Home Sweet Home

Finally got home from my Jersey and London adventure the day before last. I'll get to telling all the tales from the road eventually, but for now I just wanted to post a quick blog before I fire up another lonnnnnng Sunday session.

In my last blog I mentioned the guy who absolutely lost it and berated me when I bubbled him during the Borgata $400NL preliminary event. It was truly entertaining to me in a way...

While we were getting close to the bubble there were several players who were playing ridiculously tight to try to squeeze into the money. One of whom, a short stocky white guy from New York, was down to about ten big blinds and seated on my left.

After it folded around to me in the small blind, I looked down at A♠ 5♠ and obviously put him all in.

He tanked forever, and at first I still thought I had the best hand and was going to show him if he folded something like K♣ J♠. Eventually he turned the A♦ 9♦ over and mucked it face-up!!!

Naturally I couldn't show now, and quietly slid my cards towards the dealer. He proceeded to rant about how he didn't sit there all day so that he could bubble, how he wasn't going to be that guy, etc.

Needless to say, I did exactly what this guy was essentially asking me to do when he told me this...raise more pots!

An orbit later he was down to about seven big blinds, and moved in after I had opened with the J♠ 5♠ in late position. I told him that I had to call, and he showed me the hand I wanted to see, A♠ K♦.

Well wouldn't you know it, this guy was doomed from the start. Perhaps it was the poker gods there to punish him for being a bubble wuss.

Flop: 10♠ 9♣ 8♠

In my head: "HAHAHA good game, buddy."

Turn: 5♠

Aloud: "SPADEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!! GIVE HIM A SPADE!!!" (I <3 anti-sweats)

River: brick. =(

Me: "That's sick man, unlucky..."

Now normally the player who busts will walk away from the table and vent his frustrations elsewhere. Our buddy here declined.

Tool: "I play for twelve hours to get SCUMBAGGED on the bubble like that..."

Me (half-pretending I hadn't heard that): "Good game man, better luck to ya..."

Tool: "And he says he can't fold for 27k more...that's funny."

Me (finally giving in a little): "Well, I could teach you how to play the game, but then you might get better and I don't want that. So now you could just walk away and try to lose with a little class, maybe?"

He declined that offer. Instead he decided to threaten me and ask if I'd like to come out to the parking lot with him.

"Nah, that's okay buddy. You see all these chips I just took from you? I'm a little busy with them, because I'm going to try to turn them into more money while you drive home."

Apparently this angered him even more, because at this point he had to be escorted out of the Borgata by security.

The Borgata bloggers who were there for the whole fiasco looked like they were about to piss their pants laughing. They even came to me after it was over and asked what took me so long to rip into the guy. I told them that I was trying to be nice, but there's only so much I'm going to take.

It's easy to win with class, but it's much tougher to bite your tongue and walk away without being a sore loser. Fortunately I've been busting out of tournaments for years now, so I've become pretty good at it. =)

Hopefully it's a lesson that some of the New Yorkers who frequent Borgata will learn, so that they'll stop making our beautiful casino look bad to the rest of the world.

Matt Stout