The following story is true. I was sober at the time. The player on my right, in the 7 seat, was not, which is where our tale will eventually take us.

One weekend about a month ago, I tagged along to Las Vegas with a co-worker who was attending a wedding at Bellagio on Sunday afternoon. All day Saturday, I got to drink, meet some new, nice people, drink, gamble, drink, go to dinner, check out the Fantasy show at Luxor, gamble, and drink. Sunday afternoon, however, there was no drinking in the plan. <READMORE> While my friend was at the wedding, I was going to the poker room at Bellagio, the center of the poker universe, a day before the 5-Star tournaments were beginning. For the first time in a long time, I didn’t care if I won or lost money in a poker game…being there was the focus of the experience.

I put my name down on a long list for the 2/5 NL game, and railed various games for awhile, including Puggy Pearson talking up a 40/80 stud game. Once Pug got up, however, the show was over, and I realized that I wasn’t there to wait and rail…I was there to play. I found out that a 4/8 limit game had an empty seat, and while I really don’t like limit, I took my spot in Seat 8. Seats 1, 2, 3, 5 and 9 carried themselves like locals grinding out grocery money. Seat 4 was a weak-tight fish who played every hand and check-called every draw. Seat 6 was a solid player who critiqued everyone else’s play. And Seat 7…well, Seat 7 was special.

He said his name was Joey or Patrick, depending on who asked. He said he was 24, from Florida, just got out of the service, and was playing poker because it was the cheapest place in the casino to drink for free. And drink, he did. He smelled like the alcoholic uncle that many of us have. When I sat down, it was obvious he was already near the bottom of a normal person’s barrel. At which point, he proceeded to drink as much as any single person I ever saw.

You may think when I say that, I’m coming from some short of sheltered existence on the set of “Big Love”. Not so. I went to high school, when the drinking age was 18, in central Wisconsin, where there’s a bar on every corner. I went to college in Milwaukee. I spent 5 years on the road with drum and bugle corps, where drinking heavily was a nightly ritual (it’s different now, but it was crazy then). I used to be a DJ. I played serious pool and darts for several years. I’ve been to Mardi Gras three times, and my wife is from Louisiana. But Joey/Patrick’s ritual was something unique.

Every time one of the three cocktail waitresses in the Bellagio poker room came by, he ordered a shot. He never specified what kind of shot he wanted, it was just “Hey, gimme a shot!” so they just brought whatever they or the bartender felt like. In the course of two hours or so, he did one or more each of tequila, Jagermeister, Goldschlager, a kamikaze, a lemon drop, a Sex on the Beach, Jack Daniel’s black…10 shots total, at least…we all lost count. Every other shot was chased by a Corona longneck. After awhile, I not only knew the blonde waitress’s name (Nicole), but I also knew where she was from (Milwaukee), which high school she went to (Pius XI) and that her cousin used to work at the same college I attended (Milwaukee School of Engineering). I’m pretty sure she knew my mother’s maiden name, all by osmosis…I only drank two Cokes, so it’s not like she was coming by to make her fortune off of my business.

Joey/Patrick’s poker play was somewhat affected, obviously. I’m not sure he knew any rules of etiquette to being with, but any that may have existed in his brain were trampled by the time I started playing. He would ask me, almost every hand, “Are you going to play this one? Cause I’m folding if you’re playing.” He would show me his cards on every street, every time he was in the hand and I was not, and ask what he should do. Every five minutes, he accused the other side of the table of not being any fun and would offer to buy them a drink if they’d just smile a little bit more. Before every hand, he said, “<Dealer Name>, c’mon, man, 20%, I swear to God, 20% if I win this one.” He never did toke 20%, but typically tossed $4 or so the dealer’s way (I almost always just toke $1, and the max anyone else gave was $2), and then usually a couple more when one of the other players told him that he didn’t quite get to 20%. For every bet he put in the pot, he had to count the 4 or 8 $1 chips individually, because his hand-eye-chip coordination was long gone. Thank God the table wasn’t all that aggressive, because if he decided to stay in a hand that was 3-bet on the last two streets, I’d still be there waiting.

The staff at the Bellagio handled all of this in a most ingenious way. After the first six or seven drinks that I witnessed, they started working in a bottle or water or a cup of black coffee instead of his shot. Joey/Patrick would protest, which was answered with the politest, “I’m sorry, sir, I very distinctly remember that this was what you ordered. I wrote it down here on my pad. I’m very sorry…just drink this and I’ll bring you something else for the next round.” Never once did Joey/Patrick refuse to drink the water or coffee, which kept him at the table for awhile, to the pleasure of everyone. After all, this was free money…or so we thought.

The punchline is that by the time Joey/Patrick finally got up to take a phone call and check on where his friends were, he was up about $60 or $70. Since I saw almost every hand he played, I could see right away that he never bluffed. Not once. He saw most flops, and if he caught a good piece of it, he bet or called…if not, he threw it away. No check-raising. Not even check-calling. The super-duper punchline is that I was apparently the only person who could figure this out. The far end of the table, my grocery-grinding friends, would call him all the way down with King-high, when Joey/Patrick flopped two pair, or raise his 4th-street bet with top pair when he’d obviously hit his flush. Joey/Patrick got paid off on every hand he made. I was probably the only guy at the table to be positive-money against my neighbor. If I had the same success against the grinders who kept rivering straights against my sets, I would have reached my secondary goal as well as my primary one at the Bellagio. And he certainly made the game entertaining…I was very sad to see him return an hour after leaving, only my table was full.

As always with me, there’s a lesson here. Bluffing takes brain cells. Most poker players know that the reason to bluff is to chase someone out of a hand and win with nothing, and making that determination in the course of a hand requires thought. If you’re at a table with someone too drunk or tired to think…make sure they show the tendency to bluff before you assume they are. They’re almost assuredly playing tighter than you would ever imagine. And if you can behave as drunk as Joey/Patrick was, do it. You’ll be handsomely rewarded if you can make Dean Martin look like a charter member of MADD, while staying tight and aggressive with your made hands.
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