New York City Underground Poker

When I left you in my last post I had just arrived at my first New York City underground poker game to find a game going seven-handed with $5000 on the table!  If you haven’t read it yet, you can catch up here.

I sat down at the table and my body shivered.  The hundreds of hours of poker I have played sitting in front of a computer and at various casinos were nothing compared to this.

Remember that seen in Rounders where Mike McDermott walks into KGB’s place and gets his stacks of high society?  You can tell how nervous he is standing there covering his chips with his baseball cap.  He’s nervous Knish will see what he’s doing.  He’s nervous about the game he’s about to sit in.  He’s nervous about what his life is about to turn into.

I can’t claim to be a Mike McDermott, but I’m pretty damn good, and I had my own Rounders moment here, sitting down at this table for the first time.  I felt like my body was shaking so badly I would never be able to put a chip in the pot without knocking over the whole table.  This was my Rounders moment.  This is why I started playing cards.  I wanted that feeling, that rush that you could not get from anything else.  I wanted to live slightly on the edge of society, in a word apart from normal New York society.  Here I was, ready to play cards.

With so much money on the table I knew there was no way I could not crush this game.

I only brought about $600 with me, so I bought in for $200 at first, figuring the game would play like any normal $1-2NL game I had ever played.  Jaimo, a very large, very tattooed Puerto Rican man brought me my two stacks of red chips and wished me luck.  I hunkered down to play some cards.

Immediately I am dealt AJ of diamonds and I raise from $3 to $15.  Next to me, on my left is a middle-aged, slightly overweight, balding Dominican named Mani.  Mani barely acknowledges me, barely looks at his own cards, and raises to $50.  One other player calls and the rest fold.  The action returns to me and I figure with such a strong raise and a call, I really must be in terrible shape, so I fold as well.  As the action builds in this hand, so does the pot.  Mani bets $100 on the flop and his opponent calls.  On the turn Mani bets $250 and the opponent goes all-in for $750 total.  Mani calls.  After the river is dealt the two turned over their hands.  Mani’s opponent won the pot with A7 for one pair of aces, and beating Mani’s A4!  I could not believe what kind of game I just stumbled in to.

As the night wore on I continued to play, but had to completely reevaluate the way I played poker.  There was no rhyme or reason to the plays my opponents were making.  Mani, who sat immediately to my left raised every hand no matter what he had.  I saw him get into $1000 pots with one pair, no pair, and the stone cold nuts.  It was impossible to ever tell what he had, since he almost always put all his money in the middle.

I finished slightly behind on the night, but mostly just sat and watched the insanity.