I wish I could take a bath in Purell™.  I’m standing on the end of a two day session of filthy dirt in the mecca of degenerates- Atlantic City - and still trying to make sense of it all.

We’re on the Atlantic City Expressway when the AC skyline comes to view over the horizon.  Half a dozen giant gold and silver hotels are hapharzardly staggered across the skyline like broken teeth, shrouded in a yellow-brown haze from the heat and the humidity.  Something about it all looks greasy and it’s a feeling I won’t shake until we leave.  I think it’s the way the dense, wet air clutches at and clings to your skin, even in air conditioning, but I further suspect it’s the collective atmosphere of the people there.  A group fog built from the diminished expectations and hopes of countless would be’s, could be’s, should have been’s.  When we cut through the poor neighborhoods to get to the shiny oasis’s of greed and even more greed, it only agrees with my suspicions.  The stark contrast between what comes before the casinos and what comes within their walls is nothing short of astounding.

Wrong Foot Forward

The entire trip down has been nearly constant discussion of the game.  Don Khee ruminates on betting strategy and setting up plays like a poker Aristotle.  He has the sickest hand recall of anyone I know and as we discuss each hand, we break down the how and why behind the action and map out strategy for every plausible outcome.  It’s the right way to prep for what is ahead, it psyches us up to jump in feet first and have at it.

We land at the Borgata’s poker room and are assigned to different tables.  I drop five franks on the buy-in and settle in on the 7 seat.  The table is tight and quiet, a rock garden consisting of a wide variety of stereotypes, but nothing memorable.  There are three huge stacks, but I must have missed the action train because nobody is making a move and the play is tight.  DK is put on a juicy game and within an hour has spiked 1200 off of it. I request a table change to try to get in his game, but it takes nearly an hour to make the trip.

My play is totally off, I’m still carrying a burn mark from my last session here.  Too much stack management, too little table image, not enough chips.  The dealer is throwing me drawing pockets but the flops aren’t backing them up in any way, so I burn quickly through my first buy-in, probably within five hours.  I restack with another five hundred, but I can’t shake the feeling that I’m in for a repeat of my last AC trip.

And so far, I’m right about that.  My stack is ceilinged at 500 with 100 to 200 dollar swings, but I can’t ever get it beyond the buy-in.  It’s easy to blame the cards.  It’s easy to blame the flops.  But I put most of the blame on playing too tight in the wrong spots and too loose in the others.

I will say this, I’m satisfied with my self discipline and my ability to keep my stack fairly level for as long as I did.  Donkeys keep dipping, some of them into the game two to three thousand dollars.  I can’t ever make sense of this kind of reasoning.  At your third buy-in, you’re only hope is to break even but consider that you are already 8+ hours into play by the third or fourth dip.  That’s just degenerate shit and if you’ve caught yourself up in that kind of situation you need to reel it in because you’re playing like a jack ass.  No amount of rebuying is going to solve that, just get the fuck off the table already.

The clock strikes midnight and a couple of bad hands have left me down to 250 after 10 hours of play.  I convince Dong Khee that we should move the game to the Taj Mahal, so we peel off and head back to the room for a quick respite.

Walmart of Poker

The Taj Mahal is an abyss of degeneratism.  You feel this the second you step foot in the place.  The fluorescent light overheads, the tacky maroon and gold interior, constant clacking of chips that sound like a million marbles being dropped on a sidewalk.  The weight of the grind is heavy in this joint, you can just feel it.

And it’s such a seedy vibe, I can’t help but to feel like I’ve been thrust into a bad gambling movie from the late 70’s or early 80’s.  All the stereotypes are equally represented, everything here seems more caricatured than the Borgata, putting it somewhere close to a New York club but much, much larger.

A new 2/5 table is opened and we’re put on it.  The crowd taking seats with us is a bit rougher than the crowd at the Borgata.  1 seat is a Joe Pesci type whom I have no doubts is one rough motherfucker and I find myself wondering how many times he’s had his picture snapped at his local police precinct.  To his right is a kid straight from South Philly who does not fuck around but still manages to come across as a nice enough guy.  Next in line is a silver haired Italian guy that’s a definite local and I suspect a team player with the 1 seat.  Drunk Jersey jock with cubic zirconia earrings follows.  An Asian kid I’ve played with in NYC is sitting to my right but we don’t recognize each other right away.  The rest of the table is old codgers and one Persian guy in an Armani t-shirt whom I can already tell is going to be one of those pot ramming hyper aggressive types.

I’ve been thinking that my eagerness to jam was a contributing factor to my mediocre play at the Borgata, but I also don’t feel that anyone on this particular table is really of any concern skill wise.  Either way, I still decide to observe the game for awhile before putting in any serious chips.  DK spins off the table for greener pastures towards the start of the session and is replaced by this skinny Indian kid in a suit and a world series of poker hat that it a couple of sizes too big.  He’s got the table comedian shtick down perfect and is an endless source of amusement for me but a major source of annoyance for the old men on the table who constantly tell the kid to shut up.  He doesn’t seem to notice.

