so helen takes me to england for my birthday. naturally, my first thought is as to where i can play some poker. i am an international poker player, after all, and it’s my birthday. so i find a place called (cheerfully enough) the gutshot club, whose website advertises some action. (a gutshot straight, also known as a belly-buster or inside straight refers to four cards which can only be made into a complete straight with a single card, 4578 for example; it’s a serious longshot, and a generally bad-news kind of play. the only advice i remember my grandfather ever giving me is never draw to an inside straight.) the place is located in bumfuck clerkenwellshire or clarkenwallford upon avon or some london neighborhood i've never heard of, but what the hell... cab fare can’t be that bad. or it can be thirty pounds...
the gutshot’s in a bit of trouble lately. they’re about to be made illegal. according to the courts, the right to play a little hold ’em all comes down to whether poker is a game of chance or a game of skill, with putting hard-earned cash money down on fate an unacceptable option in the eyes of the law. luck’s not been good lately (while at the same time making an unpleasantly strong case for itself). the fact i might be able to play a couple hands at a club that might soon be a memory leaves me with no option, really, but to go. and i know it’s all luck. i play at eric’s home game with complete idiots who repeatedly take my cash with the worst possible strategies.
unlike dublin, where a friend of helen’s mom came along with me, i make this trip to the card room alone. like dublin, i have to become a member, but this just entails filling out a few forms, and i’m in. i even got a tour! (liquor upstairs; poker below.) no tournies this time, as i’m too late, having spent the evening out drinking. lowest stakes are one pound/two pounds ($2/$4) with a minumum buy-in of fifty pounds. (quick info: even if you fold everything, it still costs one pound plus two pounds (the blinds) every time the deal goes around the table just to play. minumum bet is two pounds (the big blind). this is a pot-limit game, meaning that i can only bet as much as is already on the table. no all-in like in no-limit.) i take my seat at the low stakes table...
so: sixty pounds gets me exactly four small clay chips: two black twenty-fives, and two red fives. not much to make a stranger in a strange land feel very welcome, and i quickly drop one of the precious blacks playing ace-rag (ace and a low card, which obviously loses to another, higher, ace-rag; ace-rag always wins). i figure i’ll be soon paying another thirty pounds to get back home, but i’ll at least get to spend a little time with my lady. (beautiful dynamic, that: win alone, lose with the one with whom i never want to be a loser (and i’ve already told the story of how bad it is when i manage to win big too many times to too many listeners. (synopsis: you’ve got a problem.)))
to my right is a handsome fellow from sunderland. he doesn’t need to tell me that h’s drunk, but he does. he tells me many times, as a matter of fact, and constantly drills me about my favorite place in america (brooklyn, obviously). to his right is a skinny, pimply kid from belfast. (i'm not sure how to write in such a way that inspires foreboding, but if i did, i'd employ that technique right here, right now, like a motherfucker. if we didn’t hate those northern protestant fucks before, we surely would by the end of the night. oh yes we would.) to my left is the scariest-looking skin-headed bastard i’ve ever been inches from for an extended period of time... forever, i guess. i know a few scary-looking bastards (i play pete’s weekly home game), but this guy radiates menace, even without any (visible) tattoos.
stinging from my early stupidity, i tighten my play up a bit (not a difficult move) and carry on. drunken sunderlander is sometimes distracted by belfast, so i can gently cradle my head while praying for decent cards. these simple, repetitive prayers seem to last a week. it’s hard to pray that long, but i was an international missionary... my first break comes when i let myself (generously) play a suited ace-rag in bad position. the flop comes up all spades (my suit, by god), and the pot limit keeps me from scaring everyone off. it doesn’t hurt that there are impossibly two other flushes on board. hoorah! i'm suddenly winning. it feels good! damn, it feels good. i leave off playing seriously now and again to talk with sunderland and the skinhead, both of whom apparently feel i play bad enough that it’s no risk to give me advice on how tragically i win fifty pounds with my pocket jacks. (i didn't defend as fiercely as i should have.)
and so the game goes on. the low-stakes table serves as a waiting room for people looking to graduate up to higher stakes and no pot limits (though i hear that the no-limit table is too tight, and offers no action), and players come and go. belfast goes busto (perhaps the only obvious poker slang) a few times, but keeps buying back in, moving around the table as seats become available. (downstairs at the gutshot only has five tables, and with new hopefuls and pathetic losers, there seems to be constant shifting). at one point, i make a decent enough play that the fearsome skinhead remarks that i do know how to play this game after all...
[to be continued... must sleep now. ok, maybe after an online tourney or two...]
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