Do You Have a Gambling Problem?

I've actually played at The Oaks 5 days in a row, which might be a first for me. Friday I got absolutely blown up, losing about 3 racks/thousands over the course of a very long day. Saturday I basically broke even, and Sunday Danielle and I went over and played for a few hours after we finished watching the Steeler's game at Kilowatt. That was pretty fun, as I decided to put her into the 15/30 game and take 80% of her action (so that she was effectively playing 3/6 limit hold 'em with her own money and 12/24 with mine). We played for two hours and won about $200 a piece, which isn't a bad result at all for an "off" day for me. The only interesting that happened was me finding out that this dopey looking fat 40 something regular apparently hates me with the passion of a thousand flaming suns. He ran a ridiculous bluff against me, then made fun of my laugh (which is pretty common) after attempting the same idiotic thing against Danielle. She had AK and he had QT, and the board ran out AQ7-T-Q. He raised the flop and got 3-bet, sucked out on the turn and raised again, then got absolutely owned as Danielle made a ninja-fold on the river. After he showed his hand to drag the main pot (as usual, somebody was all in) he made some comment that I half heard about "where's that laugh now" or something. I looked at him and said "You know, most people just take the pot quietly after they runner-runner someone like that" and nothing else really came of it. Yesterday I posted a smallish win over the course of a long day spent getting 3-bet by bakku, and today I won about a 30/60 rack in 8 hours of play. More to come in my next post about the ridiculousness of the last two days, but first a hilarious story from Friday.

So I'm getting pummeled mercilessly, taking beat after beat, getting check/raised on the turn every time I step into a pot, and in general not having much fun. There's a guy at my table wearing a hempism.org shirt who to this point has spent the entire day basically doing and saying the things you aren't supposed to do and say at a poker table if you are actually a professional. He's using words like expectation, as in "Your expectation is higher over here" in reference to the 15/30 table, equity, variance, and even standard deviation. He's basically acting like a big tool, and sadly I'm sitting right next to him and having to listen to most of it. He's not an awful player, but after he drags pots with Q2s ("There were 2 limpers!") and J7o ("Pot odds!") it becomes pretty clear that he's not exactly an expert. Eventually he winds up in a large pot that gets capped preflop, with him putting in the 3rd bet, the initial raiser capping it, and two more players coming along for the ride. The limper isn't important, but the small blind has a critical roll to play in this hand. He is known to me only as "uncle" and is a lag-tastic middle-aged Asian man capable of rolling over any two cards at almost any time. So anyway, 4 ways to the flop for 4 bets and it comes off:

KK8r

Uncle checks and so does the limper, the raiser bets, hemp-man raises, uncle calls, the limper folds and the raiser just calls.

KK8-Qr

Uncle and raiser check, hemp-man bets and Uncle springs to life with a raise. The initial raiser now folds, and hemp-man stands up from the table and makes a speech about Uncle always having a king and his equity being horrible or some such. He then calls.

KK8-Q-Xr

I don't remember the river, but it was small and not interesting. Uncle fires almost in the dark, and hemp-man is still standing up from his 8 seat. He slides 6 chips forward to call and Uncle tables K5 for flopped trips. Hemp-man is beside himself and clearly agitated. Instead of mucking his hand (or tabling it) he starts digging in his pockets and pulls out the pamphlet pictured above. "He did it!" he cries. "He has King Five, right?" After a moment's confirmation hemp-man tables his aces and tosses the brochure to Uncle. "Do you have a gambling problem, Uncle?" is the last thing I remember hearing before I pulled a muscle in my stomach laughing.