Travel Rogue

October 17, 2005

Poker Night in Elgin

Spent five hours Saturday night learning poker the hard way, i.e. playing for money. Not too bad. Buy-in was only $10, and most of our antes were only a nickel. At our table at least. One table over you could hear cries of, "A dollar? Big spender!"

The currency conversion that happens in poker is fascinating. The actual value of a US dollar increases significantly when tied to a black chip. A single dollar becomes 100 pennies buoyed by a big dose of bravado and bullshit. It would seem that bullshit carries infinitely more value in poker than it does in real life. At the table, a bluffer is respected and awed. "I can't believe you won that with a seven high." Players who folded cluck and shake their heads in disbelief. Yet you take this same talent in the boardroom, "We expect to beat expectations by 82% in the third quarter," and executives snicker and dismiss such blatant claims. There's just no bluffing a corporate competitor.

At the table, everything seems exponentially funnier. It must have something to do with equality and social space. Everyone starts off on equal footing. Identical antes, identical buy-ins, and the same number of cards each. The dealer rotates from one player to the next. It's the great equalizer. Your ability to win does not depend on how big you are or who you know, but on what cards get dealt. Players are seated close enough to trade witty reparte, but far enough apart to prevent chip snaking.

One of the players seated at our table, Michael, kept winning hands with a dependable pair of queens. Oh, how he loved his queens. This of course led to much jeering, jiving, and even the creation of a new game in his name. In the poker variation dubbed 'Michael', "Queens are wild and there ain't no straights." Hobie had us on the floor with that one.

Other, more familiar games were Screw Your Neighbor, Little Kings, Night Baseball, Iron Cross and the ever dependable five and seven card stud. By the end of the night, my shuffle had deteriorated and my eyes were blurry, even though I only had three beers over the course of five hours. It was sheer poker exhaustion. And through all the laughs and curses, I managed to come out six bucks ahead. Not bad for a novice.

Posted by carolyn at October 17, 2005 08:41 AM

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