Poker Chump

In addition to being drunks, my family are also gamblers. This is a relatively new phenomenon; I remember after Thanksgiving (and Christmas) of last year playing poker around my aunt’s house until the wee hours of the morning and taking everyone’s money. I was on fire - at one point I stepped outside to get some air, and three hot chicks showed up out of nowhere and blew me. Seriously. Ok, well, not seriously.

Last year, my family seemed new to the whole poker thing, but that didn’t stop me from brutalizing them and bragging about it (”Well, I have 2 Kings here, but then - wait a minute - what’s this? Oh, that looks like a third King. And something else is here in this pile of cards that I have before me - can anyone make this out? It looks to me like 2 Aces. Can someone please check this? My eyesight is poor. Is that 3 Kings and 2 Aces? So I win? Oh good. I am going to donate this to the Church, first thing in the morning. Also, you guys suck. I’m ashamed to be related to you. I haven’t seen a beating this bad since my last girlfriend threw out my Oreos because they were stale.”).

But this year, my family really upped the ante. I went over to an aunt's house for a family dinner, and as the evening was drawing to a close, my uncle pulled out a full set of poker chips, and we began to play (first Texas Hold ‘Em, then 7-Card Stud).

And boy, was I off. Like, really, really off. I said before we even started that I was due for a loss, since I had been playing some most excellent poker. Of course, realizing this did not stop me from talking a good game, calling my cousins (both male and female, ages 16-22) “chumps”, “losers”, and, as I got drunker, “cockasses”.

The bad karma came back to haunt me, because I was cold. Ice cold. It was as though some of the cards I was getting were in another language, and not even part of a standard deck. By 2am, I think I had once gotten dealt a 14, three of my cards seemed to be in Russian, and one just said “You suck at this, fatass.” It was awful.

Also, we were playing dealer calls wilds, so that means the person dealing while dealing could say, “Ok, in this hand, 7’s are wild”, so that any 7 could be any suit, any number or face. And in about twenty hands, I think I got maybe three wild cards. And each time this happened, a competitor would have five of a kind or a royal flush. Not good.

But I’m happy to report that I battled back at the end, and after seven hours (!) I left with my $20 buy-in back and an extra $20, which I ended up smoking the next night. Good times, and I’m looking forward to playing again, when I hope to be a little more lucky, and a little more high.