Here's the anatomy of a real bad night. This article is mostly to answer my wife's question, though not in the terms she asked it, of "Are you screwing around on me or are you just so addicted to poker you can't come home?"

I went to the game expecting to deal and arrived at ten o'clock. The other guy that deals was going to take care of things until then and then play on his tips. Unfortunately, there had been a low turnout and when I arrived there was a four way tournament going on that was only in its second blind level. Two players had already been eliminated but the other four had tightened up. I watched for a little while, but then started dealing just to pass the time until they were ready to play cash again. Finally about 11:15 they chopped the tournament up three ways, and I got a chance to make a few dollars in tips. The other dealer was among the players. He went broke at around 11:45 and I felt bad about taking his action, and had amassed about thirty-four dollars. I let him deal and started playing, taking twenty out of my wallet. I didn't want to take it out but thirty-four was not enough for this game.

I won a few and lost a few but at 12:30 when I thought of going home I thought how disapoointed my wife would be with my earnings. I was up about ten dollars at the time, counting what I'd made dealing, and didn't want to hear the standard, "It just isn't worth it." I decided to play a little longer. Along about 1:30 I was up about eighty dollars and feeling much better about things, but then got second bested on two hands very close together and suddenly I was broke. I'd been planning on playing before class on Thursday, so it was very tempting to get back in this game for that money now, if someone would extend it to me until Friday. I hated to ask someone for a loan they might not collect on until three days later, but after a few minutes of watching, the words just spilled out of my mouth almost by themselves, much like when finally working up the nerve to approach a crush in high school. I knew that the problem I faced was that the guys I could count on to come across were almost as broke as I was, and the other guy was the one player who was determined to be my nemesis, trying to outplay me every pot, primarily by having me out-bankrolled. I'd asked for a hundred but he came back with "Would fifty do you any good?" Immediately I saw that with fifty it would be back to the same old getting pushed around, and that was probably his plan, but I countered with, "Sixty might," and he three me two green chips and two red chips. I figured I'd get an extra couple rounds of biding my time with sixty.

I finally started catching cards and was feeling pretty good about going home up eighty or ninety at 2:15 in the morning. Finally I got my chance to break my nemesis's, or at this point my creditor's, aggressiveness. I caught pocket eights, and called a straddle and then a raise from the straddle. The raise from the straddle was his favorite move, especially with the continuation bet on the flop. The flop was 299. I'm a little fuzzy on the exact order of things here, but I believe I bet out fifteen, and then he raised fifty. "Here we go again," I thought, and debated just folding right there, even though I knew he might be, even probably was, bluffing. "He might have an overpair," I thought. A nine was unlikely, but a pair of tens or up had me killed. I knew that he would represent a monster by putting me all in on the turn if I did call, so instead of doing that, I decided that I would raise all-in, which was an additional fifty-one, and represent trips for myself. I might get him off at least half the hands that had me beaten, and if he was just bluffing it might make him think twice about it the next time. Sure enough, he folded.

At this point I was up a lot, and really wanted to just jump up and head out, but I felt guilty that I'd come back in on a loan and then proceeded to win close to two hundred dollars very quickly, and I knew I'd just stir this guy up even more the next time we played if I did that. I figured why not play a little while. There was still a calling station with a healthy stack throwing chips around so I figured to improve. Instead, the calling station managed to outdraw my nemesis, and finally nearly felted him. He politely asked for his sixty back. "Good," I thought, "I can just slip this checkbook back into my pocket." I still had about two hundred dollars at this point. When the calling station went broke on a nearly undending series of calls at about 2:45, I thought, "This is it. I have an out. This game is over." Then he slapped leather for another go, and his money was there for the taking. I decided to stay just a little longer.

Unfortunately it was my turn to get bad cards and play them loosely. I was way up so I thought to catch a few more hands I could use to trap Mr. Agressive or Mr. Any Flop Is A Good Flop. This strategy proved disastrous as I chipped away about one hudred sixty dollars over the next hour to hands that hit just enough to get me hurt. It finally came down to Mr. Agressive raising his straddle by ten and me re-rasing to twenty-five and all-in with ATo hoping to catch him in one of what had to be a large number of bluffs. He called me with 66. A 6 came on the door and it was over by the turn with me drawing dead.

Like I said, I lost the twenty dollars I grudgingly drug out of my wallet, but more imprtantly I got home at 4:30, at which point I had to make sure the kids had clean clothes for school. It was after five when I crawled into the bed, and shortly after seven when my wife firt got awake enough to tell me how extremely pissed she was at me for coming in so late. In other words, it was a real bad night.