I’d like to say that I lasted at the poker longer than a couple of minutes. I’d like to say I played all night, in made the best plays and kept rising that I didn’t leave that seat all weekend. But the truth is that the first hand, I got dealt kings. Right there in the hole, on the first hand that I lifted, two red men looking up at me inside.
I was still green to the game and all, but you’d have to be beyond a donkey and just plain idiotic to not know what kings are.
It came to me and I raised. I got reraised. I raised again. We went all in. It was like lightning, like going swimming. There wasn’t much of any choice. I thought for a minute he might have aces, the kind of all hands, but I wasn’t going anywhere like that, and surely not with the several drinks under my belly. Still, even with that, I felt okay being this aggressive playing poker for the first time in a while.
The guy turns over QQ. I show him my pair. Our chips make a large pile in the middle.
The flop is a bunch of little numbers. The turn is something else: a ten or nine, I can’t by now remember. On the river comes a queen. One big red monster to kill my monsters.
Almost before it started, as if I were competing for the world’s record of quick money loss. I don’t even remember anything after that, just the explosion and then blank, K.O., kaput. Should’ve practiced playing poker online.