that I didn’t bet trip aces on the river. Whether or not he was on the level to understand that I knew he had nothing and knew he’d bet it, I’m not sure. This hand helped me forget about arriving late and helped me get focused.

The most interesting hand I played came a bit later when a new player was moved to my table. He was obviously an internet player, and had a cockiness about him. It wasn’t over-the-top obnoxiousness, but there was some smugness in there. He seemed to understand limit hold’em rather well from what I had seen of him up to this point, and was not afraid to play aggressively.

This guy opens in MP and I elect to just call in the BB with AQo. I toyed with 3betting, but decided I didn’t want to play a big pot out of position.

The flop came A84. I do not think there was a flush draw on the board, but I’m not 100% sure.

I check, and he checked behind.

Well, now I know that he doesn’t have an ace. The turn is a K. I am not thrilled with this card because (a) he could have kings I guess even though I suspect he’d bet the flop with that hand and (b) if he is indeed being stupid with an ace, now I chop if the board pairs the 8 or the 4. I want to get value from bluffs and pairs, both which should be betting the turn if I check again. So, I do and he bets. I call.

The river comes a 9 putting a flush draw on the board.

I check hoping he will bluff or value bet a pair, as I have shown no strength at all here. He does bet, I check/raise, he flies out of his chair with a “What the hell?” look on his face and after 2 seconds of studying the board says “3bets. I 3bet.” Then I know that I have been unlucky and fold. He is totally baffled and turns over two kings. I smile and say, “Nice hand.”

I’m not sure if betting the turn and calling down a raise is any better than what I did, and I surely didn’t want to bet/fold given that he may interpret a turn bet by me as a hopeless bluff at a pot that he seemed disinterested in. I could have just check/called the river after I check/called the turn, but I felt (and given his reaction on the river I think I was correct) that if I did check/raise the river I’d get a lot of “What the hell? Your line makes no sense” calls out of one pair hands. Plus, I like people being afraid to bet rivers against me. Whether any of this matters in a tournament setting, I’m not sure.

I somehow made day 2 of event 20 at this years WSOP. I have an average stack and pretty much no idea how to use it given that I know nothing about tournament strategy and for the most part find them to be exercises in masochism.

I also managed to get into it with a guy at my table not more than 5 minutes into the tournament. This gentleman was from Texas and was clearly very proud of this fact. He had on a cowboy hat, cowboy boots and a large belt buckle that he obviously won in some rodeo or other contest where man pits himself against an animal that clearly just wants to be left alone. The buckle had some inscription on it, but I failed to identify what it said as I did not want to have this guy think I was staring at his crotch. He didn’t strike me as the kind of guy who is all that open to alternative lifestyles.

This guy seemed intent on getting into it with anyone and everyone, and I was fortunate enough to be the first victim.

We played a pot 3 hands into the event where he 3bet preflop and was the bettor in position on every street, and I called him down on a board of A94AT. When I called his river bet, he said “You’re good”, without showing his cards. I sat there silent and motionless, waiting for him to reveal his hand. He then says, “Pair of 7s”, still without turning his cards over. “I can beat it”, I say but do not show my hand. He then realizes that he is going to either have to show his hand or muck it. He finally mucks it and the dealer pushes the pot to me. I toss my cards in without revealing what I had.

“You’re not going to show?”, Tex asks me.

“Nope.”

“Why not?”

“All you had to do was turn your hand over when I called you and you’d have gotten to see what I had. You chose not to do that.”

“I told you what I had. As a man you should show.”

To this I laugh in his face.

“This ain’t my first rodeo, you know”, he says in a moderately irritated tone while shifting in his chair in a very macho fashion.

“You sure about that?”, I snap, no longer having it. ” I think it might be given the fact that you think that I’m going to show you what I have in that spot and just take your word for it about what you had.”

It becomes clear that not only is he not used to people talking to him this way, but it also becomes obvious that this kind of logic is foreign to him and does not please him. For the next 10 minutes he would randomly ask me what I had in that hand, even though I had my headphones on and clearly had no interest in speaking to him, much less in telling him what i had. He then tried a different angle.

“Where you from?”

“Minnesota.”

“What is the capital there? Is it Austin?” He says this with a smirk, as if he thinks he has somehow really zinged me with that one. I have no idea where he was going with this, but I think he was attempting to make a “my-state-can-beat-up-your-state” kind of statement that he assumed would incense me. Given that I am not moronic enough to engage in state-pride arguments, I simply responded that “St. Paul is the capital” in a tone that said, “I am only answering you because my Mom always told me to be nice to people, even huge assholes like you. Not to mention that you given your performance thus far, it is not at all unreasonable to suspect that you may genuinely think that Austin is the capital of Minnesota.”

