Beverly Hills Home Game
I have missed my regular home game in New York City. On Monday nights, my buddy Ferrari ran the game out of his seventeenth-fl oor apartment located one block away from the Copacabana. We nicknamed his apartment the Blue Parrot. Ferrari was an attorney at a prestigious litigation fi rm and the regular players at the Blue Parrot consisted primarily of work friends or his classmates from NYU Law School. The other seats were fi lled with a rotating cast of players that included a fashion photographer from SoHo, a sportswriter from The NY Times, a mortgage broker from Connecticut, an up-andcoming stand-up comedian from Brooklyn, a slam poet from the Lower East Side, and a bio-engineer from London.
Over the last couple of years, I have played poker in over a dozen countries and in card rooms all over the United States. But no matter where I went, I always longed for the comfortable confi nes of the weekly home game at the Blue Parrot. I craved the banter and the homemade guacamole, not to mention the spilled beer and bad lawyer jokes.
Since I started playing poker in college, I’ve had the opportunity to sit in at different home games all over the country. One game stood out during the time I lived in Seattle over a decade ago. Several friends of mine shared a house in the Fremont section of Seattle and they hosted a home game every Monday night in the kitchen of the Trout House. They nicknamed it the Trout House because several members of the acid-jazz band Kilgore Trout lived there. The band members practiced in the basement and we could hear them during the games. When practice was over, the guitar and sax players wandered upstairs to the kitchen and bought into the game.
We drank Labatt, smoked BC nugs, listened to great music, and told off-color jokes. In short, we had a blast. The games at the Trout House were some of my favorite home games of all-time because everyone who played in them was pretty cool and we didn’t mind losing money to one another. Mostly everyone had dead-end jobs either as line cooks or bartenders or waitresses which meant everyone had cash to play.
We had some good players and the games were dealer’s choice. We’d buy in for $40 to start and it would not be uncommon to rebuy a few times. We played a lot of stud and wild card games until the fi lm Rounders came out. I saw it three times at the Neptune Theater in Seattle. At that point, inspired by Mike McD, we introduced Hold’em to the Trout House game. Initially, we kept making mistakes on which cards to burn. Yeah, we were total rookies, but we thought Rounders was the greatest movie in the history of cinema and we just had to learn Hold’em. Little did I know that the fi lm would affect millions of other poker junkies around the world.
The majority of home games that I played in were constructed for social interaction. The stakes didn’t matter because the main philosophy centered on hanging out with friends and having a good time. Competition and skill were secondary to the camaraderie and relaxed atmosphere that the home games instilled. That’s why I found it diffi cult to play in those rare instances where I was invited to ultracompetitive high stakes home games. Who liked taking their friends’ money? Sadists and assholes, that’s who. Those social misfi ts often ruined the main objectives of the night – to have fun. Most people worked hard and were looking for an evening away from the offi ce, the spouse, and the kids. Home games provided a wonderful escape for a couple of hours.
After going through withdrawal for a couple of years, I fi nally got my home game fi x. I recently moved in with my girlfriend who lives in Los Angeles. We both were invited to play in John “Schecky” Caldwell’s home game located just fi ve minutes away. The game rotated among the houses of Schecky’s different high school friends who lived in the posh Beverly Hills area. I was eager to fi nally enjoy that casualness of a home game along with the possibility of picking up a few bucks against amateurs with deep pockets.
I played a couple of times over the last year and always had a blast. Those splendid evenings were a warm reminder about how much fun poker can be when played among close friends. The social aspects of poker always put me in positive spirits, unlike the cruel gambling demons in Las Vegas that haunt me with every turn of the card.
The Beverly Hills home game was hosted at a multimillion dollar house, with not one but three Lexuses (or is it Lexi?) out front. Inside, there was always a well-stocked bar with plenty of imported beer, expensive wine, and spirits along with a massive spread of catered food – organic pizza, Kobe beef sloppy joes, and homemade Philly cheese steak sandwiches.
Schecky’s home game broke down to 50/50 male to female ratio with an age variation from 16 to 91. Yes, there was a 91-year-old woman who was sweet as can be playing in the game. The rest of the crew featured a travel writer, a foul mouthed rabbi, a television writer, an entertainment lawyer, a comedienne, a former NBA basketball player, a travel writer, a CEO of a global media empire, a student at Beverly Hills high school, a fi lm producer, and a hemp-toking former child actor. That potpourri of players made every home game a fl avorful evening.
