Colorful Characters

Colorful characters

I was reading a book called The Tiltboys which is sort of a vanity story about a group of poker players and their Wednesday night home game. It was a difficult read for a number of reasons, not the least of which was that their hijinks didn’t translate well to retelling. More important to them than their poker game was an ongoing game of Rock, Scissors, Paper or as they called it Roshambo. While I’m sure that the game made the players feel as if they were too hip for the room, I frankly don’t see anything interesting or amusing about it, nor about the group of players, each of whom apparently fit a different stereotype. There was the lucky guy, the brain, the maniac, the fish, the complainer… all of the types you’d find in a poker room. Amazingly they had exactly one of each.

It got me to thinking about some of the people I’ve played with, many of whom were far more interesting than any of the guys in Tiltboys.

For example, some of you poker fans may remember a very unusual incident that took place during the U.S. Poker Championship on television a few years ago. At one point a player by the name of Lance asked the floor man whether a straight beat three of a kind, and he was quite serious. This taking place in a televised $10,000 entry event was one of the most bizarre things I had ever witnessed. So when my endodontist friend called to invite me to his game and told me that Lance would be one of the players nothing could keep me from that table. And I wasn’t disappointed. There’s so much to share about this night but I’ll limit it to this one story. Lance was a wine lover and at one point as the cards were in the air he was away from the table in the midst of pouring his 5th glass. I looked down at pocket queens and made a sizeable raise. Lance’s seat was to my immediate left and the dealer asked if he wanted to come back to the table to look at his cards. He simply responded “I call” as everyone behind him mucked. The flop was 8-5-2 rainbow. Lance was now reading the wine bottle as I overbet the pot hoping to take it down right there. (And I will tell you this, we are talking about serious money here). Instead of returning to the table to look at his cards, Lance simply said “I call” and continued to read the label of the wine bottle. The turn was a 10, leaving me with two choices. I could check in the hope that we check it down in the unlikely event that he had some sort of holding like 10-5, or I could try to end the hand on the turn. I have always believed that when faced with such a choice it is better to be aggressive and so I chose that course of action and moved all-in. At that point Lance said “well I guess I’d better look.” I held my breath as he returned to the table. He squeezed his cards and stared intently at them, then allowed his gaze to wander to the board. Each second passed agonizingly slowly until he finally turned his hand up showing 2-3, and conceded. One of the other players asked for a rabbit hunt and the dealer turned up a 3. If I had slow-played the turn I would have lost to two pair, 2-3. By the end of the night Lance spent ten minutes writing checks to other players as he smiled and joked. We all told him how much we looked forward to playing with him again because he was a “fun” player. That was 3 years ago and I haven’t seen him since.

Another extremely colorful character in my poker world is Doctor Dosh, an Indian doctor of internal medicine who plays some of the craziest poker I have ever seen. Among the many of Dosh’s creations is the call-muck, a move in which he would call a bet with one hand while mucking his cards in disgust with the other. Some of you may need to read this paragraph a few times for it to sink in and even then you would probably shake your head in disbelief but what I am saying is absolutely true – the second ultimate tilt – yes there was something worse which I will relate in the next paragraph – and these are things which even the Tiltboys could never hope to achieve. Doctor Dosh the chain-smoking medical man who would be talking on his cell phone at 3 A.M. prescribing medications for hospitalized patients while deciding how to play pocket 9s. He assured us that he never prescribed the wrong medication or dosage. He wasn’t as accurate in calling large raises.

