Tunica Part I (B) – Joe Dirt
(pictured at left with family),
Spiderman, and the Turd Sandwich.
So one week later, I resolved to make the long drive back to Tunica to redeem
myself.
I always journal my poker lessons from any given session, and I came up with a
pocket sized “ten-commandments” to keep on me during the next couple of
tournaments. These commandments (no, you may not know what they are J ) were
taken from the errors I make the most in my games. With my little reminders of
perfect play at my side, I felt I could could play the best poker of my life.
Knocked out but boy you better come to
Don’t die you know the truth is some do
Getting into the $5150 buy-in for the main event would require me winning a $550
satellite in which the top 10% of the players remaining would get their golden
Willy-Wonka ticket for the three-day tournament. Although I was already up $3200
for the trip, I absloutely decided against ponying up the full $5150. “If I
can’t beat this satellite of weak players,” I thought, “I don’t deserve to play
in the main event.”
We started with $6000 in chips, the 120 of us in the satellite. Within half an
hour I was down to $1000. Gulp. This isn’t feeling like redemption.
My immediate problem was a local with a presumed taste for Milwaukee’s Best,
Burt Reynolds films, and Skoal. I felt like I was in the Twilight Zone. This
local, with his mega-mullet, creepy moustache, and, yes, a Member’s Only
windbreaker, began to beat me mercilessly and insult me. (You think I’m making
up the Member’s Only windbreaker, don’t you? Or the mullet. I swear on my
immortal soul I’m not.)
He flopped four Jacks against my AQ. Kings against my Queens. Rivered a flush
against my straight (his cards? 8h 3h….puke, to put it mildly). Whatever he
needed, he got. And with victory came salt.
He asked me, “Hey, ma-in, whut happinid? You fergot to brush yer ha-yu-huhr?” To
this day I have no idea how he managed to make “hair” a poly-syllabic word…hell,
I think he stretched it out to, like, seven syllables.
Now in defense of my OWN hair, it’s by design, not accident, that I look like a
maniac. I feel as though I’m in a more command of a poker table with insane
looking spiky hair, believing that people might not pull any moves on me, not
knowing what I’m capable of, since I willfully look like this. Google Mike Caro
for more information. This tornado-bait dickwad, however, actually believed he
looked cool.
I chose to bite my tongue and live by my chisled-in-stone rule of not getting
into verbal confrontations with lesser players. If you make them angry, they
might become self-aware and play better. I didn’t come here to make friends or
enemies. I came here for the cash, Joe Dirt, and come hell or high water, I’m
going to get it, either around you or through you.
I doubled up. Then again. And again.
Along the way, Joe Dirt makes repeated insults towards me, with aphorisms so
lame and bewildering, yet the whole time without a doubt that he is, indeed, the
Socrates of Tunica County.
“Well if it weren’t for the fishes there wouldn’t be no river.”
(???)
“I ain’t seen no better in a full ocean of garbagecans.”
(?????)
Several more venomous, indecipherable insults follow over the next hour.
I began to lose my cool…no, I really did loose my cool, but, controlling myself,
I calmly whisper-asked the dealer just loud enough for my half of the table and
my enemy to hear, “Dude, is that Joe Dirt we’re playing against? Where’s Chris
Farely? I can’t believe I’m playing Joe Dirt!”
Joe Dirt hears my insult and gives me a steely, dirty look out of the corner of
his eyes.
It was on.
As fate would have it, I’d hold Jacks this time around when he held AQ and put
me all-in. For several reasons, I had Joe Dirt’s AQ read like the top line of an
eye-chart and knew I was a slight favorite to win the hand (I was a 6:5 favorite
for those of you playing the home game). But did I really want to call Joe
Dirt’s all in? If I lost the coin flip, I’d make my walk-of-shame only a couple
of hours into the satellite, and could I really live with myself knowing that
Joe Dirt, tormentor of sheep, feared uncle, and loyal J.C. Penny comsumer took
all my cash, dreams, and hope of personal redemption away from me? How long a
drive back to Biloxi would that be?
