PAIN

  After more than a quarter of a century playing no limit Texas Hold 'Em, I often wonder if weird situations are not the rule rather than the exception.  Last night this suspicion was confirmed anew.  Not five minutes into a $2-$5 game at the Bellagio, I found myself in third place ? before the flop ? holding wired kings.  That's right, two of my opponents were dealt Ace-Ace.  Worse still for one of them, four diamonds appeared on the board.  That gave the other player an ace high flush.  (Not the nuts, mind you: those four red cards included the four, five, seven and eight of diamonds.  A wise guy seated two seats to my left said he was chased out holding a pair of red sixes.  In that case, perhaps the weirdest part of that hand was his refusal to come in for all his chips.)

 

            While I loathe playing catch-up, particularly so early in the evening, I did not have much of a choice.  Either I bought in for another two hundred or got up and bid the place adieu.  Reluctantly, I went into my pocket.

 

            Guess what?  Ten minutes later I went all-in with wired queens.  Called by (1) a bearded gentleman holding two kings and (2) an Oriental lady dealt a pair of jacks, I shut my eyes waiting for the flop to turn over.  Damn it!  Give me a chance at least, I said to nobody in particular.  No such luck.  The other two kings appeared along with "what the hell's the difference?"  There was no way my two ladies were going to beat four crowned monarchs.

 

            I went into my pocket and withdrew another two bills.  Down four hundred bucks after twenty minutes, I considered trying my hand at roulette with its tempting 36 to one payout.  If a lousy ten dollars could get me back to just about even . . .

 

Forget it, I said nearly aloud.  There's a zero in there and a double zero.  That's thirty-eight combinations, isn' it?  Casinos in Las Vegas are not noted for giving suckers an even break.

 

More than ninety minutes passed before I dropped the last chip of my most recent buy-in.  If you ask me which is more painful, losing quickly or losing by attrition, I'd have to say it's fifty-fifty.   Oh well, it was nice to see the Oriental lady had moved ahead, and the guy who had taken a bad beat with wired aces was also making a comeback.   How is it that some people are able to recoup losses quickly while others have to crawl through fire just to win the blinds of a single hand? 

 

At the end of a short story called "A Friend of Kafka," author Isaac Beshevis Singer has his long suffering protagonist say: "if there is no God who is playing all these tricks on me?" I guess that sums up the attitude most Texas Hold 'Em players have on a losing day at the tables.  Besides placing the blame on bad karma, does it not imply we might emerge victorious next time out?   But don't think such flippancy relieves one's pain.  Because I'm telling you, it hurts.  It hurts more than any non-poker player can ever imagine. 

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