Tao of Poker

Fish Fry: HDouble Style!

Just read a great blog from HDouble about his trip this wekeend to the "border" to shakedown elderly fish in Primm Valley, Nevada! Looks like he should have just stood outside and mugged the poor saps before they walked into the casino. Can you send me directions to this casino?

He wrote: "But I began to feel sorry for this clueless collection of imposter poker players. They acted like they knew the game, and must have had some experience, because they knew how to bet (they still hadn't learned how to fold yet, but that's ok). I don't think there's any way that any of them had read a poker book. And I felt my killer instinct fading away, feeling like I was playing against pop warner football players rather than people who have played the game for years and years. But as I was dealt rockets for the second time, the pity faded away...."

Hey HDouble, I found a title for your new novel... The Pity Faded Away: Confessions of a L.A. Grinder.

Alas, I have felt that not-so-good feeling once or twice (when I used to work on Wall Street and you'd get a push-over client that would just blindly hand you over his life savings and I'd shake my head thinking, "Geez, what a fool. Will this guy also let me fuck his wife and his daughters too?") but for the most part you have to pump yourself up for that killer instinct and continue sucking out old people's social security money. I have a feeling that I won't see any of my social security deposits so I might as well cash in on dead money. When I first played poker in a casino, no one had any sympathy for me!! Like Canada Bill Jones said, "It's immoral to let a sucker keep his money." Too bad those miscreants don't play at Foxwoods.

Anyway, HDouble's story reminded me about the time at the Excalibur in Vegas this past December, when my brother Derek took a drunk guy sitting next to him for all his chips (he had a rack and a half of $1 chips). I never saw Derek play better, and at the same time, I never say anyone just give away their bankroll like that. That guy fell asleep (or passed out) in the middle of a hand! Derek had to nudge him so he'd call one of his bets (the drunk guy lost of course).

But we're not done with HDouble! Here's one of my favorite parts to his last entry: "My stack was up to 750 at this point, and I was running out of energy. There were two chubby, drunk looking girls watching the game from the rail for around an hour. They were looking over my shoulder, and I leaned back, initiating what turned out to bed the funniest conversation of the night. My wife had gone to bed long ago, which may have been the reason they were sweating me (why couldn't they have been hot, drunk, and good poker players? Is that too much to ask?)"