I was going to write about the bad beats I took Friday night. I still will, but the experience I had last night takes priority.
I had The Itch. So I decided that, once I got done with a stroll through Folsom, once I got a bit of a basketball workout in, I’d clean up and head over to Oaks for a few hours of peaceful–and hopefully profitable–play.
I got there a bit later than I had planned, and there were still three $6/$12 tables going. While there was a list, it took only about 15 minutes to get a seat.
I ended up in the Seat From Hell.
Normally, I like seat 6. The flop is right in front of me so I can see the cards easily. I can see the action coming to me so I can be ready when it’s my turn. Tonight, though, seat 6 was next to seat 7, the drunken Player From Hell.
As a side note, is it one of Murphy’s Laws that the drunk obnoxious player rakes in a higher-than-usual number of massive pots?
Oh, and make no mistake: He was drunk. Blitzed. He was ordering fresh beers every 20-30 minutes. And no just one. Nosiree. Each order was for two bottles.
As with most drunk players, this one was in just about every pot. With most, he raised preflop. At this table, he seemed to know well the player in seat 9. They traded frequent conversations during play, in Vietnamese (one of the many issues that several dealers did not address). All three of the players to this player’s left were loose raisers; they would often re-raise the drunk player’s raises.
Needless to say, I knew I’d have to play a tight game to have any chance at a profit.
But the drunk player made even that strategy unpleasant, and not because he won (which he did) and I didn’t (more because I was getting few playable cards). No, the night became more and more unpleasant as the drunk player downed beer after beer.
In addition to the violation of the English-only rule, he:
- Verbally stated one play and then made another, such as announcing a raise and then folding
- Shouted, both his plays, his conversations with other players, and orders to the wait staff
- Dropped vulgarity left and right, f-bombs and more, nearly every other word at times, and for no particular reason
- Laughed at the losers of pots when he won
This last item was the straw that broke the camel’s back For the first time ever, I asked for a table change. it was bad enough sitting at that table, but sitting next to this guy became utterly intolerable.
I made it clear to the floorman why I asked for the table change too. He said that while they can ask the player to calm down, they don’t usually take someone off the table unless they are slowing the game down. This was theone thing this guy wasn’t doing, at least not significantly so.
But while I enjoyed playing at the other table more, a nice sedate game with some good players, that game broke after awhile and guess which table was the only one left? You got it. He was still there. Fortunately, I was across the table from him this time. Unfortunately, it was approaching 2am and he was trying to down as many beers as he could before he could no longer get served.
At that point, the f-bombs were flying even more frequenlty, and one of the floormen was practically hanging out behind the player, reminding him every minute or so not to shout, to can the vulgarity, etc. Not that the requests had a snowball’s chance in hell of being honored. At about 2am, the club staff had had enough and picked him and his considerable chip stack up.
I was told that he wouldn’ be driving home. But the question remains, at what point do you stop feeding a player alcohol? Is there any responsibility with the wait staff to see a player getting to such an out-of-control point that they can say “no” to a request for more?
The staff’s attempts to placate the demands of one customer made for a bed experience for several other customers. I’m not sure that this is the best decision for the long run.
Meanwhile, I had a long string of bad cards, of not catching anything most of the time when I did try to poke at something, and won just 7 pots in nearly 6 hours of play, a decidedly below-average win rate that contributed to the night’s net loss, a loss that woudl have been more palatable had the experience been less unpleasant.