So be it, Joe Dirt. If you win, you win, but I’m a slight favorite, and that’s
all that matters at this stage. I call and he turns over…AQ. Told you so. No
help for him, flop, turn, and river, and he’s gone.
For once I can’t resist. I wave my hand up in the air as he’s two steps away
from the table. “Bye!” very loudly, smiling. Cold stare back.
Twenty steps later he peeks back again at the table. My waving right hand is
there waiting for him. “Bye!”
We’re in a large banquet hall for the tournament, so by the time he reaches the
exit door 45 seconds later, and looks back a third time, and still sees me still
waving goodbye, I know his dog is going to get it good tonight. And I would like
to apologize to the dog.
To put it mildly, I dominate the next seven hours of play, and now there’s
fifteen players left out of 120, the top twelve of us remaining will get our
seat into tomorrow’s main event. I have about $100,000 in chips and have a lock
on the golden ticket. ALL I NEED TO DO…is just need to sit back and wait for the
three small stacks to be cannibalized.
…But I’m so mentally tuned into the game right now…hmmm…how can I describe the
feeling? Remember in “Spiderman” when Peter Parker first realizes his abilities
in the fistfight against the high school bully, and he’s mentally cognizant of
every single aspect of his surroundings at a speed that a normal man can’t
process? I’d have to say that’s the zen, immortal feeling of being “in the zone”
at a poker table, or any other sporting event. I'm sure you've been there, and I
think you'd agree we'd all love to be there in the zone ALL the time. So with
three people left to go, I’m still “in the zone,” so confident and cocky, I’m
actually freaking comparing myself to Spiderman. That’s a dangerous place to be,
and I’ve seen players actually bust out of a tournament they’ve “already won”
because they want to play more hands. It’s called EGO. And it’s time to drop it,
fast.
“Turd Sandwich!” I yell out.
The dealer looks at me, confused.
I clarify.
“Fuckity shit ballsack,” I explain to him…but in a kind, loving, unagressive
manner.
“What are you talking about?” he asks, as the rest of the table wonders what the
hell I’m doing with, for one, everyone’s chips, and, two, the a mouth of a
Tourette’s syndrome-suffering, inner city, menopausal, drunken female sailor.
“I’m trying to get a penalty,” I explain. I don’t want to play any more hands
for the next few rounds. Goatballs!”
The dealer understands my logic, but unsympathetically explains, “Well, we’ve
changed the rules…you can’t get a penalty for profanity anymore.”
“What? That’s bullshit! What do I have to do to get a penalty around here? I
don’t want to play any more fucking hands!”
I walk over to the floorman and discuss the situation with him. He tells me if I
don’t want to play any more hands, just to simply walk away from the table. I
explain to him that that’s no fun, and I want a penalty. We talk some more, and
he confesses that if I expose any one of my hands while in play, I will get a
one round penalty.
So on the very next hand I’m on the button, and a very good Asian player in thid
position makes a normal sized raise to bring it in. I look down into my fist to
see AK suited—the fourth best out of 1,326 possible starting hands. I turn the
cards face up into the muck and start laughing loudly like a jackal, then I lick
the back of my hand with a big glob of spit off my tongue and attempt to groom
my bird’s nest of hair like a cat, repeatedly.
I’m officially kicked off the table for a full round.
At this point the last fifteen players are confused, amused, or pissed off at my
behavior. But I know that I’ll be seeing at least eleven of them tomorrow at the
main event and I’m working on building my image way ahead of time. Why wait for
tomorrow? J
My timing was perfect, as the last few players got knocked out, I got to watch
the best last two minutes of Superbowl history. The first three hours of the
Steelers/Cardinals game had been broadcast in the poker room loudly right behind
me on a ginormous-screen TV, and I hadn’t heard a thing. I was in the zone. What
an amazing comeback it would be.
***Did you enjoy how I just parallelled myself with the Pittsburgh Steelers and
gave a lovely foreshadowing of things to come tomorrow, with a dramatic
unbelievable finish? I thought it was much better than the Spiderman comparison.
I hope you liked it.
