Poker gems, #27

Jesse May, Shut Up and Deal, p. 65-66:

My friend and roommate Jimmy put it in perspective about two years later when he told me a story about one day down at the Taj Mahal when he was playing with Hot Mama Earl in a Hold’em game. Now Earl thinks Jimmy is some sort of superhuman… possessing some special knowledge about poker that’s way beyond him. At one point Jimmy does something stupid—I mean really stupid—like he calls before the flop with a hand that’s way bad against a guy who maybe hasn’t played a hand in a while. Calls the flop with nothing and then check-raises on the turn with almost zero except maybe some twenty-to-one-shot draw that miraculously makes a straight on the river, so when he flips his hand over at the end everybody’s eyes widen in disbelief, and the poor chump who Jimmy beat in the hand gets out of his seat to make sure he’s not seeing things. And Jimmy is keeping on his cool-rider face, but inside he’s laughing hysterically because he knows how lucky he just got. Jimmy’s not the sort to rub it in or show his emotions and admit that he made a stupid play so he’s just looking down and raking the pot, and meanwhile Earl is sitting across the table with stars in his eyes, enraptured, drinking it all in because he thinks he has just witnessed a world-class player making a world-class play and not an ordinary sod who just had a snake charm stuck up his ass. Later when Jimmy and Earl both happen to be walking to the bathroom together and they’re out of earshot of the other players Earl says, “Now I understand if you don’t want to give away too many secrets, but could you explain to me about that play you made with the ace-six?” And Jimmy wants to look Earl dead in the eye and say to him, Earl, sometimes I just don’t know what the hell is going on and I just do stupid things and get lucky. But Earl doesn’t want to hear that and he says, “No, stop. Don’t tell me. It’s probably too deep to understand.”

So Jimmy instead smiles and looks mysterious and says, “Poker is a very complicated game,” which is what Hot Mama Earl wants to hear anyway and he walks away thinking Jimmy is a poker god and Jimmy takes a deep breath and goes to the bathroom and tries to figure out how he’s going to get back the five thousand dollars that he’s stuck in this 75-150 Hold’em game and how the hell is it possible to be losing in a game where everybody is playing so bad. But luck is strange and the short run in poker is very unpredictable, so even though he’s tired from eight hours of poker and hurting and feeling like a good seafood meal and a nice cold beer and a long sleep, he freezes his face in his cool-rider mask and trudges back toward the table. But all anyone can see is a relaxed smile, dark glasses, and impeccable concentration. And Earl is able to walk away thinking poker is deep, mysterious, and romantic, wonderful to be involved in, and not base, crude, and filthy.