A Poker Post

Every Wednesday night for the last two years I have been gathering with an ever-changing group of friends and playing poker. I'm not a gambler per se, and I do not enjoy going to casinos. However, Wednesday night poker has been the highlight of my week ever since I started going. So, I am not going to regale you with stories of the games, since poker stories are only interesting to other poker players, and only moderately so at that. Instead allow me to describe the social network that has sprung up from this weekly gathering.

Our game is a game among friends. The stakes are low: $11 a week with all the beer you can drink until it runs out. The winner gets most of the money, with a little going to second and sometimes third, depending on how many are playing. The winner is then given the honor of buying the beer for next week's game. So even if you lose, you still come away with something.

This week we had 15 players. I managed a fourth place finish. The best/worst part of the night likely can be traced back to my insistence on quality beer. My friend Natan won last week, therefore he was charged with buying the beer. Natan is from Israel, so he was deprived of growing up in the drinking culture of Wisconsin. He would much prefer coffee to beer, and has on more than one occassion threatened to bring trays of lattes in lieu of the suds. I also give him a ride to the game, and the only repayment that I ask is that when he wins I get to pick out the brew. There have been many unfortunate occurrences of Coors Light at poker night, something that I simply cannot abide by. So I selected a variety of micros, both domestic (Wisconsin) and imports (MN, CA, NY, OH, Canada). The consequence of this was that those people used to the effects of a near-beer such as the Silver Bullet were in no time shitfaced. The aftermath: a certain truck-owning individual whipped several shitties, as the kids would say, in the muddy lawn and another person mistook Drive for Reverse and drove into the car in front of her.

Now you know why I keep coming back.


Addendum: I left soon after the game ended, so I did not witness all of the aforementioned fun. I have been getting emails and calls all day filling me in on the events. The latest little tidbit is that apparently the person who was run into also got into some vehicular mischief herself. She was trying to back out of the driveway and ran over a decorative iron wagon wheel, tearing it from its concrete foundation. And before MADD gets all over my ass, the folks that had these mishaps WERE NOT ALLOWED TO DRIVE HOME! We may not be responsible, but we aren't stupid.