The fi rst time that I ever played, the home game coincided with a birthday party for the hostess’ dog. Only in Beverly Hills could you attend a dual celebration of poker and pets. The pooch turned 21 in dog years and the entire house was decorated for the special occasion. The birthday dog got a special treat for his big day… gourmet cupcakes from Sprinkles, the hottest bakery in Beverly Hills, where people line up around the block just to purchase their savory wares. While the game went down, several dogs ran amok throughout the house and darted underneath our table. One of them had a bladder accident right behind my chair and I inadvertently stepped in dog pee. That never happens at the Bellagio, but it was one of those things that make home games unique experiences.
The conversation at the tables is always interesting due to the diversity of the players, many of whom are involved in the entertainment industry. I’ve heard some hilarious things that you would only hear at a Beverly Hills home game, such as…
“I had my aura photographed last weekend.” Everyone knows you need a great agent and an even better plastic surgeon.” "Did you know Michael Jackson’s son's Neverland Ranch has been rented out as a retreat for priests? And it happens to be across the street from middle school for boys."
"I was wondering if you could take a peek at the last new draft of my screenplay.” "How often do you feed lamb to your dog?” "Who would want to rob me? All they would get is my Prius and a diabetic cat.”
“Anyone know any good acupuncturists?” I spent $40,000 renovating my bathroom. It was $38,000 for the marble and two grand for the toilet.”
The fi rst time I played in a tournament at the Beverly Hills home game, I tangled with the youngest and the oldest player. I busted the sweet 91-year-old lady (and I didn’t feel bad about it at all), but the 16-year-old girl with black polish on her nails totally schooled me. I failed to bust her when my pocket kings were no match for her K-10. She fl opped a straight and added insult to injury when she rivered a straight fl ush. And she wasn’t done toying with me. She slow played pocket aces against me and doubled up on another hand. She looked like she was in her early twenties, but clued us in to her age when she mentioned, “It’s getting late. I shouldn’t be driving after 11pm.”
“You on probation or something?” I said. “No. You can’t drive after 11pm in the fi rst year you get your license.” “Wait, how old are you?” I wondered. “I’ll be 17 soon.” “So you’re 16?” I said. She nodded. “How’s this year’s crop of freshman chicks looking?” I said as Wooderson’s voice from Dazed and Confused echoed through my mind. “That’s what I like about high school girls. I get older and they stay the same age.”
The Beverly Hills home game went on hiatus shortly after Schecky’s wife, Jen Leo, had a baby. But the hiatus was short-lived and the game returned. The poker night coincided with a “meet the new baby” night. The game was hosted at the home of an infomercial gazillionaire who recently added more moolah to his fortune with his latest products: knock-off versions of the Slanket and the Sham-Wow. I used to watch those horrible commercials all the time and think, “Who are the inbred nits who would actually buy one of those Slankets?” Well apparently, our nation is made up of millions of knuckleheads who desperately crave a blanket with sleeves.
For the rest of the night, I had my mind on chiseling away at that massive Slanket/Sham-Wow counterfeit fortune. The special home game attracted two pros in Rafe Furst and Joe Sebok and a couple of random people from the poker media including two of the guys from the Wicked Chops Poker crew and former BLUFF TV hostess Gloria Balding. Rafe Furst arrived mid-way through the fi rst level. He spotted a baby’s pacifi er on the table in front of an empty seat. “Is Phil Hellmuth here?” he asked.
That zinger got a hearty chuckle from the peanut gallery. The Poker Brat was not invited, and instead the pacifi er belonged to Jen Leo’s newborn. Luckily, she put the baby to bed before I sent the foulmouthed rabbi on mega-tilt and he unleashed a verbal maelstrom that would make Bobby Knight blush.
The rabbi was the most hilarious character at the home game. He always started out jovial as he slowly sipped a pint glass fi lled with Ketel One vodka and cranberry juice. As the game progressed, he drank more and more and his language grew saucier and saucier. At the end of the second cocktail, the smack talking began. After the third, he unleashed a barrage of C-bombs. One of my personal favorite scathing insults: “May the fl eas of a hundred camels infest your armpits!”
I was in awe. He wasn’t the fi rst rabbi that I ever met who dropped a few F-bombs, but out of all the rabbis that I knew, he drank them all under the table and with the same enthusiasm and professionalism as a Catholic priest.
The foul-mouthed rabbi sat to my right and we constantly bantered back and forth. I became his nemesis and we both made the fi nal table, except that he was bleeding chips and on the verge of tilting off the rest of his stack. I went in for the kill. With fi ve players to go, he opened with a min-raise. I was short-stacked at that point and shoved with A-5. The Rabbi called and taunted me as he tabled his A-J. I fl opped a fi ve to take the lead, rivered another fi ve, and won the hand with trips. I doubled through the rabbi. He spewed profanities as I raked in his chips.
“You little bitch!” the rabbi screamed as he slurped on his drink. “I fuckin’ hate you!” Man, you have no idea how much I’ve missed that sort of fun.
