7-Card Dud
I will start this story by stating the obvious: When you play 39 hands of poker and manage not to win a single one, you can’t just blame bad luck. Other factors, like hexes, karma, and mojo should also be closely examined.
And, sad to say, human error was probably a factor as well.
It’s quite difficult to play 39 hands of poker and not win a single one; it may be a singular accomplishment in the history of poker. Which is not to say that I’m not capable of playing some bad poker and being a big loser on any given night. I’m certainly not a great poker player, although I had spent a fair amount of the last week reading up on strategy and generally learning more about the game. But still, 0-for-39 is a particularly bitter pill to swallow, especially given that a fair amount of my money went to a woman whose only exposure to poker was having seen David Schwimmer play on Bravo! Celebrity Poker, and who asked repeatedly if she was allowed to look at her cards that were face down. On more than one occasion, she would show me her cards after the hand was over and ask earnestly, “Did I have anything good here?”
So that was pretty special. There was another guy at the table who kept pulling Aces all night long and calling me “Bud”. I decided he was a dullard because of his declaration that check-raises were dirty play. I couldn’t wait to check-raise him and say, “I raise, Bud.” But since it’s hard to check-raise somebody when you have a 2-5-8-9 in your hand, that little fantasy only existed in my head. (But rest assured, I fantasy-check-raised the fuck out of that guy in my head all night long. In fact, I’m still doing it!)
How did it happen? How did I manage to play 39 hands of poker and not win a single one? I won’t bore you with all the details, other than to say that in my 39 hands of 7-Card Stud during Friday night’s tournament, I had exactly 1 Ace, 1 King, and 1 Jack as my first up card (and not many more among my down cards). Everything else was below a 10. Which, naturally, means that if I didn’t have those power cards, my opponents typically did. Of course, there are times when having a low card showing can be a blessing if you have a power pair in the hole. Alas, the only wired (hidden) pairs I was able to draw were a pair of 8’s, 5’s, and 2’s.
And so I sat, watching my pile slowly melt away. I was only in four showdowns the entire game, and I lost them all. One of them bled me of about $70 when a guy didn’t buy a semi-bluff, and after that I realized that out of my initial $300 chip allotment, I was down to about $75. About 2 hands after that, the minimum limits went to $5 ante and $20 maximum, and suddenly I was looking at a very small number of hands left in my evening.
I needed to win something and win it fast, but I didn’t have enough money to go chasing after hands with crappy opening cards, which of course was the story of my entire night. I needed a power pair something fierce, but the cards never came, and I continued hemorrhaging chips until I had nothing more to give. I died such a slow agonizing death they’re going to ask Jim Cavaziel to play me in the movie version.
When you lose 39 straight hands and feel like there wasn’t a whole lot you could have done about it, it’s time to go get yourself a beer. Which I did, a minimum of seven times, with a strong Vodka Red Bull thrown in for good measure.
Actually, up to that point in the evening, I had really only lost 35 straight hands. I saved my last four lost hands for a special feature of this tournament known as the Consolation Game. The first six players to be eliminated from the regular tournament were to be given an additional $200 in chips for play in a $5 minimum/$20 max game, with a winner-take-all pot of $75. Thus, whoever emerged from the Consolation Game would make back their entire $50 entry fee, plus a nice $25 for their troubles. Which is all well and good, of course, but winning $25 wasn’t as much of a priority for me at that point as winning a single fucking hand of poker.
The Consolation Game had certain charms of its own, among them the fact that we were a group of people who were pissed off because we had lost, and more than likely reasonably drunk because we saw that we weren’t going to be playing for hundreds of dollars later in the evening. (It’s important to note that I only drank water while I was still in the big game, so drunkenness wasn’t an excuse for my play.) Still, it was a good kind of pissed off, more of a “what the fuck” attitude than anything else. That is, except for me, Mr. 35-and-Out. I was genuinely pissed off, and somebody was going to pay.
I was to be that somebody. First two hands went by, I stayed in till about fifth street on both hands, and lost about $50. Then I pulled a three Flush, saw no other cards of my suit on the table, decided to play it, and hit on the Flush by the fifth card. Hey! Look who’s playing poker!
I ended up in a showdown with Friend of Pipeline Dave B. This is an important point, because Dave was actually the seventh player out of the regular game. We were only supposed to have six, but Dave went out just after the sixth went out, and a movement started to get Dave into the game. Nobody minded, and I was happy to have him there. In fact, at one point Dave said he didn’t want to play because there wasn’t a seat for him, and I was insistent that it wouldn’t be a problem. I may not be remembering the events correctly, but I think that Dave was playing in large part due to my insistence.
And now I was going to take his money. We bet and raised and so forth. He had a pair showing. I had a flush. I felt good. It was a big pot; I probably had about $120 in it. I felt good all the way up to the point when Dave flipped over his Full House. Then I felt bad. Real bad. Put-your-hand-through-a-wall-bad if I was an asshole, which thankfully I am not. So instead I just slumped in my chair, drank my Vodka Red Bull and secretly hoped Mr. Full House Dave would slip a disc in his back while he was moving the chips over to his corner of the table. Thirty-eight lost hands down, one to go, since I only had about $20 in chips left.
You know what happened. Four lousy hands--the Consolation Game was of little consolation to me.
39 hands. No wins. Obviously, I did make some mistakes in the course of the evening. I probably shouldn’t have played so tight in the beginning, and I probably shouldn’t have tried to bluff a guy all the way to the river in the first game when he showed absolutely no desire to do anything but call every bet. But out of 39 hands, I really couldn’t think of more than five or so where I would have changed my play if given the chance. Sometimes, you just have to have cards, and I didn’t have them last night.
With the cards I had, I’m pretty sure I could have been playing at a table with Ronald Reagan, Paris Hilton, my 8-month old daughter Lily and the four wax Beatles from Madame Tussaud’s and still lost all my money.
And then, about a half hour after I dropped from the Consolation Game, a wonderful thing happened. More accurately, it was a sad and pathetic thing, borne of drunken desperation: Another game got started.
It wasn’t my idea, but I was happy to jump in with about six other guys who were standing around with nothing to do and nothing to show for their efforts for the evening, though they were all happy to point out to me that they at least had won some hands in the course of the evening.
The stakes were somewhat lower, with everybody buying in for between $5 and $10. I pulled the $8 out my wallet that I wished I’d spent on KY Jelly and bought as many chips as I could.
Lo and behold, the cards started coming to me. I had Full Houses, Straights, and Flushes. It was as though every great hand I was due to get in the course of the evening was withheld until this unprecedented Second Consolation Game. This wasn’t what I had in mind before the tournament started when I said I hoped I would get my best cards late in the evening, but I figured it was better than going 0-for-50. I got so many great hands, so fast; I won $26 in less than 20 minutes.
So, I walked into the tournament with $58 in my wallet and left with $26. Considering that everybody paid $50 to get in (and some bought back in for another $50 when they went out), and that only the final four in the tournament and the Consolation Game winner (which was Dave B., natch) came out with money, in a way that meant I finished in sixth place for the night.
Start 0-for-39 and finish sixth out of 22? Maybe I’m not such a bad player after all.
That was of tremendous comfort to me as I was up till 4:00 AM, drunk and wide-awake from that damned Red Bull.
10:45:12 AM 
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