I’ve been jonesing for some poker action, but one thing that happens when you are out of work is your sole focus becomes getting a job, not playing cards all night with your friends. Sure, you can try and convince yourself that you’re a winning player, that when you play cards you have an expected hourly rate of return that converts a leisure activity into actual work, but at the end of the day if you pull your unemployed self into a Wendy’s parking lot right after dropping your kids off at school at 8am, excitedly type “Twin Rivers Casino” into Waze, and then fist pump and yell “Yeah Motherfucker!” when the computer lady spits out her first direction, you have got yourself a problem that probably needs clinical attention.

Fortunately for myself, I am not THAT bad. However, I feel like I’ve played enough poker that I now know the scene, the people as well as the cards, enough to envision what such a scenario would be like, right up to the adrenaline rush a theoretical gambling addict would get firing up the old Prius engine as he merges onto I-95, sucks in all of that glorious fall foliage with his eyeballs as, I dunno, let’s say Talking Heads Fear of Music gets fired up on the stereo.

It being a real stunner of a November morning, with an immaculately sunny blue sky and temps in the mid fifties, there may have been a bit of regret somewhere just past Attleboro. I could be in these trees, taking it all in, laying back and just enjoying the natural order of things rather than grinding it out in a Rhode Island casino. I mean, just those three words strung together, “Rhode Island casino,” while they describe a place and not a medical condition, sort of, for a brief moment weigh down your gut in the same way as the phrase “I’m sorry, but it’s inoperable.” Rhode Island, of course, somewhat pales in elegance compared to a place like Vegas. Nobody anywhere else in the country counters a suggested trip to Vegas with the line, “well what about Rhode Island? They have gambling there too now.” You think about that as the trees, the splendid trees, one after another in quick succession fly by on the highway, and just at the moment when you think, man, I am such an idiot, such an addict with no will power at all, there by the side of the road you see a coyote!

And what is that coyote doing? He’s getting ready to cross the highway. Oh yeah, the woods are good, plenty of mice and squirrels to eat, coyotes are the king of the food chain in those along I-95 forests, but the coyote wants something more. Maybe he’s heard late at night, some howling at the moon, a voice on the other side of the three lanes, suggestive and foxy… ok, let’s say it’s a fox, not a coyote, but just the same, the animal, the wild beast above all else wants to gamble. I think it was Nietzsche who first said that, if not him then the Dalai Lama. Either way, you realize, it’s time to cast away the words you describe yourself with, i.e. unemployed, desperate for work, a lackluster father, etc and become what you truly were called to be. A coyote. Or a fox, I mean. Either way, just an animal about to cross a highway.

We get there at 9:30ish. Name on a list. There were four tables going. Two 1/2, one 2/5, and one 5/10. I saw Teddy from Roger’s game at the 2/5 table and said hello. Sorry, I meant to say, in this purely imagined scenario I saw Teddy. It took like fifteen or twenty minutes before I was seated. The first hand I got was Kc5c. There was a raise, I folded, and then the guy to my immediate left called. The flop was club club 5. Uggh. A raise, a call. A blank, a small, easy to call raise with a bunch of outs was made followed by another call, and then another club on the river. Big river bet, snap called. Somebody had a pair of 8s. I was already tilted and I hadn’t played a hand.

The kid on my right was young and very talkative. Lots of poker talk. He was ok enough, but definitely not as good as he thought he was. He was with a bunch of guys, his friends were for the most part milling around the room, others were still seated. It turns out that Twin Rivers allows twenty year olds to play. Twin Rivers and Turning Stone he told me. I forget where he said he was from, but I remembered him saying it was three and a half hours from Lincoln, Rhode Island. Basically what I gathered was, that him and his buddies had traveled a good distance to do a marathon session and he was one of the only guys still playing. The others would loiter around, bug him about leaving, and in turn he would bug them about buying back in, which got responses like “I can’t even take $80 out of my bank account, dude.” And here I thought being unemployed was a bad beat.

There was some action at the table. A little bit of zaniness. I didn’t want to come off as a nit, so I entered a few pots pre just for show. I took down a small three way pot with a bluff on the flop in position, which was a nice way to appear as an “action player.” Then came my big hand. AK offsuit in the big blind. A family pot type deal until the action is one me. I think I made it $27, I forget. Two callers. The flop comes down AQ4r. I bet $30 or $40. Who knows. One caller, this south Asian guy who had been making really small c-bets earlier, like $10 into a $60 pot. The turn is another ace, so I check to look vulnerable, because that is my new thing lately, looking vulnerable. He checks too, which I think ultimately induced a call on the river (10) when I bet $65ish. So that was nice.

There was definitely some action. I saw a guy sit down and a hand in call a $100 preflop jam with 66… and win. One guy opened to $31 and was called by the twenty year old kid next to me who had less than $150 behind. The kid took down a massive pot when he flopped another ace to go with his A6. The table was a din of remonstrating afterwards, but the kid insisted he was going on a good read.

I figured that in order for me to get back with enough time to meet the kids at the bus stop I would have to leave a little before 1pm. When I was about to leave the room had really filled up. There were probably three or four times as many tables at this point. I worried before getting there that arriving at 9:30am might end up with me endlessly waiting for a table or two to spit out a player. Seemed like you could get on pretty quickly arriving anytime in the morning. There was a lot of table hopping as well. I am not sure what that was all about. The talk was about how much better the 5 seat is than the 9 seat. I can kind of see that being an advantage with sight lines maybe, but I wouldn’t switch tables for it. Maybe it’s just code for “I am intimidated and don’t want to play at this table anymore.”

Wimps.

I was having a nice morning at the table until just before I was about to go. I was in a multi-way straddled pot with K9 of clubs. My mistake was playing this one. I can make excuses for what happened afterwards until the cows come home, but yes, I should have folded. Suffice to say I bluffed off one guy on the turn and was left with one of the young kids. He had $32 left so of course he called my move on the blanked turn to get the deeper stacked player out. Well, I should say, of course after tanking forever, he chose to call with his thirty-two remaining dollars into a $150 pot. The board was Qc 10c 6s 4d. He turned over 89 offsuit. I can’t fault him, he thought he had 8 outs. Anyhow, a 7 on the river and he nearly triples up. Ouch. Nice hand, good game. I had to get back up to Boston to meet my kids at the bus stop with a decent enough profit, but one I wish was $180 bigger.