I found a mandatory minimum $100 buy in 1/2 game in West Roxbury.  This guy Mike runs it out of the bar he owns. The game’s action starts up right at closing time. This brings in people who don’t want to stop drinking at the bar. You’d be surprised how many people will fork over $100 to play a game whose rules they don’t know if it means they can have another drink.  Yes, sometimes patrons have been known to try and nit it up, but when that happens Mike amps up the volume to 1/2/5 and so on. The only thing that sucks about the game is the late starting time. Jeanne thought I was having an affair because of the overnights, which kind of forced me to show her how much money I’ve made there. That got me the green light. The game runs twice a week, and I’ve been playing since the middle of January. I’ve probably been there half a dozen times and haven’t left down once. Winning sessions have ranged from a high of $2400 to a mere $270. And in that up only $270 session you should have seen some of the bad beats I took.

I sometimes feel guilty. Especially when, as happens often there, guys are too drunk to move their chips into the pot. After winning a hand, you have to get up, walk over to their seat, and push the chips away for them. Right out under their donkey noses. They’ll give me these confused drunken looks, not understanding the chips, the cards, or anything. These strange things are put in front of them and then moved away from them. For the vast majority of them, that’s the extent of their understanding of what’s going on.

The players are so dumb and drunk that sometimes they are tough to deal with. Slurring their words to the point where you can’t understand them, or passing out. The other day that happened to this guy Tim,  and Mike responded by announcing that house rules stipulated that unless you were “officially going the bathroom,” ie in the bathroom or en route to it, you had to pay the blinds. It was three-handed at that point, Me, Mike, and Tim, so Mike and I just stole the blinds for 10 minutes or so and locked up the rest of his money. Mike then woke Tim up to rebuy, and he says ok. You sure you’re not going to vomit, Mike asks. He sounds kind of serious here, like he’s a doctor or something. Tim says no, he can play, just deal the cards. Three hands later Mike flops top set against him and bets five times the pot all in. Tim snap calls with an inside straight draw and rivers it. Two hands after that I move all in pre with pocket kings and he calls me with 96 of clubs. He wins with two pair, and now he’s sitting there with $400 and wants to go home. I’m too tired to play he keeps saying, but Mike keeps dealing the cards as fast as he can, saying no, no, you can’t hit and run, that’s against the rules. They go back and forth fighting about it and in the meantime, Mike wins back $200 off Tim.

Tim doesn’t seem to care about the money, and he tries making for the door. Mike tells him he can crash on the couch in the basement, but he just has to play for a half hour more.  There’s more bickering about this between the two of them, but they’re playing cards the whole time. They get into it heads up where there’s a ton of action on the flop. Mike goes all in. After tanking for a few minutes, more because he’s dozing than thinking, Tim calls. I deal the river and I’m looking close at Tim now, because I think he might be asleep. Mike tables a straight, maybe with a little too much emphasis, because it startles Tim, who suddenly half remembers where he is. As Mike rakes the chips in, Tim does a double take at the cards. Hey wait, he says, did I win? Mike stops, and takes a hard look at Tim. Since I wasn’t in the hand, and I was so fixated and whether the guy was asleep or not, I sort of didn’t pay too close attention to the board, which was T98r followed by two threes. Tim turned over an 83 of hearts to hit a boat on the river. He was right but he was still confused because he was so messed up. He continued to stare at his hand and then back to the board and back again, trying to confirm he had a full house. Then Mike quickly swept the cards into a pile saying nope, you had trips I had a straight, you lose. Tim tries to sputter out what he thought he saw, while Mike ushers him out the door to catch an uber.

I can hear them back and forth out in the cold for a few seconds beyond the frosted panes of the door’s windows. A few more refrains of I thoughts and You didn’ts.

The door swung back open and Mike hurried back in. For an instant I saw the disappointed Tim standing on the sidewalk, looking back into the bar. He seemed to be looking at me, imploring me to tell him what I saw, but I could only look away.

As I was cashing out Mike said I could crash on the couch downstairs if I wanted to and that if I told anybody about what happened he would fucking kill me.