Hezo Kittie

Poker seems to be the trend these days. It gets better with more people, it's fun, exciting sometimes, nerve-wracking, competitive, and you get rewarded generously for winning. What could be any better than poker?

We have come a long way since the months prior when none of us really knew what we were doing when it came to Texas Hold'em. We made our way from no ante to ante to small and big blinds. The blinds were the best addition to our game, because it forced you to make a decision about your hand before seeing a flop. There's no pre-flop checking in this game, unless you count the big blind when there's no raise.

But I'm getting off topic. You would think that our regular poker game would be getting better, but I'm feeling a turn for the worse. Were we always this bitter whenever we were short stacked? Did misdeals always used to piss us off that much? I may not have the best memory when it comes to anything, especially poker, but I never remembered our game to be this hostile.

One could argue that I'm just neutral because I made a couple bucks last night, but the fact is that if I lose, then I lose. That's how it works. If I made a bad call, if I got bluffed out of a hand, if my full house lost to a higher full house, then I just suck. No money for me.

And it's not like I don't care about losing my money, because this money is what I have to live off of for the summer unless I get a job. Sure, I play for fun, but I'm not giving away any freebies.

But seriously, the seriousness of this game is getting out of hand. Since when did we spend the next three hours angrily thinking about how the dealer (me) accidentally moved a player's cards into the discard pile before the flop was dealt, only to see it was the winning hand? I'm seriously sorry Will, but if you honestly thought you should've been paid off that hand then I would have gladly given you your estimated amount of money deserved from my own stack of chips. Because I seriously don't care, but if it matters that much to you then I'll let you reap the benefits out of my own pocket just to keep this game sane.

After Brian won the previous hand with four of a kind fours, I shuffled and dealt the same deck, and I ended up with his exact starting hand last round (pocket Jacks) and I called for a misdeal because I personally thought that I didn't shuffle it enough for randomness (even though you could argue that since you alternate people when dealing, they were about nine cards away from each other). Jordan groaned because he got pocket
Aces, but I dealt the flop to "rabbit hunt" and I flopped a set. No word from Jordan. 'HOLY CRAP I SHOULD HAVE BEEN PAID OFF!' is what I should've said. I would've owned Jordan! I lost three bucks that day but I could've been even! Granted, it was my own doing, but somehow it doesn't bother me at all that I would've gone on to win that hand.

Kurt hit the nail on the head a while ago when he told me, "It doesn't matter losing by the cards, because they're cards, but it sucks to be outplayed."

My sentiments exactly. I don't think about my bad beats or my awesome full houses when I think of poker, I think of Will bluffing me out when I flopped low pair with Commander Crab only to fold and see a king on the turn. I think of Kurt putting enough pressure on me heads-up to force me to fold a set. Cards are all luck, but when you know that someone outplayed you, that someone was one step ahead, read you correctly and played the part perfectly, that is defeat in the truest sense of the word. They didn't take your money because you went all in with Kings and they showed Aces, they took your money because they read you the whole way.

Everyone seems to follow KGB's lead when he said, "The fuck you lay that down for...should have paid me off...burgleflickle!", although the situation is a little different.

As I was telling Gavin online last night, poker used to be our sanctuary from school. The concentration required during close hands kept that black cloud of future assignments far from our minds. We were all learning the game together and having fun with this friendly competition. Now, friendly competition has transformed itself into a cutthroat battle for those precious twenty cents.

But when it comes down to it, they say it's all about the amount of chips in front of you. Anyone who thinks otherwise is dead money.

So the next time I take my chips to the table, fellow poker players, get ready to salivate at the thought of taking my chips. Because apparently, seriousness leads to winning poker.