I haven’t gotten around to writing up my last trip to The Crescent Lounge, which happened last Friday night. So, to anybody who has been waiting patiently, please forgive me.

Carpooled with Dan R. formerly of West Roxbury, now of Brooklyn, but potentially now of West Roxbury again. On the way Dan and I got into it over whether or not Hillary Clinton’s term as Secretary of State was successful or not. I’ll spare you the details of the argument, heck, I’ll even spare you who took which side, I just mention this to give you a mental image of two guys in a Prius flying along 95 north yelling at each other over something neither one of them knows much about.

Getting inside The Lounge, the basement glowing in neon hues, would have to wait for a bit as the players were out on the sidewalk smoking. It used to be that the players smoked in the lounge itself, then the smoking was pushed outside, so the players were smoking in the yard. Now the yard is off limits, and smoking is done on the sidewalk. A lot of this has to do with the proprietor of the lounge, Andrew T, having a new baby in the house. Probably the last thing you need as a young dad is having a bunch of degenerates skulking around your yard all night. I think about that at times when I am at the lounge and I say to myself, enjoy this little scene because it is not going to last.

Unless of course, Andrew’s kid grows up to be a card shark.

If there is one drawback to the lounge as a player it’s that the ride back from Waltham to Roslindale can be tricky, at least as Waze navigates me. You’re the only car on the road for almost the whole route, and this makes me worried that I’m going to be in the crosshairs of every Newton cop. So, aside from a couple Golden Halftime Hand Goldschlager shots, I didn’t drink at all.

I like to drink playing poker although I’ve read that I shouldn’t be. Most of the live poker I’ve played has been while drinking. I think it’s safe to say that my “winrate” for drinking versus not drinking poker is roughly the same. And, no, a feel player like me is not going to have stats to back that up.

Anyhow, the game was pretty lively and fun, as per usual there. I noticed that Jeremy was losing a bit and getting agitated. At one point, after rebuying, he was handing the chiprack back to Andy R, and as Andy tried to take it back, Jeremy wouldn’t let go. Later, Jeremy was taunting Mike A. over something or other as well.

A while back when I was there Jeremy told some story about falling off a scaffolding or something. I forget what the hell it was that he fell off of, I just remember the detail about him falling from a height of twenty feet or so and walking away from the incident barely hurt. Jeremy’s a tough guy, he told me he does 400 pushups a day along with a host of other exercises a wimpo like me couldn’t possibly imagine even the names of.

As he continued playfully taunting everybody else at the table I began to consider not the odds of the hand I was dealt but the odds on IF Jeremy decided to fight everybody else in the room at this given moment, how big of a favorite would he be?

Probably something like 4:5.

Joe B was there. I always consider Joe to be the most addicted of all the players I know. Around 1:45am, we were four handed and I said I’d stick around for another half an hour. Five minutes later Joe says he’s only in for the next orbit. I guess I am the one with the real problem now.

I hadn’t played any poker in almost two weeks going into last night. I wanted to play at the Crescent Lounge tonight, but it turns out that wasn’t doable, which bummed me out because I haven’t been able to make it over there for over a month now. So, with no Lounge this week, no cards for almost two weeks, and the Red Sox down 4-0 to the Yankees, I figured I’d sneak out of the house to Roger’s Thursday night game after I did my chores.

Jeanne was upstairs, so I texted her that after I was done with taking out the dogs and doing the dishes I was heading out. Or at least, I thought I texted Jeanne that. A minute later I got a text from Rog saying “ok.” Whoops, texted the wrong person. Man, will I look bad if she ends up having some valid reason why I shouldn’t go. She had some reasons why I shouldn’t go, but none of them quite valid enough, so I was out the door after making the assurance I wouldn’t be coming home at 2.

I got there at nine and the game was just getting off the ground. I bought in for $250 but then Rog wanted to settle up with some money he owed me from before, so I ended up starting the night with $350. I never really chased that money. In fact, in a way I kind of liked having a little credit there. Since I don’t pull money from ATMs to play cards with, the idea of being able to ask for a $100 instead of running home to my roll was kind of nice. But, whatever, those days are gone now, I guess. Also, and maybe this plays into it, but historically, when paid back debts before or during a poker game, I end up down for the night. I try not to be superstitious about things like that, but in an illogical way, I thought that getting the $100 would mean losing it and more.

