Back to the Paris for more series games. A mixed game tournament heads-up has a small audience roaring through the conventional hall. One player takes a pot, pounds the table and leaps up, pumping his fist to the howling. The series is poker at its most sporting, and the crowds are only growing. They’ll peak in less than ten days.
The ring games are filling, too. Curiously, one of my dealers is not a fan of this blog; he’s left several confused and dissatisfied comments. Of course, he doesn’t recognize me in person. I am not surprised to find that he is a quality dealer. It’s mildly interesting because he is one of those “everything must be positive” types. I’ve written a little about this need for flattery in the performing arts, which might as well include poker.
In person, this desire and quality is fine. At the table, even excellent. Doesn’t make for much of an examination of the world around you, though. It’s not a problem, and I will not be speaking with him beyond the usual small talk. I try not to think about my readers too much; there are exceptions for sure. I do write for them, in one sense, yes, but I am really writing for some abstraction, some impossible soul who is interested in the things I am, I suppose. Or can be persuaded to be. I’m not sure exactly, nor does it matter, because the writer is compelled to his task.
I’m back at 2/5 and a lot of 2/5/10. It’s useless cycle to resist because this is where I will find the win rate I need. The problem is the swings are not friendly to my diminished bankroll. Tonight, I am gifted a great start with aces against ace king. Is this the time I get things going? Not so fast: I can’t hold on to it for even thirty hands. I end up facing an extremely polarized line for most of my stack. Holding the right blocker and having taken the right line, I decide this is the time to make the hero call. Of course, my opponent has just hit an unlikely gutter. Well played by him but this is the sort of thing that is keeping me in shambles. I’m glad I can make calls others won’t, but it hasn’t worked out positively this year.
My poker conscience is strong, however. What I mean by this, is that I don’t tilt, not at all. I even expect to tilt! Shouldn’t I feel tilted, I ask myself. Yet I can’t find the feeling because I haven’t really made a significant mistake. What they don’t tell you is that real tilt, the bad stuff, comes from errors which you can’t consciously see. Your mind revolts against a mistake you could have avoided and gets your attention.
So, I play on. I will be rewarded. Meanwhile, I do my thing and win a lot of small pots. I’m three-betting lighter than this table likes, which is nice because no one is intimidated outside of the series anymore. This then leads to having it pre and getting all the money in on the flop with a big check raise in a four-bet pot on the right board. I’m winning with a classic formula.
And then losing. This time, stupid stuff when I 4b shove over a smaller stack and he calls off with J9s. Tournament players, hisses Edward Longshanks. I lose. That’s irritating but we’re not leaving these guys tonight. I order a coffee which never arrives.
As the night deepens and tables break, the cock-sure local legend Miss Deal makes his way to my table. I don’t get a piece of his usual late-night spew. He’s certainly gotten me pretty badly over the last year, making sets in three bet pots when I have unfoldable hands. Tonight he rips ace rag in for 150 bbs and a quiet player’s jacks hold. Miss Deal fires off two full stacks before finding the exit. I’ll take the rain check, in this case. I’m in the market for some spazzing.
Yet how can anyone roid out? The Paris atmosphere is cool and airy. The cash tables are still busy, even at three in the morning. Staff is plentiful and hustling. We see the same dealers return but not the dissatisfied reader. There’s little fixing that. Everyone wants something specific in their arts, but I think being openminded is best. On my Substack reading series, every book has been valuable, even the current brick I am struggling through. I think about this book a lot, wondering why I don’t appreciate it so much. I delineate its style and content; I question my interpretation. We will likely reach an impasse. The games are no different. I’ve been playing better and better, negotiating. Everything is working well enough.
Is it? Where are the wins, where is my money? I can’t panic, even performatively for the blog. The wins will return, not because they always do – that would be a lie. The winning could end forever. The winning will return because I play well enough. In fact, what is catching my attention a bit is the idea of playing really well. Isn’t that what the series is supposed to represent, after all? I look over at the tournament area. Empty.
