Poker Diary (Part Two)

At the end of "Garden State" which a group of us saw on Monday, Zach Braff's character asks, dramatically, "What do we do now?". For our group, at least, the answer was simple enough--now we play poker.

Two nights earlier I had hosted a modest game at my house, marred, but not ruined by the inclusion of Chad Heger. Chad brings a special brand of pessimism and negativity to the poker table, thinly masked in his second rate sarcasm and inappropriate simile. Left to take his pick from any snack in my house, he refused, commenting, "A Rwandan family of 10 has better snacks than you." Though I could have easily countered his attack by mocking his now massive fro, it was just too easy. It would have been like shooting fish in a barrell or trying to bluff Joey Kelly out of a big pot.

Later Chad steered the conversation toward x-boxes, and it quickly became clear why:

"My X-Box is so much better than yours!" Chad boasted.

"All X-Boxes are the same, Chad" Chris reminded him, but apparently he had 'souped up' his x-box by adding some memory and some SNES games. Wow, could you waste any more time or money, than by adding inferior games an x-box. Chris told him so with a quick, sarcastic:

"Wow! That's impressive, why don't you brag about it!"

Chad was clearly hurt, and he was suspiciously quiet for the next five or so minutes. Then, as I launched into a story about how messy my apartment in New York City was, he saw his chance to strike.

"My floor was covered in trash, you couldn't even see the carpet" I joked.

"Wow! That's impressive," Chad scoffed, "why don't you brag about it?!"

Chad had been saving up, waiting for his moment, and he had thrown a ball. And he had struck and killed a fan. And the fan was his brother.

"It was a story Chad. That's all, a story."

"Oh," Chad realized, "I gotta go."


Needless to say, Chad decided not to come to Matt Sauter's house to play poker two days later, but we'd managed to get an interesting crew together nonetheless. Riaz, Jack, and Matt Waller didn't see the movie, but showed up for the game afterwards. Shannon, Matt and I made up the old guard that had seen the movie, and young blood came in the form of Chris Yokota, Joey Kelly, Kevin Fathi, Lee Redmond, and Andrew Burroughs. Mark Burroughs was making a special guest appearance, in his first attempt at poker since he lost for the tenth consecutive time almost half a year earlier.

We decided to play at Matt Sauter's house for two reasons. First, we felt that he had made the commute down to southern orange county enough, and he deserved a break. Second, about two weeks earlier we had built a rumpus room, and figured it was time to use it. Well, when I say that we built a rumpus room, I mean that we pushed some boxes out of the way in his garage and put a table where the boxes had been. It sounds simple, and it probably was, but at the time, I decided that it would be more fun if we pretended that we were robots on an assembly line as we moved the boxes, adding at least three hours to the project, and costing timmy a broken leg, and three shattered vertebrae.

I will never forget the screams of "Meh!" that escaped from his mouth as that box full of shipping peanuts crashed down upon his fragile frame.

We completed the rumpus room, however, and it was now ready for rumpus to take place in it. And what rumpus there was.

Locating Matt's house was a fiasco for many of the players, who apparently had never wandered north of Mission Viejo. At one point, Kevin Fathi was talking to Matt and Shannon getting simaultaneous directions from them on where the house was. Stereo directions, I mused, and then suggested that they each recommend a left and right turn at the same time, causing Kevin's car to split comically down the center, like Herbie the love bug, or Joey's pants when he bends over to pick up some food.

A geologist might try to tell you that the most reliable natural phenomenon is the eruption of the "Old Faithful" geyser in Yellowstone National Park or the return of the swallows to Capistrano, but don't believe them. Mark Burroughs loses at poker night more reliably than "Old Faithful Spews" anyday. People set their watches by Mark, it happens so reliably, but these people are usually not very punctual. The person that does this is me.

Now that Mark was out of the way, the rest of us could play for real. With Ace 10 of Clubs in my hand, I was quite thrilled when the 9, 7, and 4 of clubs came down like manna from heaven on an early flop. I got a call from Matt Sauter early on and doubled up to about 50 bucks in the first ten minutes.

Slowly though, after my three of a kind was beat out by Andrew's straight, and I pushed all-in with my queen's against Fathi's Aces, my good fortunes started to dwindle. I was so scared that I laid down pocket Jack's to a four dollar raise pre-flop. Speaking of Jack, he had one of his more successful nights, turning a movie pass and four dollars that I had leant him into about 3 dollars profit. He had to leave early, cuz his worked started early next morning.

Andrew Burroughs started to go up big, along with Chris Yokota and Lee Redmond. Fathi rebought often as did Matt Sauter, and eventually I was forced to as well. At my table, we decided to mix up the action by playing some Omaha hold 'em, in addition to the traditional Texas version of the game. I won't delve into the mildly complicated rules here, but let it be known that if a group of guys doesn't understand a game, they should not wager medium amounts of money on it. In a disastrous series of events, Shannon accidentally won a pot, then was forced to give back probably more than he had won in the first place. We decided, then, that Omaha was probably a bad idea, until the average IQ at the table was >= 34. Why 34 you ask? This is the number of IQ points needed to understand Omaha.

Onto the wonderfully tragic downfall of Joey Kelly. I was slightly upset at Joey, because he had pocket 10's that devistated my 8 10 with a board of 8 8 10 J 3, so if my tone sounds vengeful or mean-spirited, know that it is only poker revenge. In the words of Joey, I'll issue a pre-emptive "I'm Sorry".

Now, Joey chose to listen to his ipod mini as we were playing poker. I can understand why the pro's do this. Hours spent playing satelites and tournament tables could get monotonous, and music could break up the monotony. But a large reason we got together was to talk, laugh, and be social. But, what can I say. Some people really need their daily dose of Hillary Duff and BSB.

As the night wound down, Joey explained to everyone his predicament, "You see guys, here's the problem. I'm very easy to make fun of. I'm fun to make fun of. But I don't mind, I just let it happen." It's very lucky that Joey had this attitude, because, I kid you not, as he said this a large amount of drool accidentally dripped out of his mouth landing on the table in front of him.

With 27 dollars in hand, Joey announced that he had to leave after this hand. Noone objected and the board came up 10 J 4. A bet of 2 dollars by Joey was called by Joey's friend/poker nemesis Chris Yokota. Joey didnt look happy to be called, he just wanted to get out of there, so when an Ace came on the turn, Joey made a very dubious all-in push. Chris called instantly with the nut straight, and Joey quickly mucked his cards, too embarassed to show them. When it was later revealed that Joey held a 10 8 in hand, he expalined, "It's pretty basic really. I don't wanna leave with only a 7 dollar profit. I'd rather leave with nothing at all. Y'know?" Now, I don't want to read too much into this, but Joey is a staunch conservative. Is the sort of reasoning that republicans apply to economics. All I know is that Joey's "Supply-Side" poker chip plan, giving each player 100 extra poker chips to help stimulate "demand for betting", was a catastrophic failure.

As the night drew to a close we decided that it had to go out with a bang, so that the only bets allowed were fold or all-in. Matt Waller gave us quite a show when he put 20 bucks on the line with an A 4 against Yokota's K Q with a board of 4 K Q. A Jack on the turn was meaningless, but an Ace on the river provided much merriment and cheering by all.

With that, the Newport poker odyssey ended, and the poker players, like the swallows before them, returned to Capistrano.