Sometimes people ask me to help them throw a poker game at their place. There are pluses and minuses to this. For one thing, people like a familiar setting, they like to go to a place where they know what the deal is, where they know they’ll be comfortable. Usually, when I bug my group about a game someplace other than my basement, I have a harder time gathering people together.
On the other hand, poker basement, by virtue of being two flights of stairs from the nearest toilet, isn’t the greatest setup. Some people have also commented that poker basement is a little bit dingy, is freezing cold in winter, is way too hot in summer, is way too depressing year round, has way too much mold, et cetera, et cetera. Personally, I wouldn’t mind playing cards in poker basement any night of the week, but some people have high expectations like not being pelted by falling plaster when the neighbor upstairs walks across his floor.
My buddy Eric had mentioned a few times that he’d recently moved into a new place in Watertown and they had a great rec room to play cards in. To be honest, when he mentioned a rec room, or however it was he described it, I thought it would probably be a slight upgrade over poker basement, but enough to travel all the way to Watertown for? That I didn’t know. However, he texted me about it recently, and I thought that this would be a good way to have a game with higher stakes, that wouldn’t make it seem like Sherwood Casino was now becoming a game for big shots. I’d like to keep poker basement .25/.25 for a little longer, but if other people are hosting, and I’m recruiting slash providing chips, for some reason I don’t feel as bad upping the stakes. Hence the 1/2 games at Rog’s and the 1/1 game in Eric’s rec room.
On my way to the game it was pouring rain and my Waze app was acting up. I got lost in a very tony section of section of Newton. It was a little frustrating, as every time I made a wrong turn, instead of finding a main road, I’d end up on another darkened street of giant homes. I thought about the poker games the people who lived in them must have. Probably something like 5/10 no limit with an automaton dealer bought in a Hammacher Schlemmer catalog. It was tempting to pull the car over, run through the rain to one of the windows, and rail one of these games peeping Tom style, but then I remembered that this was just in my imagination, and even if it wasn’t, surely not everybody in Newton was hosting such a poker game. Probably only about 12 to 15% when you really think about it.
When I finally arrived at Eric’s place in Watertown, however, any notion that fancy pants digs were solely the domain of Newton multi-millionaires, was set aside, because holy moly were we grinding in style last night. The place was a brand new luxury condo/apartment complex that according to Eric is presently only filled to something like 10% capacity. It had a very swanky hotel vibe to it. With the exception of us having to use a pool table as a poker table, it had the feel of being in some private game in Vegas, or at least what I imagine a private game in Vegas to be like. Well, without the automaton cocktail waitresses, but you catch my drift.
I had a good night, thanks to getting hit with the deck, which was nice because it means I bounced back into the black for 2017. I am now, thanks to poker, $232 richer than I was on January 1st. If this keeps up I’ll be able to buy an automaton dehumidifier for poker basement.