At first, when he'd turned over his cards with a clap of his hands and a “YEAH BABY!!” I couldn't figure out what was going on. I had KK, he had JJ. The board was XQ9 K T. I studied it for a second. I looked at his cards, I looked at mine. I had no flush, I had no full house. He had about $30k on the table, in six $2k stacks of white chips, a $5k chip on top, a huge wad of hundred dollar bills behind. I had about $4200. The pot was about $8600.
About an hour before I'd sat down on this table there was a big commotion when he'd made a deal to go all in blind for with another player, for $5k. He wound up with the winning hand with 63. As I was sitting with him, he was in about half the pots, straddling every time he could, telling stories about bluffing Esfandari out of a $30k pot with 74.
So, I had Kings, and I limped in early position. He was on the button and raised $300 into a $100 pot. It folded back to me, and I did my best to hesitate for awhile, to look, at the pot, look at him, look down at my chips. After thirty seconds I said “I raise,” and threw out three hundred dollar chips. I instructed the dealer to take the money into the pot. I looked at the pot, I looked at my chips. I scrupulously avoided looking at him. For a second I thought about the possibility of him having AA, which I figured was impossible due to his over betting the pot. He was here to gamble, there was no way he'd want to kill the action on his aces. So, I thought for a little while longer, and I figured that if he had a middle pair or even a high ace he'd convince himself that I had a low pair and that he should gamble with me if I went all in.
“I'm all in,” I said in a quick high pitched voice, as I made a sweeping hand motion over my chips. I put my hand tightly over my mouth and most of my face as he thought about it. Eventually he asked the dealer for a count. I pushed my chips toward the pot, the dealer took them in and said in Chinese accented broken English,“thirty eight fifty.”
“Thirty eight hundred?” I say nothing, I put my hand over my mouth and do my best to not move, not make eye contact, and to look nervous. He has a pained look on his face. “I'm either a four to one favorite, or it's fifty-fifty.” I say nothing, keep my hand tightly over my mouth, I look up at him a little, I make a little eye contact, I look back at the pot. Finally he says, “ok, I'll gamble with you,” and throws his $5k chip into the pot. Dude to my left says “Aces.” I turn up the Kings. He says “you're good,” in a glum voice with a dejected look on his face.
It's 4:55AM PST as I type the first draft of this. I am drinking red wine and still feeling numb and in a dream. I keep thinking the “live by the sword” cliché. I guess I am that cliché now. The funny part about this is that I'm still actually up $1,265 on the trip, averaging a whopping $60.24 per session.
The real question is how did I get so much money on the table in the first place? Let me first say that I made zero blunders tonight. I had one $2k mistake of not being able to fold my own kings when I could have put a very tight older man on aces. The first big losing hand was a $4k bluff of trying to get a dude off QJ on a Q8X X A board. I had pretty much the perfect read on him, but maybe he had a better read on me. I guess I did make a big blunder after this though, of getting upset after losing $4k and putting the $5300 on the table. Which was every red cent I had at the Commerce bank. I felt that I was the best player there, and after losing that KK/AA hand, I was down to $2k which I built back up to the $4200. So I guess I might have actually been the best player there.
Bullocks. This doesn't matter. The numbness of the shock is wearing off. Through the wine I can feel it being replaced by an anger I think will be all consuming. I need at least a week, maybe two, in the poker hospital.
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