He eventually lost interest with me and decided to pick a fight with a black woman in her mid 20s who I once heard him refer to as “fly girl.” I am fairly confident that by the first break, “fly girl” had had just about enough of Tex. If he made one more thinly veiled racist/sexist comment, she was beating his ass. I just knew it. Unfortunately Tex did not come back after the break even though he had 30% of his chips left, and instead was seen playing 25/50 PLO where I am sure he made many more friends.

I flew out of the Twin Cities this morning at 7am. It was not as bad as it could have been, as I managed to sleep for about 4 hours. We landed at 8:30am Vegas time, and were lucky enough to get a cab immediately.

The cab driver was a nice guy with a thin accent and a thick scent. I noticed immediately that the cab smelled like a locker room.

“You guys play poker?”, he asks presumptively. Given the facts that the World Series of Poker had just begun and we do indeed fit the profile of two poker pros, his blatant profiling was dead accurate.

“Yeah, sometimes we do. Do you play?”, my buddy says.

My buddy cannot help himself. When someone who most likely knows very little about poker wants to talk poker, he feels the need to see how many utterly ridiculous things he can get the guy to say.

“Oh yes. I play at Wynn. It is best there. You play 30 minutes, they give you comp for buffet. 40 dollars. Other places always want to know what game you play and how long you playing. Not Wynn.” The cab driver is now thrilled that he gets to talk poker.

“What game do you play at the Wynn?”, my buddy asks with delight.

“4/8″

“Are you good?”

“Well, last time I won. I have 2 spades and 2 spades are on the flop, so I go for flush, but it come straight.”

“Oh, you had flushdraw (he says with an obnoxious accent), but make straight instead?”

“Yes. The other player, he was not happy. I say, ‘I go for flush but it come straight.’”

“Well, that is how it goes sometimes. How big do they play at the Wynn?”

“They play for 10 million dollars.”

“Really?!”

“Yes, but that is no limit.”

“I like no limit, because I like to go all in,” my buddy says.  It is like watching a child toy with a defenseless animal.  He is not really hurting it, but he is in total control and could kill the thing if he so chose.

“What big limit games do they play at the Wynn?”, my buddy continues.

“Sometimes as much as 200/600.”

“They have 200/600? How often does the game go?”

“Not very often.”

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There is nothing quite like spring in Minnesota. I don’t know if it is because winter is always so harsh and unrelenting or what, but for some reason the first few days when it is really nice outside are just fabulous. The air feels clean and fresh, and I think everyone kind of has a “hey, we made it” attitude. It is a comradery that comes with overcoming great adversity. I imagine that people who survive a harrowing shipwreck feel the same way.

I just went for a walk and stopped at a store up the street to buy some ice. I probably should have bought some ice cube trays instead, but I never was a fan of that “teach a man to fish” saying, so a bag of ice it is.

When I walked up to the counter there was a guy there writing a check. Normally this would drive me nuts, as in this day and age a check should be written in a store exactly never, but my attention was focused on the giant paradox going on behind the counter.

On the left side was a vast selection of cigarettes. There must have been over 20 choices for the tobacco enthusiast. On the right side was nearly as wide of a selection of quit-smoking items. Gums and whatever else one can buy over the counter to rid themselves of the addiction that sits only 2 feet to the left. It was like a giant middle finger pointed at anyone who smokes or is trying to quit. I wonder how many people walk in looking to buy some nicotine gum and think, “Ah, screw it. Give me a carton of Marlboro 100s.” Or how many people who used to come in for the gum fall off the wagon and now have to go somewhere else to buy their smokes because they don’t want the cashier to give them the, “Oh, I see you’ve failed” look as they ring up two cartons of Camel lights.

It is as if the store just decided to say, “Look, we know that if you smoke, at some point you’re gonna want to quit, and we know that if you ‘quit’ you most likely will fail a few times. Well, we’ve got what you need right here regardless of where you are in this often futile cycle of quit/start/quit/start/quit, and we know you’re coming for one or the other. Basically, we’ve got your ass. So, what’ll it be today?”

I just got back from 10 days at Commerce. Two days before we left, there was snow in the forecast. Today it was 70. Not that I enjoyed it, as we landed at 6:30am. I got home and crawled immediately into bed. I am afraid that I am back on vampire-time, which is no good if it’s gonna be 73 and sunny every day. Adjustments must be made.

It sure feels good to be out of that hotel. One more meal in that place and I think my body would simply stop taking it. “Nope. That’s it. Anything you try to send down, we’re either sending back up or never sending out. It’s time to stop with the bad food. Got it?” I do get it, and thus we got the hell out of there.

It was absurd for me the first few days. I kept flopping sets. I must have flopped 1.25sets/hour for 15 straight hours. It almost got embarrassing as I rolled over yet another set that filled up on the flush-bringing turn card that also made some poor bastard a straight. That said, I wouldn’t have it any other way.