Aside from running well, the tournaments do celebrate good play. I’m so disciplined but is this a good quality? Maybe I won’t be on stream or even enter the equity lotteries, but I feel like I might need to make a push of some sort, even if it’s just volume. The poker arguments and advice and aggravation and excitement is all over social media, even when the games cool off after midnight. The series is having its effect on everyone in poker, even me.
I put in another session. Little goes right. I lose the minimum by folding flop in a four-bet pot; I am shown middle set but maybe I didn’t have to make this good decision in the first place. I lose again in a three-bet pot, this time a little more as I am forced to continue one street getting five to one. Everyone has it; at one point the table grumpkin, a clear bump on the log absurdly hiding in sunglasses, finds a three bet from the big blind against my UTG open: what a joke. Grumpkin sizes small so I see a flop with a suited ace. K33r: for fuck’s sake.
Soon yet another incompetent Ethiopian dealer arrives at our table; so many of this particular brand, I’d like to know the economics of the trend. She can’t do anything right and doesn’t care to, but among her faults, she’s not taking a dollar in rake! At one point I quietly tell the floor he might need to supervise this one, but he only says, “I know” grimly and immediately hurries away from us. When the players start leaving after fifteen minutes, likely influenced by our impossible dealer who is making everyone uneasy and forcing us to watch her every move, the remaining ones call for reduced rake! My bros aren’t paying attention despite paying attention. The floor acquiesces to “reduced” rake. I laugh and the Brit asks why, but I of course can’t explain it to them until later. Meanwhile, I am losing, somehow, at this table.
The dealer taking rake simply becomes a new thing to go wrong. She starts trying to take rake preflop, or the wrong rake when it is time to pay the house. At one point she arbitrarily decides that twice the normal rake is right; maybe she has a future in private games. I help her at every spot, and we get through the half-hour. When I win a tiny pot, I explain the rake to her; I don’t when the others win pots but she forgets, to keep with poker tradition: it’s us against the house, which I don’t really believe but am not going to upset anyone. As she is wrapping up, the dealer turns to me and says something inscrutable, which I at first assume is some normal gratitude for rescuing her performance. However, after I ask her for a clarification I realize she is angry and is demanding why I am recording her on my phone, which I was not doing. Off she goes to a higher stakes table; have fun with that.
My stack dwindles further. I take a good line that involves a river overbet when a straight comes in. My opponent calls with third pair, no kicker, which is a surprise on a one-liner. Okay, I guess I’m owned, but clearly he is thinking differently than I am, because he mocks me with a striking, contemptuous tone, snorting at me “trying to represent a king?” as if it were some strange thing that the opener on the button would have a king! I have more kings in this spot than any other in poker! Unlike the hand the night before, when I felt good after making a tough call, now I’m frustrated and angry. What is this idiot’s problem? He’s flatted from the small blind with Q4 and is giving me grief about poker strategy. This is my reward for getting us through the Eithiopian’s reign of ineptitude.
I will think about that striking contempt on the drive home. No one can behave, it sometimes seems, and that makes sense in a culture of people that no one wants. I have forgotten, like DFW’s fish, the water I am breathing. These are my people and they are me.
So, all my good feelings are gone when a new weirdo sits in. He’s not moving steadily and gripping an empty energy drink bottle as if it were a crutch or a cane; he rubs it against his face, too, as if the plastic were absorbent. I suppose that he is drunk or on something stronger. He opens to 2x, which is just as odd as the rest of his behavior. I three-bet him and now he goes into a bewildered tank. He stares at me as if I were not from earth. After a full minute he makes a four-bet to a very precise size; I know what this usually means and it is bad news. I have probably misread him, but I’m not folding with only eighty bigs left. I stuff it without fanfare and he calls. He turns over jacks as if we’re in a tournament, and I oblige him by showing my ace-queen. I can get this whole night restarted by winning one flip.
Jack on the flop.
-1028
