Sorry. Gratuitous Kenny Rogers. I'll never do it again.
Last night we were invited to a Labor Day Poker Party that ended up being surprisingly fun. The buy-in was only $10 (unless you lost, went out of the game, and chose to buy back in again), and the winnings were split such that the third-place winner would get his/her $10 back, the second-place winner would get $20, and the first-place winner would get everything else. So the system was acceptable. Not that I really have anything to judge it against, since the last time I played poker was probably penny-ante Five Card Draw with my mom when I was a teenager. Well, I may have played video poker once or twice at an Indian casino shortly after my 18th birthday, but frankly, that's a long time ago now, too.
Anyway, I wasn't sure if I was even going to want to stay at the party very long, since the only people we knew were the host; his girlfriend, our friend Kathleen, who works at the college as a librarian; one other faculty person; and then Rob had gone to high school with one of the host's friends. Plus it turned out that some totally random other person at the party had taken Color & Design from Rob when he first started teaching in town. But basically, it was an unfamiliar group of people.
Luckily, there were only about 12 people there total, which meant it was fairly low-pressure; and most of them turned out to be pretty cool. Plus Rob and I totally swept up. Rob got third place, and then I ended up splitting the rest of the pot with the other remaining person, since we were both tired and both had about the same number of chips. So we ended up with a $40 net profit on the evening. I actually felt a little guilty. I guess I'm not really a gambler at heart, but I did enjoy learning how to play Texas Hold 'Em.
Things got a little extra entertaining when one guy, evidently trying to sound macho, for some reason decided to brag about his sex prowess and loudly mentioned (in reference to his girlfriend, who was right there), "Yeah, I fucked her twice today before we even got here." Then, in response to an awkward silence and some comments along the lines of how maybe it wasn't entirely appropriate to refer to nailing his girlfriend right in front of her in the third person, I seem to remember him repeating the comment, then digging himself deeper somehow (I think I was trying not to listen because it was too painful). Then, a little later in the evening the guy got too stoned and had to go home--thereby possibly saving himself from himself, and putting an early end to his poker night. Ironically, if he'd stayed, he could have been splitting those first-place earnings with me, since it was his stand-in who ended up sharing the winner's pot. Ah, the perils of too much weed and beer.
2 comments:
The last time I got involved in gambling was when I won the 'pick the losing horse contest' at my cousin's Kentucky Derby party. I won $11 by default: my loser wasn't actually the loser; the real loser was disqualified. You know you're not the gambling type when even the loser you pick wins by default.
The girl at your party could've had some fun with her indiscreet lover by saying 'Gosh, did you? I don't remember that.'
Hee hee! Now that would have been entertaining. When I wrote that post I found myself thinking that, as a writer, I should have been paying more attention and honing my eavesdropping skills--but it was just too awkward. The other people sitting around the table kept trying to hint to him what an ass he was being, and trying to give him chances to redeem himself, but it kept getting worse!
I love your losing horse story! I think the extent of my gambling is when I play solitaire "Vegas-style" on the computer, and that's not very often...
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