long night

The readers digest version of the game was that I flopped the nut straight.

I had KJ and the flop was 10 -Q - A. I got all of my money, all of his money, and some other money in the pot. I counted it up at $16,000 at least in the middle with the average stacks at 10K and 400 players to go.

Turn was and Ace..which beat me....and the river was an A just to add the requisite insult.

I was out.

But that was the good part of the story.

After busting out, I missed the last train out of AC. But all that was fine as my Uncle was meeting me at the Trop and had us a room. I go to the Trop. No Uncle. No room.

Now I had about $100 to my name. I had no car and no room. The next train out was at 4:45 am. A room was $100. I went to the poker room...

I mean WTF, I aint paying no $100 for a room for 8 hours. And I figured, If I got up $100 quickly in the poker room, I'd just get the room.

Now I only had $100 so I couldn't play No Limit. And my brain was pretty fried from 6 hours of concentrated play, so I couldn't get fancy. I sat at the $2/$4 limit table. Every hand had 6 players in the hand...unless there was a raise, then there would be 8 players in the hand. That wasn't going to work, I needed something else.

I got up and found a Stud game. Now stud is slow, which is exactly what I wanted. Nice and slow. There's 8 players at the table and if you're in Atlantic City you can assume that the average is of those 8 players is five-hundred and seventy years old. So I ordered me a whiskey sour and settled in.

After a little while I realized that everyone at the table knew each other, which isn't all that unusual. Then I also noticed that when I was in a pot, there seemed to be a lot of callers. Maybe they were just thinking that I didn't know how to play the game since I was under 80. I had a couple of strong draws blank out, which was frustrating, especially as my exposed cards were strong and people would not fold. But, hey !, when I hit I want as many people in as possible. Then, finally, I hit a hand...they all stayed in and some woman..the ringleader of the group, hit a full house on 7th street. I was steaming pretty bad.

A couple of hands later this same bitch gets into a hand heads up with one of the old dudes....again, I was getting 4 callers, but when I was out it seemed like everyone was steering clear of each other. So then the woman showed A A as her first two cards. The other guy showed K 9. They checked it down until the end !!!!

I totally flipped out! And I mean that in the wosrt of ways.

" IS THIS A POKER GAME OR A NEIGHBORHOOD FUCKING PICNIC ?!?!?!" and it went downhill from there. I may have slammed some stuff around as well.

After that the action at the table sort of died. I also noticed that some dude with a walkie-talkie was hanging around.

I sufferend through a stright-flush draw from 5th street that never hit and then got up from the table furious. Down my $100....plus another $50 that I had borrowed. This was quickly turning into a bad day. I made a couple of remarks about bringing back euthinasia,then I gave everyone the finger, got up, and walked out.

Thankfully, JHM and JW had showed up and were kind enough to lend me $150. I sat down in their game of NLHE 1-2 Texas Holdem. We had a fun time and for the first few hours I was able to win back the $150, hold onto the $150 that was lent to me, and get ahead another $100 plus.

Around 1:30 am the wheels started coming off....I was getting tired and couldn't focus. I usually follow the action pretty well and try to read hands. But by 2:00 I noticed blocks of time would go by and that the button would somehow have moved three spots.

At this point I had been up for 21 hours straight, on 4 hours sleep the night before. I had played like 12+ hours of poker, and I had about a dozen well drinks in me.

It also didn't help that the table had filled with knuckleheads. That's usually a good thing...and a profitable thing...but it's also a bit of a minefield if you're not on your A game. In the end, we stopped at 3 am with me down $20 for the entire night....and I'm fairly confident that was the $20 in whiskey sours that I drank.

Th blur that followed was being chased by a faux mugger, sleeping outside a closed train station, sleeping inside an open train station, taking two trains home, and collapsing. It's 3:00 pm and I just woke up.

I feel very healthy. A Chris Farley John Belushi kind of healthy.