Okay so what could possibly be more tiltable than the call-muck? How about the all-in muck. Now I know for a fact that the player who perfected this classic move reads my blog so I will not name him. Instead I will call him Tiny. As it happens Tiny is one of my favorite poker players of all time and I’m not just saying this because he reads my blog or because he has the biggest tell I have ever seen (he is aware of it but still can’t control it). There is so much that I love about Tiny that I don’t know where to start. And this despite the fact that last week I heard him complain to another player that we had Mug diet root beer rather than his favorite A&W diet root beer. I even dismiss the fact that two weeks earlier he whined about the Bachman’s popcorn not being as good as Herr’s popcorn. And let’s not even talk about his pizza and chicken critiques. None of that matters. I love Tiny! But alas I am on a tangent. You want to know about the all-in muck. It started innocently enough when the Visor raised pre-flop, but things deteriorated quickly when Tiny pushed all-in for a considerable amount of additional money. After everyone else folded, Visor pondered making the call, and displayed his cards to players seated next to him. For some reason this troubled Tiny, and when Visor finally made the call with pocket 9s, Tiny threw his cards into the muck conceding the hand and following up with an immediate rebuy. I do not post this story with the intent of embarrassing anyone, but rather to simply show that our group of players is far more uh..offbeat than the Tiltboys.

Another unique player that I’ve had the pleasure of battling was Richie the Hat. Richie was a young aggressive player who was without a doubt the best card reader I have ever played against. It was eerie the way he would look you in the eye and tell you exactly what two cards you were holding. That was Richie’s strength. His weakness was that despite this uncanny talent, he could not lay down hands which were worse. Time and time and time again he would make comments like “I know you have a queen high flush” (and he would be right) but then he would call with two pair. His favorite hand was 3-5 offsuit, which we nicknamed “the Richie.” When hands like that are your favorite hands, you tend to do poorly at poker. Richie the Hat is a fond memory.

Then there was Freddy Mo who actually introduced me to a home game in which as many as 50 different people played in tournaments and cash games. Sometimes a new player would try his luck in the tournament and get knocked out quickly. As he forlornly headed for the door Freddy would always call out to him “thanks for coming and grab a toaster on your way out.” Freddy was a master of the salt-in-the-wound. He also coined a few other oft-repeated phrases including “Hit to lose, America’s favorite new game show” which he would say whenever somebody who was drawing dead on the turn hit a card to seemingly improve his hand, and “I have a developer” whenever he made a foolish preflop call (which was often).

Paul was and will be another of my favorite players. I say “was and will be” because he has quit poker permanently for the fifth time this year,
Paul has a unique poker perspective. Losing $1 or $10,000 is still losing and so whenever he would find himself losing late in the evening he would straddle, sometimes for 30 times the small blind. And then if anyone dared call, he would raise another 500 times the small blind without looking at his cards. Talk about action, this man stood alone atop that mountain. He was also one of the most prolific bluffers I have ever played against. On one occasion he was seated across the table from me when he bluffed me out of a hand. He then texted the Visor who was sitting to my right saying “hahaha I bluffed him.” When the Visor turned to me and said aloud “look at this text that Paul just sent me,” it instigated the third time that Paul quit poker permanently, his logic being that it made no sense to play poker with people who can’t keep a secret.

My favorite poker moment of the year though came against Tony, arguably the tightest player I have ever played against (in fact last week in an 8 handed game where everyone else limped, he mucked his cards on the button and while discarding them an ace accidentally turned up). Tony is an extremely successful tournament player and a guy who never stops talking in an effort to gain information from his opponent. In this particular hand he raised preflop and I called with pocket 5s. He checked the flop of A-K-9, leading me to believe that he hit the flop hard. Otherwise he would surely have made a continuation bet. The turn was a 5, giving me a set on a totally rainbow board. He stared at me and in a very serious tone said “that 5 helps me.” I stared back without comment as he made a large bet. When I called his bet he reiterated “Be careful. I told you that 5 helped me.” Again I did not react. When a 7 hit the river and he checked I knew that I was a winner. As I reached for chips he desperately tried to stop me from betting. “Don’t bet,” he intoned, “the 5 is going to make me a winner,” the inference being that he had A-5 in his hand. I made a bet which couldn’t be resisted by anyone with a decent sized ace, including Tony. He called with his A-J and when I turned over my pocket 5s you could see the blood drain from his face. His embarrassment was obvious when he meekly pointed out that I had good reason not to fear the 5.

I play with a number of other characters. If they beg me to write about them then I will in the future. If they beg me not to write about them, then I’ll devote entire columns to them. In the meantime go find something else to read.