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Poker can be a very emotionally taxing game, and people
tend to do some crazy stuff when things aren’t
going their way; sometimes you feel like the whole world
is against you. Take, for example, this story that happened
at The Bike a while back.
The game was $6/$12 Hold’em and it was your typical
LA Limit Hold’em game. Pots were so big they needed
two dealers to push them. One participant was an Asian
gentleman who was having just a horrific run of bad
luck. He managed to lose several big pots in a row and
now, finally, he found himself in the biggest pot of
the day. When I say this was a big pot, ladies and gentlemen,
I mean it could have qualified as a small European nation.
Our friend, who was sitting there with pocket aces in
his hand, had flopped trips and was beginning to feel
his fortune had turned, when he got rivered by a gut
shot straight, and the aces went down in flames. As
the dealer was shoving the beast of a pot, someone said:
“What’s that smell?”
Evidently, the Asian gentleman had decided he’d
had enough of them aces, and was busily setting fire
to them. The player who had won the pot decided to save
the day and yelled out to the floor man: “Set
up on 4!”
For readers unfamiliar with the term, this is what
we dealers call for when we need new cards. Since this
particular deck now only had 50 cards, a new set up
was probably a good suggestion.
HOW DO THEM CARDS TASTE?
This reminds me of a story I heard about the funniest
guy in the game today, Mike Laing, involving a pair
of kings. I recently bumped into Mike and asked him
if it was true. Here’s what he told me:
“Well, I sit down in this $15/$30 game, and all
I have is $300, but somehow I manage to run the $300
to well over three dimes. I’ve been drinking quite
a bit, and now I’m kind of steamrolling the table.
Up in the top section, I spy Daniel Negreanu playing
$300/$600. After a while, he comes by ready to cash
out and we have an open seat, so I motion for him to
sit down and join the table. He has well over 20K on
him, but decides to join the game and have a little
fun, and you know Daniel – he’s raising
blind almost every hand and playing crazy, just betting
and raising everything. So after a while, I convince
him that he and I should play overs. When only Daniel
and I are in a pot, the game becomes no-limit.
“Anyway, this hand comes down in which we’re
heads up; I’m in the big blind and Daniel is in
the small blind, and I look down and I see two kings.
Well, you have to realize that I’d just got busted
with two kings on the final table in Tunica, so kings
were not my best friends at the time.
Anyway, Daniel opens the pot for a small raise and I
re-raise him to, like, $500. He then says, “I’m
all in,” and I, of course, call. Daniel flips
over A-T offsuit, so I’m feeling pretty good.
“Well, Daniel hits his ace on the turn and I’m
broke, and when the dealer asks for the cards back,
something snaps. I stand up from the table, screaming,
“No, no, no… you’re not getting these
back!” I proceed to tear them up into about four
small pieces and, with a shot of Jack, down the hatch
they go. In short, I ate ’em.
“Ten minutes later, I rush to the bathroom and
try to vomit the cards back up, but them kings just
wouldn’t come out. They were really stuck fast
and I start to get a little worried. I leave the cardroom
and go down to my car. I had just changed the wiper
blades and I had the old rubber blade in the back seat,
so I decide to use it to try to dislodge the pocket
cowboys from my throat. No luck. Next I drive home and
try one of them coat hangers with the rubber ends on
them; still no luck; them kings were not coming.”
Mike eventually ended up in hospital, where, following
several x-rays, a doctor was able to extract the kings
from his windpipe, and Mike was able to extract a telephone
number from one of the nurses. “So,” he
reflects, “apart from losing that big pot, not
a bad night really.”
Scary thing about this story is that I believe every
word of it. I know Mike and I know what he is capable
of doing; he is quite possibly the craziest guy I have
come across in the world of poker. I hope this stuff
brings a smile to your face, and next time you see Mike
do me a favor and ask him how two kings taste.
Until next time, may the flop be with you… Always,
THE HUX
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