So you may have heard that I got tossed out of a poker room for slapping a kid that beat me in a pot. You probably figured that old Karl was a grumpy sore loser and you probably said something like “Well, I guess you can’t be surprised by that, he does get a little pissed off when he takes a few beats.” Well, I’ll take a cue here from the oldest grumpiest man in America and tell you “The Rest of the Story”

I was playing in a $2/5 no limit game in Indiana at the Horseshoe in Hammond. The games are real good, suckers with more money than sense in most of the seats, and during the mornings when I usually play we don’t get a lot of young kids messing up the game. Because I play during the day, I spend most of my time stealing pots from old timers and value betting dealers who just got off work and decided to drop their tips on the table so I can win ‘em back. That works out nice, but occasionally some wiseass kid who learned by watching WSoP broadcasts and thinks he’s the next Tom Dwan will drop by our game.

Usually it’s a kid who hasn’t played live poker very much and doesn’t know that he’s supposed to play at night with the other aggressive idiots who want to gamble it up with him. I knew this kid was gonna be trouble the moment he sat down. He was wearing Beats by Dre headphones, a dead on indicator that he’s a jackass and can’t play poker worth a damn, and a WSoP hoodie. The hoodie doesn’t mean he’s a bad player, but it does indicate that he makes bad choices with money because paying $60 for a crappy sweatshirt so that all your friends know you’ve been to the Rio is plain stupid.

The kid came in raising almost every hand like he was the big pro at the table in a tournament and we were all gonna be scared, but like an internet idiot, he was raising to $15 in a $2/5 game. If you do that in a live game all it gets you is six callers and you get to play your hand against whichever old timer managed to flop the nuts on you.

About half an hour after he sat down, the kid raised it up from one off the gun and I called with a pair of eights on the button. About seventeen other guys called too, including the floor guy, the cocktail waitress, and a guy in Council Bluffs Iowa playing a $4/8 Omaha game. I figured if I flopped a set with that many players I had a real good chance of losing my whole stack, which is always nice. When the flop came 3s 3h 8h I felt a little better. Please, just let one of these jackasses have a trey in their hand and let Mr. Beats by Dre have two hearts in his hand. Old Karl might be stopping by the strip club on the way home if this pot goes the right way.

The kid bet out, and he got raised, so I just called right away. Ignore old Karl folks, nothing to see here, just chasing a little flush draw or hoping a pair of sixes is good. Move along, nothing to see. The kid went ahead and reraised all-in like the dipshit he was and the original raiser went ahead and called him. When I called him too, the kid flipped over his ace-three of diamonds like it was the stone nuts and stood up to see what we had. The guy who raised on the flop looked surprised and flipped over his pair of tens like he just took a terrible beat and poker was unfair to him.

If you have a pair of tens, and a dipshit kid is raising every hand, go ahead and reraise him or call and play your tens to make a set, but don’t take the middle ground. This fool did just that. He went ahead and slowplayed it until it was beat and then got all his chips in the middle. Well played my friend, well played. Now I was just worried about fading a ten so that dipshit wouldn’t get rewarded for getting all his chips in with a two-outer, but that didn’t happen.

You must be wondering what the hell happened for me to end up slapping the kid.

The turn was an ace. So was the river, and I took a hell of a beat (by Dre) in an $1,800 pot. The kid was actually yelling “Ace!” after he saw the turn, and I’ll be damned if the dealer didn’t give him one. He jumped up in the air like he just threw the winning touchdown in the super bowl, hollering and pumping his fist in the air. Apparently $1,800 is a lot of money. You can buy a lot of Jason Mraz tunes to listen to on your giant headphones with that kind of money, so I guess it makes sense that he was pretty excited. Then came the following conversation.

Me – “Classy.”

Dipshit – “Sorry about the beat.”

Me – “It ain’t about the beat son, act like you been there before and take a seat.”

Dipshit – “Wow, sore loser.”

Me – “Shut it”

Dipshit – “You gonna make me shut it?”

At this point I got up and walked over to him so we could talk face to face and be clear about our conversation. I started this new portion of our conversation with a slap to the face. Pretty hard one actually. I don’t know what got into me, I might have had too much coffee, but I let him have it. And believe it or not, the little bitch fell down on the ground. From an open handed slap from an old man!

Security took about ten seconds to arrive, and by that time I was already back in my chair waiting for the next hand to start. We had a disagreement, it was over, and I was ready to play cards again. The security guards thought I should leave, which didn’t make any damn sense to me. The kid was out of line, issued a challenge, and I accepted. The discussion was now over, his attitude was greatly improved, and we were ready to go back to playing poker, which was why we were all here in the first place. I didn’t see any reason to leave now that things were fixed up.

Now if I have to leave, and we discuss it and there just ain’t no way around it, then I’ll leave on my own and I don’t need a rent a cop laying his hands on me. I’m a proud man and I won’t be manhandled without a fight. This big fella didn’t have any respect for that and promptly got his arm around like he was gonna put me in a headlock. That just ain’t right.

Things are a little blurry after that, but I ended up out in the parking ramp on my ass, and I have a couple sore spots that I don’t think were sore before, but I’m in one piece and them security guards will be a little more respectful next time. At least if they know what’s good for them.

I do want to play at the Horse Shoe again, so please allow me to apologize to everyone except the dumbass kid. I’m sorry for knocking that lady’s drink over when the kid fell down. I’m sorry that I got blood on the carpet of the poker room. I’m sorry I busted up some cars in the parking ramp. And I’m sorry I bit the security guards, but they were being awful rough and they should have more respect.

That’s all I have to say about the incident. Have some respect and we’ll get along fine.

Karl turned pro upon retiring from a job with the post office in 2002 and he plans to keep getting his money in ahead against idiot fish until it’s all gone.