The Best Night Of My Month

Six months ago, I started a monthly poker night in my Man Space Basement, partly to make more friends in the area, and mostly just to play some low-stakes poker. Back in my penniless musician days, we used to play for nickels, dimes and quarters, with the biggest pots going around $10 to $15. We'd play all night for less than $20, with the kind of back-and-forth repartee that had everything to do with wasting time together, and little if anything to do with actual poker. So it was basically a nostalgia thing for me, and had next to nothing to do with the big national mania for hold'em.

The game now has taken on an every four weeks quality to it, with a slow core of local regulars starting to develop, buttressed by the occasional out-of-towner from Philly or New York. (I live about halfway between the two, with Philly roots and family, and a New York desk job.) The stakes have grown, not to the point where anyone is really getting hurt (we tend to have maximum buy-ins under the idea that no one is going to leave my home very mad), but enough where a sizable payday could mean you can fill your gas tank. And while I won't bore you to tears with the details of any specific game (though getting pocket kings the other night, and having two more show up on the flop, really was one of the highlights of my year)... well, I will say this.

If you aren't in a game, get in. And if you don't have a game, start one.

There's a reason why in-person cards is even better than online or against a machine, and that's simple -- in-person cards involves the spectacular disapora of trash talk, work stories, women stories, drunk stories... just stories, really. Running gags that teeter between exceptional irritation and utter hilarity. The actual attempts to play poker, balanced off your growing book of every player, mitigated against the fact that most of us are drinking, which doesn't do much for your book or your analysis skills. (How I know that I've been more lucky than good so far... the fact that drink seems to help. Woo hoo! Two great vices that go great together!) The knowledge that, in a low-limit game with guys that are more interested in having a good time than amassing career winnings and going on to the Pro Tour, that what you might see on television or read in a how-to book has nearly no use in what's going on here.

It's fantastic. It's the best day of my month. It's a vice that's even shared by the guy that might be our next President. (Yes, Obama plays, at least according to the New Yorker. They say he likes to see a lot of flops. I tell you, other than the intellect and the people and speaking skills and skin color, I'm so like this guy. In that I like poker and basketball, and breathe oxygen.)

And it's a great way to have, more or less, the same experience that your uncles and great-uncles and men for generations before you have known... that wasting time, with cards and with your friends, is one of the best ways to waste time that there is. (By the way, if you are local, we usually have a space or two open. Email me at dmt shooter at gmail dot com for an invite.)

Now, what are the blinds again?