The day before I came back, there was an incident I didn’t think too much of at the time but now find to be just hilarious. There was one dealer who had just been asked to make some scramboooool of the deck by a white guy who should know better than to ask for scrambooool. He was not being sarcastic. He genuinely enjoys his scrambooools. This is just too much for me so I, also being a white guy who should know better than to ask for scramboooool, saw fit to help the dealer scrambooool by reaching into the deck and scramboooling the cards along with him as I shouted, “Yes. You are must make a very good scramboooool, dealah!!!” Another white guy (who also should, and does, know better than to ask for scramboooool) then says with a wrinkled brow and a slightly pained expression, “Dealah, make sure to cut the deck RIGHT in half!!!” That opens the floodgates and now everyone is into it and we are all enjoying the love of the scrambooool and the absurd dealer requests which are now being tossed about freely. It’s like an open forum for superstitious idiots, but in this case half of the idiots are being sarcastic. The dealer nods that he will try to honor this bevy of requests, and then turns to me and asks which hand he would like me to cut with. “Left”, I say without hesitation, almost as if I was expecting the question.

I have been in LA for the past few days playing some live poker. It is always an interesting experience. There are always little gambooolers throwing cards and asking for set-ups and berating dealers and going on tilt in some form. Anything is fair game for criticism, except of course their awful awful play. When they lose, it is because dealer kill them. Or set up kill them. Or bad seat change kill them. Or machine malfunction and then kill them. It is always something, and they are not afraid to make their feelings known.

On this trip, I saw something that may have actually legitimately qualified for “this dealer kill me”. Two little gambooolers were involved in a pot. Both gamboooolers tend to like to blame dealer, but the guy on the button seems to know that blaming dealer is foolish, and often smiles and laughs when he does it. It is in his blood to berate dealer, but it is pretty clear he knows how dumb it is.

This guy raises on the button with KK, and the other little gamboooler calls in the BB with 55. The flop comes 744 with two diamonds. The little gambooooler in the BB bets out and the button raises. Before the BB can act on this raise, the dealer burns and brings out the turn card. This card is a King. The problem is that the flop action is not completed, so that card needs to get shuffled back into the deck once the flop action is completed. So, the BB calls the raise and the King gets shuffled back into the deck. This understandably irritates the button. The dealer now burns and turns and brings what would have been the ‘natural’ river card. This card is a 5. BB is now thrilled because he made a full house. The river card is some brick. So, had the dealer not screwed up, a King would have come on the turn and a 5 would have come on the river, giving both players full houses, and these guys would have gone off for a ton of bets.

The guy with KK is not pleased, and is constantly mumbling how the dealer cost him $3,000. What some of the hot-blooded little gamboooolers would have done had they been in his shoes one can only guees, but I cannot imagine a situation where flying chips/cards/obscenities would not be prominently involved, and perhaps even law enforcement.

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Today I was fortunate enough to get to play live poker with some of the worst players in the northern hemisphere. I am always thrilled when I show up and the game is very good. That said, it is not uncommon for me to get absolutely tortured in such a game. It is like fighting a bunch of blind midgets in a confined area. If you can neutralize a few of them, you’ll be fine, but if they get a hold of you, it’s gonna be a long day. Today was such a day.

The lead midget kept telling me that I “always have an ace in my hand.” He must have said it 10 times throughout the day. I must admit that he is correct. If I raise, there is a very good chance that I have an ace in my hand. Even in light of this fact, he still managed to play the following hand against me today…..

One person folds and I raise UTG+1. This should be a good indication to anyone with even a modicum of poker sense that I might have something, and that something may indeed be an ace. For a moment I fear that I will not get any action, because “I always have an ace”. If they always think I have a big hand, they’re just going to fold and I won’t make any money. Thankfully this is not the case, as 2 players coldcall, king midget 3bets, the blinds call 2 more bets, I call and now the first coldcaller 4bets, we all call. This pot is now huge and it was started by the guy who “always has an ace”. These guys must have really good hands. Or maybe they have a special “wild” card or something in their hands that is actually better than an ace. Hmmm. I better be careful here.

There are many of us to the flop which comes K74r. Checks to the coldcall/4bettor who bets whatever he is misplaying, midget-in-the-middle calls, king midget calls, I call. The turn is a queen, putting 2 hearts on the board. Same action as on the flop. The river is the 4 of hearts. I check, the coldcall/4bettor bets, midget-in-the-middle who has been doing nothing but calling up to this point calls yet again, king midget now raises, I fold, the coldcall/4bettor calls in disgust and now midget-in-the-middle who up to this point has done nothing but call, folds closing the action getting over 20:1. The 4bettor slams down two black aces in disgust as king midget rolls over the 92 of hearts. Apparently he wasn’t worried about me having an ace.