STFU

I’m not playing many hands, waiting it out for something premium to come my way.  The cheeseball in the 4 seat with the fake diamond earrings and Breitling look-alike watch throws a huge bet at the ancient Italian rock sitting to my immediate left.  The old man is having none of it and pushes all his chips onto the board.  Earrings hems and haws but finally calls.  The rock flips the nuts and Earrings is pissed.  As the dealer is counting out what the Jersey boy owes, he starts bitching that he didn’t see all of the green chips and starts making a fuss about paying up.  “He had his greens hidden” he claims, as if it’s going to make any difference or that there is some particular break he’s going to catch by protesting.  The dealer has no handle on the table at all, so the kid ramps up his bitching about the greens, almost refusing to pay.  I inject myself into the fray by pointing out that I saw them and that Jersey boy is two seats away from me so he SHOULD have been able to see them too.

Earrings doesn’t like hearing this at all.  “You shut the fuck up.” he yells at me.  My eyes pop open and I reiterate my point that the chips were in plain view, dropping my voice an octave and speaking with a confidence that only comes with anger.

“I told you to shut the fuck up!” he stabs at me.  My back straightens instantly and I start leaning forward to say something else but am motioned to by the pro in the 1 seat to back off.  He had replaced the Joe Pesci character about an hour prior and I had a bit of respect of him.  Nice guy, strong player.  When he makes the gesture to stop by crossing his hand across his throat, I clamp my mouth shut and lean back in my chair.  He throws me a wink to let me know I’ve done the right thing and I offer him a shrug in return and a shake of my head.  The phrase “stop being such a girl” is still swirling in my mouth, but the pro is right.  Not my fight.

He finally pays the old guy off and then storms from the table throwing a temper tantrum.  The Pro starts laughing and we all agree that the guy is a donkey.  About a half an hour later, he takes his meager chip stack off the table and I don’t see him again.

Right in the Nuts

About 10 minutes after that incident, I realize I’ve actually purchased some respect from the table by getting involved in that last dispute.  The old rock becomes my buddy (despite calling all my raises, all of the time) and I’m able to throw in a lot more table talk.  Within 30 minutes I’m comfortably integrated in the table.  I’m still getting dealt drawing hands, but I’m hooking into flops and I start building up my stack through a fairly constant set of pots.  I swing up and down a few times, but by 7am, I’m up to $700 and ready to peel off to get some sleep.  I’m only down $300 for the day, which is tolerable.  I don’t really expect the situation to brighten up anytime soon, so I tell DK I’m racking up and he decides to play a few more orbits.

I decide to hang out and wait for DK, pulling up a chair behind him and providing post-play commentary.  A thug rolls into the 10 seat next to DK and I’m talking about serious thugishness here, the kind that feels like it’s fresh from the slammer.  There is no spark of intelligence in this guy, he is pure brute and pure gamble.  I don’t really pick up on this until much later, although it should have been obvious off the bat.

The game juices up a bit and I make an incredibly stupid decision to buy back into the game.  This decision is stupid for so many reasons, I can’t even count them all.  I’ve been playing nearly non-stop for 16 hours at this point, fighting the entire time to leave the day even or marginally up or down.  I’m exhausted.  So in true degenerate style, I throw any sense of self-discipline out the window and pop back into my old seat.

About six hands into it, I’m dealt A♣A♠ in middle position.  Fucking awesome.

Big blind raises 40, I re-reraise to 120 and thug calls.  Action to BB and he pushes all-in for another 250.  I’m stunned at this point and take a minute to think about it.  What the fuck have I gotten myself into?  It is crystal clear to me that BB has my exact same hand.  I was 99% certain of this.  He’d have to be a total donkey to get involved with something like AK with a re-raise and a caller.  KK maybe, but I didn’t really feel that was likely.

I actually consider folding.  If BB has my hand, all of my outs are done in for.  Thug could have any thing and while it would be a donkey call, I had a feeling he wasn’t going anywhere regardless of what I did.  Finally, I push all my chips in, thug calls with enthusiasm and I flip up.

BB shows me AA, just as I suspected.  Thug flips up T♦8♥.  There is a collective “what the fuck” from the table.  Of course, he gets two pair on the flop and BB and myself can only shake our heads in stunned silence.

DK has never seen me so angry. And it’s not really the call that makes me angry, it’s the thug standing up and yelling “ship it” when he hit.  The second those words came out of his mouth, I snapped hot and my mouth filled will all sorts of soliloquys that I’m positive would have gotten me beaten to death had I spoken all of them out loud.   I let a few slip past, but got myself the hell out of the poker room before I say something truly stupid.  DK follows me out but is a little uncertain what to do because he’s never seen me this snapped off before.

I can only shake my head stunned and repeat the words “what the fuck” over and over.  I finally climb into a cab and sulk back to the hotel, leaving DK to try to reclaim some of my cash from that thug.  On the cab ride back, the driver asks me how my luck is going.

“Fucking awful,” I tell him.  He laughs.

“You know what I tell gamblers?”

“I don’t gamble.  I play poker.” I reply, not really wanting to hear a fucking thing this guy has to say.  He doesn’t seem to notice my disposition.

“I tell them to go the massage parlor and get laid before they play.”

I’m suppose to laugh at this, even though it’s a painfully obvious sales job.  Just drive motherfucker.  Please.

To be continued ….