January 30, 2011

  • Riverboat Rosie

    My mom's birthday is February 1. Ever since my mom died in 2000, I have always had a dealer's choice poker game in her honor right around her birthday. Most of the time, I've had it the Friday before her birthday. See, my mom was the biggest gambler I have ever known. I've always said that she had such a bad gambling problem that the only way she cured it was by dying. Let me give you some examples of just how much she loved to gamble.

    Some time ago, circa 1997 or 1998, my mom had her gambling friends over to play dealer's choice Labor Day weekend. They started about 5pm on a Saturday. Being a guy in my young 20s, I went out with friends for the night about 7ish. When I got home at 3 am, they were still playing. Of course, I went to bed. I got up at 11 and guess the fuck what, they were still fucking playing! They had even ordered take out breakfast from a local place. I think they finally finished playing about noon and her friends left and she went to bed. She got up a few short hours later and went to the riverboat casino for more gambling, getting home at like 4am. The next day, Labor Day, they played cards again for about 5 or 6 hours.

    In addition to cards, my mom loved just about all gambling. Like every old lady, she loved bingo. Of course, there were the slots and lotto tickets. She would stay out until all hours of the night gambling. I remember being in my early 20s and staying out until 6 am and beating my mother home. How pathetic was that? Here I was, a young guy and my 60 something year old mother was staying out later than I was!

    So this past Friday was the annual card game. We started at 8 in the pm. We had 6 guys playing including myself. I try to keep this game about as exclusive as possible in that I try to only invite people who knew my mom. At one point, we were playing a game called The Good, Bad and the Ugly, which is a five card poker hand that takes FOREVER to play. Why does it take forever? Because after the cards are dealt, the dealer flips up a card from the deck. That card is good in that it is wild. Commence with a round of betting before another card is flipped up. That card is bad in that if you have that card in your hand, it is now dead. Another round of betting and the ugly card is flipped up and if anybody has that card, it kills the hand and we re-deal. The game can not end until nobody has the ugly card. It is quite the pot builder. My friend Dave does not like it. So, what does he do when my brother decides to play it, he bets $5, causing everybody but one person, me, to fold. I call him because I'm not going to let him get away with doing that shit. So next round of betting, he bets another $5. All of a sudden, I grow a set of stupid fucking balls. I get my wallet and everybody is thinking I'm going to put the $5 and keep going. Instead of $5, I pull out two twenty dollar bills and throw them in the pot. The look on his face was nearly priceless; if I had to put a price on it, it would be $40. He sat there stunned, thinking to himself "what the fuck just happened" while everybody else's jaws dropped. I think he was kind of goaded into calling me because he put $40 in. And guess what? The next card was a kill card so we had to play another hand. And in that hand, I won the pot.

    The whole night was so much fun. Later on, Dave wound up getting a natural royal flush in a game of Screw Your Neighbor. The group of us have been playing cards together for the better part of 17 years and this was the first time anybody had ever gotten a natural royal flush. Of course, he won the hand, but it goes to show you just how rare and hard a royal flush is to come by.

    Last night was more poker at another friend's house who is not part of the group of guys I played with on Friday night. He wound up  having 18 guys for his Texas Hold 'Em tournament. The first game I finished 4th which was good enough for $30. The next game out of 14 players I finished 7th which was good enough for me to go home.