I’m damn tired of running bad. I run so bad it would make your ass hurt. I’ve lost more pots than a stoner with ADD. I get sucked out on more than Charlie Sheen. I get beat more than Tito Ortiz. Hell, people catch up to me so often I feel like Dale Earnhardt. Well, actually old Dale hasn’t won a race this year, while I think I won Ace-King Vs. a pair of tens sometime in mid-April. So I guess it could be worse.

Actually, I’ve run thousands of races this year, while old Dale has only run about 15. I’ve lost a hell of a lot more races than junior this year, and he’s made a lot more money too. Poker is bullshit. I haven’t run good since Cindy Violette was hot. And famous. I haven’t gotten lucky since, well since I got lucky with Cindy Violette. Kind of a weird play on words how that worked out.

What I mean to say here is that poker just ain’t fair lately. In fact it ain’t fair a lot of the time. And when I’m running bad, I don’t bitch about it. Hold on, yes I do. Quite a bit. But I’m about damn tired of hearing other people bitch about it. There should be a “first bitch” button, just like a “first seat change” button they have in a lot of rooms. If you win a pot, you have to give up the first bitch button to whoever is still running really bad. There can be a “second bitch button as well, and when the first bitch guy isn’t bitching about his bad beats, then the guy holding the second bitch button can whine about his bad fortune until the first bitch is ready to start back up again.

My system would at least give us some sort of order and fairness to the constant crying and whining about the lack of fairness in poker. And that’s all people really want when they go to a cardroom: they just want things to be fair. And they want to win money. And have everyone respect their game and acknowledge the fact that they are a good player. And maybe have the cute cocktail waitress smile at them a little more than the next guy.

This all leads me to an interesting conclusion about why people are such jackasses. They don’t go to a poker room looking for a fair game, they are looking to get lucky. Whether it’s with their flush draw, or the cocktail waitress, they just want to get lucky and they know that you can’t get lucky if you don’t gamble. So the idiots come to a house of gambling, thinking they are going to get lucky, win despite their lack of skill, and somehow beat the rake even though they don’t know what the hell they are doing.

With the first and second bitch buttons we would have a system where the person who is doing the bitching is at least identified as doing exactly that. It might even help to have a little disclaimer posted in every poker room. In fact, I’ve written up that disclaimer and posted it below for any poker room that would like to use it. Just send old Karl Tepley a buffet coupon and it’s yours.

Bad Beat and Running Bad Complaint Policy

Here at (Insert Poker Room) we pride ourselves on ensuring fairness for all of our players, and we are sorry that poker has not been fair to you. We realize the importance of fairness and for such a strong player to be down for the session is clearly not right or fair. We also realize that you have taken a much larger number of bad beats than is reasonable, and we understand that you would like to share the stories of your remarkable run of bad luck with others at the table. In sharing these tales of woe, please remember the following.

  1. You will not receive the sympathy you are looking for. No one gives a shit. They’ve all taken their share of bad beats and they aren’t going to shed a tear for you.
  2. It will not improve your results. Crying doesn’t help anything. It’s just blood in the water for the sharks who’ll take advantage of the fact that you’re wounded by biting huge chunks out of your leg and watching you bleed to death on the beach in front of your family while some dickhead takes pictures of your corpse with his cell phone and posts them on the internet.
  3. It will not make you look like a good player. In fact, the people who aren’t joining the whine festival will be immediately tipped off to the fact that you are a crybaby and they will know that you rely more on luck than skill in your attempt to make a profit. When a good player hears a bad beat story, he is thinking “What an asshole. I’m going to own this idiot and take his chips for making me listen to his bullshit stories.”
  4. Here at (Insert Poker Room) we believe you have the right to talk about your run of bad luck, but we ask that you allow your listeners periodic breaks. A ten minute break every two hours, as with tournament poker, will help your listeners to remain alert and attentive and hopefully return from the break ready to focus on providing sympathy for you, you crying little bitch. This break will also give the other players a chance to visit the restroom, take a short walk, or hang themselves in a toilet stall to avoid listening to any more of your pathetic whining.
  5. We appreciate your continued patronage, even though you run much worse in this room than in other similar poker rooms. To express our appreciation, we would like to offer a $10 food and drink coupon, redeemable at our nearest competitor. That’s right, go to (Insert Nearest Competing Poker Room Here) and take your bad beat stories with you, we’re all tired of watching you cry about how the dealer screwed you again. Just get the hell out and come back when you’ve grown some hair on your nuts and can handle losing a $100 on a 4 to 1 shot without falling to pieces for two hours.

Thank you for visiting (Insert Poker Room Here), please come again.