Am I here to make friends, or money?

I was eager to accept when I received an invite to my neighbor’s home game. The last few months have been all about chang­ing dia­pers and feed­ing for­mula to my 6 month old at all hours of the night, I need a night out. The buy-in is $60 and I fig­ure a night of male bond­ing and fart jokes is worth at least that. Some­times just get­ting out of the house is a win.

I think to myself, let’s play loose. Be social. Go with the flow. Get to know the guys. Make it more about the hang, than play­ing poker. First hand we play, I can’t help myself. The com­pet­i­tive spirit in me gets uncon­sciously ignited and I play aggres­sive deceit­ful, dare I say “good” poker. Sud­denly I get drunk with the knowl­edge that I am clearly the best poker player at this table. I prey on these poor suck­ers who don’t know my style by mak­ing a stone cold bluff and win. Oops, just took $30 off my neigh­bor. Next hand, I catch a real hand and win, another $20 from him. Fuck, I need to slow down, or at least stop tak­ing money from my neigh­bor. Next few hands I show some dis­ci­pline: fold­ing don­key hands so I don’t suck out on some­one and make them mad.

I man­age to slow down and focus on talk­ing to the guys. Then it all changes. Billy, the stoner to my left who is a dead ringer white ver­sion of Will.i.am, breaks out a per­fectly rolled spleef from the Far­macy (god bless Los Ange­les). I jump at the chance to smoke some weed ( I did hap­pen to notice sev­eral bags of gummi bears on the counter. This is going to be a good night.) I take a few puffs and just like that, stoned.

The next hand is PLO 8 or bet­ter. Now let me just say that I com­pletely suck at this game. I fig­ure this is a good time for a lit­tle give back to secure next week’s invite. Fast for­ward to me hit­ting a straight flush on the river. A steel wheel none the less. The stone cold nuts if there ever were any. There is a pause. One of the guys says to me, Why so quiet? You got the straight flush? I am so stoned and stunned all I can say is, “Yes, yes I do.” Then I bet, get four callers and take it down. Another $40 from my neigh­bor, along with about $100 in the pot. What a time to be get­ting cards. I just want to fit in, hang with the guys, get invited back. Now I am the jack­ass who smokes the free weed, has a horse­shoe up his ass and takes money from the host.

Most of the time, I play poker to win money, get an adren­a­line rush, act a lit­tle bit irre­spon­si­ble, but this time I really just wanted to get out of the house, meet some new guys and maybe even expand my social cir­cle. I had a dif­fer­ent rea­son for play­ing poker tonight, but the cards wouldn’t coop­er­ate. Some­times you have the weapons when you are try­ing to make friends. Other times you get caught naked when you’re among the wolves. Poker is a cruel game that way. An unpre­dictable, ruth­less roller­coaster. And that’s why I love it.

Why do you play? Let me know at stories@whydoiplaypoker.net