It’s harder to think superstitions are stupid when you get screwed by going against them. The $350 I started the game with was down to $180 in half an hour. I put another $100 on my stack, but things weren’t going so well. I tried to console my self by considering that with the $100 from Rog to start the night, my roll wouldn’t be as adversely affected, so no big deal. A couple of hours later I was hoovering around $300 and dishonestly thought “$50 down, no big deal, I’m having fun.”

I checked the Sox game on my phone. They were down three in the ninth, but had the tying run at the plate, so I fired up the audio and listened to them get within a run and then heard Castiglione’s call of Hanley’s three run bomb to win it. Yes! Almost right after the Sox win, my luck at the table started to change. By the time I was supposed to be leaving I was up $50 for the night. A real $50, as in $500 after the 350+100 buyin(s). Of course, it’s easier to say you are going to leave, than to actually get up and go. Rico and another guy showed up in dark suits because they’d just been to a funeral. I alway feel weird bolting right when somebody else gets there, so I said I’d play another half hour.

That half hour passes, I am counting up my chips to leave, but at Roger’s the hole cards are still coming to you until you are cashed (in hand) out. I’ve lost a lot of money because of this, but hey what’s that? Instead of two hole cards, I’m getting four.

OMAHA!

Now I have to stay another hour. I know almost everybody thinks they are better at Omaha than they actually are, but I was running good, and was only afraid of Brian at the table. Brian, who upon getting the four instead of two cards, said, “I don’t really know how to play Omaha.” I didn’t believe that for a second, but true to his word, he was cashing out ten minutes later. Better than knowing how to play Omaha, is knowing when to leave a game.

Omaha treated me well until two am, when I got the “I thought you said you’d be home by 2am” text from Jeanne. Of course Rog was slow to cash me out, which resulted in one more hand for me in which I won $125ish from him. Cashed out for $700, which is up $250 or $350 depending on how you look at it. I’ll look at it as $350. I know it’s somewhat dishonest, but at the end of the night, that’s how much more cash I have jammed under that floorboard in my bedroom.

Corey’s birthday party poker game was yesterday. It’s pretty rare that I can get out of the house on a Sunday afternoon, but since I had the heads up a few weeks in advance, I was able to work things out. It was a .05/.10 NLHE held at his friends Roslin and Matt’s place in Needham.  The place was great, they had a sunroom in the back of the house that was the perfect size for a poker table, and a hot tub a few feet out the door. The best part though was their pooch Phoebe, who I snuck half a hot dog to when nobody was looking. We were pretty tight after that.

Corey is what people call a really good poker player. He made a lot of money playing poker on the internet back in the good old days, and even took a swing playing semi-professionally in Vegas. When you play poker a lot you often run into people telling you they used to be pro, but with Corey, I’ve seen him play enough to know he’s pretty legit. I like playing him in smaller stakes because it’s a cheap way for me to brag that I’ve played somebody really good. I like Corey a lot, but there’s no way in hell I’d play 1/2 with him.

Since Corey is really good, I had a hunch that his friends would be really good to. I had played with Matt once before at my house, but I didn’t remember much about his playing style. As weird as it sounds, despite the stakes, I was a little intimidated going into this game. I figured that if I was at a table full of Corey’s, everybody would have fantastic reads on me, and I’d be sliced and diced into oblivion, put into a situation where losing $40 or something would be nothing compared to the beating my poker ego would take.

The other players turned out to be decent, but fortunately not Corey decent. The game started around 1:30 or 2 in the afternoon, almost everybody bought in for $40. I had run six miles in the morning and didn’t have breakfast, so after about half an IPA, I was happily buzzed. Little did I know at the time I was settling into what would become something of a marathon length game. We ended things a little before two a.m.. It was one of those games where my entire body is begging me to go to sleep but my gambling addiction won’t relinquish the wheel, a late night car ride where you are fighting with your eyes to keep them open, and with each passing 83 offsuit under the gun you are asking yourself, what on earth you are doing. Ah poker, I love it.

I finished up $21, which feels like breaking even after such a long game, but Is should probably count myself lucky, since I don’t know if anybody else was up besides Corey, who ran over the table. I took good chunks from me a few times too. I think he was up $130 or something, I forget, it was late.

I am not sure when I am playing again. Part of me feels like I haven’t been playing as much because I am so excited about the big tournament I’m hosting in October, but after yesterday’s crazy long game, I might just be tired.