Poker Poker Article - "99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall”

“99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall” - by Al Spath

The Orleans Hotel casino poker room seemed unusually breezy as huge ac units worked overtime to filter the 118-degree outside temperature. The smoke created by a massive desert fire in San Bernardino County begun to infiltrate the skies over Las Vegas. Cocktail waitresses were busy ferrying drinks to the tables, but were they being tipped to provide “extra” libation to a certain player seated on table twenty-three?

By chance (or luck), I was fortunate to be seated at table 23. The action on the far side of the table (seats 1-3) was constant and erratic as hell. Seat 1, we’ll call him “motor-mouth,” couldn’t stop talking. He single-handedly may have raised the audio level in the poker room another notch. Seat 2, we’ll call him the “arbitrator,” would listen to both “motor-mouth” and our featured player at table 23, “the tipsy tourist,” in seat #3. He would act as peacemaker, translator, audience and laugh machine. He skillfully made sure a balance was maintained and the “motor-mouth” didn’t say anything to chase away or dampen the fun of “our tipsy tourist.”

At the opposite end of the table, in seats 8-9-and 10, found me in seat 8, a Canadian university student in seat 9, that I called “Joe College,” and “Mr. Miagi” located in seat 10. Every time I looked at him, he was peeking at his cards, constantly. All I could think of was “wipe on, wipe off.”

As we played at this $1-$2 NL holdem’ table, the buzz on the fun side was loud and full of high fives and the chugging of drinks. The state of the serious side (8-9-10) could be described as “cloak and dagger,” for all three of us were targeting the players in seat 1 and 3, with special attention towards the “tipsy tourist” who was knocking those beers back like John Daly in a sauna. It was just a matter of time before we could take one or both of their entire stacks (one being over $400, the other at around $650) just give us the opportunity and it was a done deal…. So we thought!

Hand after hand the “tipsy tourist” made miraculous catches and dodged bullets fired by each of us as he eluded capture and in fact increased his stack by about a hundred bucks. It was then that I found myself not playing poker against the entire table and this approach left me exposed to players who were “targeting pots,” thus enabling them to pick me off as well. It can be an awfully bad habit and can at times become quite costly. I was fortunate to detect this flaw early and decided to make a table change. Yes, I was leaving a juicy table for a chance at getting back to my game, not playing a game that had “loser” written all over it.

As I waited for a seat to open up, “Joe College” decided to tell the cocktail waitress to bring our “tipsy tourist” a beer, every time his beer was half full (and two more after he passed out). She obliged for a $5 tip and went on her way. It seemed he was drinking them as fast as she could make her rounds. Good thing he was stuffing most of those limes in his bottle, or someone might have slipped on some that did hit the floor. His aim was getting very shaky at this point, and of course his card sense was “sharp” as ever (wink). A few more pots were won by others and every time the “tipsy tourist” went under $200, he arose from the table, went to the ATM, and returned with more cash to purchase chips. He reloaded, time and time again, maintaining a $300 minimum stack. Asked once by the “arbitrator” why he did that, the “tipsy tourist’ replied: “the pit boss told me this was a $300 table, so I have to have that much, don’t I?”

Smiles lit up the evening!

I took my table change, down about $28. I keep an eye on table 23 from my new seat (#1), at table 24. I just knew the night was going to have some fire works; I just did not how it was going to go down, but then it happened. “Down Goes Frazier, Down Goes Frazier,” comes to mind when I see “the tipsy tourist” laid out on the Orleans floor and security teams rushing in from all sides. Did he step over the line and say something inappropriate to the new player who replaced “motor-mouth” in seat #1? Apparently so, and the new player wasn’t about to coddle this drunk or take any verbal abuse. Did the beer cause the incident? Probably. Did the intoxication affect everyone’s play at the table? Certainly. Was it right to send beers to “our tipsy tourist” all night long? Guess that depends on your own perspective, but as I cashed out a rack of red (profit after table change), “Joe College” shouted, “I got them, all of them.” And then I looked at his stack, sure enough; he had about ten stacks of red in front of him.

Not a bad return for a $5 tip!