pulp friction

For the first time since the Travel Channel started airing the World Poker Tour and shattering ratings records in 2003, I ventured into a poker room last week. It's saddening. Gone are the games I loved. Gone are the characters I loved even more. Everyone's younger, dumber, ruder. They only want to play what they see on TV. They only know how to play what they see on TV. It made me positively ache for yesteryear.

Like this one time...

A buddy and I were playing at a Stud table in the Plaza, a true shithole of a poker room off Fremont Street in Vegas. I was grinding along, amassing a nice stack of chips a little at a time. I played well that day. I didn't chase hands, and if I went to the river—the final card—you could pretty much bet you should have folded a few raises ago.

Seated far from me but next to my buddy was someone who could be a character from...from...a literary reference fails me. The man clearly lived in the Nevada sun his whole life. He seemed about 60, but after so much irradiation, who can really tell? Cows' skin is less leathery than his. Permanently the color of peanut butter, the man had a great shock of white hair sprouting out of his scalp and ears. He was unshaven, and one suspected that if he actually took a razor to the many ridges of his face, carnage would ensue. He wore the same faded, tattered jeans and flannel shirt he'd been wearing since Roosevelt's first term. Teddy Roosevelt's. He capped the ensemble with a mangled straw cowboy hat, snakeskin boots into which he tucked his jeans, and a gigantic silver and turquoise belt buckle. When I would raise, he glared at me with one good eye. His left eye had seemingly been punctured by a pencil. Yet there it was on proud display, ancient gray pulp with the remnants of a hole in it, staring at us all from its socket.

He was also a poor player. My stack dwarfed his, and I mercilessly raised into him all night long. I pulled out all the stops, checkraising, feinting, buying pots. I could tell he was getting discouraged by my aggression and good luck. Suddenly, security came to the table and forcibly escorted Ol' Pulpy away. He did not go away lightly. To my ever-mounting surprise, he pointed his scaly finger at me, screaming that he'd slit my throat in my sleep. Me? Me? What did I do? I didn't have him thrown out of the Plaza.

No, my buddy had. Apparently that last threat was one but one of many Pulpy had issued upon my person, not suspecting that the other player in whom he was confiding was, in fact, the friend of his intended victim. I had been blissfully unaware. It was all well and fun for my buddy—who was saving up anecdotes with which to regale me later, if I lived—but when Pulpy snarled something about finding out where I was staying, that's when my travel companion selflessly rushed to action. My hero.