My poker updates, despite my best intentions, have fizzled. They have been as hard to produce as say, a game, which for the last few months has made disarming Saddam look simple. Our Christmas game only had four guys, January was a bust, and February was back to four after which Rob declared a five guy minimum. Funny, but I thought that was already a rule. In fact, I assumed the February game would be cancelled until Dwight showed up at my door at 6. Below are longer versions of both those games, written mostly from memory. The details might not be accurate but who cares.

First, highlights of our scintillating lives in bullet points.

• Dwight stopped talking about renovating his kitchen and actually did it or is doing it. Estimated time of completion-eight weeks-about half as long as if he'd hired me. A pic from last summer's vacation, a 1500 mile jaunt between National Parks visiting with Susan's brother and his wife both of whom are park rangers.

• Brian's company OSDN moved west without him, leaving him with less money to lose at poker.
• Bryan is in a witness relocation program.
• Stu (so far) keeps his private life to himself. Smart man.
• Rob's life is better suited to the pages of the National Enquirer.
• Check out Dave's two biz web sites: http://www.ulinet.com/ and www.homenetworkplus.com
• Mark has been skiing in France, giving me firewood and working like a dog on the interior of his garage.

December 2002

Bryan, who would have made five, forgot. It was almost seven o'clock when I tracked him down at home.
"Why didn't you call me earlier?" he shouted.
I turned away from the phone and repeated his comment to Rob, who, chewing on a slice of pizza he neither ordered nor wanted, said with a smirk, "Now he wants a reminder service?"
To which Bryan responded, "Didn't we used to have one of those?"

In November, after yet another failed attempt to get a game scheduled, Rob fired off an email that said something like, "You all can drop dead and go to hell." He has been the poker assembler for most of the last twenty years, and suffers each month with cancellations, late and lame excuses, or no responses at all. I had his job for six months as punishment for Matthew hacking into his email account, so I know better than most, this job, that is a labor of hate. I also know that these last few months have pushed him to the edge, and if you want to add butter to those bent digits, suggest that he needs to do even more babysitting. Our games always fall apart around the holidays - it happened last year, and the year before. Bogus excuses abound. Coldly logical Dwight is most puzzled,
"One game a month, what is the big deal?"
Mark, with the best excuse, an electrician's class that met three times a week would often be among the missing. Again, Dwight would say,
"Once a month, is that too much to ask?"
He's right and Mark is right when he complains that if he isn't available, we rebook. "If Dave can't play, we play, if Bryan doesn't show, we play, why is it that if I'm not available the game gets cancelled?" It's a mystery to me but it's true.

Mark and Dwight came back with the pizza, two large and one small, but not the mushroom, pepperoni and tomato pesto that we ordered. But a plain cheese, all veggie (looked like every left over green thing in the crisper plus some floor sweepings Rob mistook for meat) and a small pepperoni. I have never picked up the wrong order but apparently the same isn't true for Mark. "Jan says, why didn't you look before you left?" Look before you left? I never check, and I'm betting it probably wouldn't matter, but this night, with just four of us preparing for our "holiday" game, it did. A month later. standing in line at Salerno's Pizza, I found out how it happened. I had just picked up my order when the guy behind me walks up and says, "Pizza for Mike." But I digress.

The funny thing is, the games we played, in spite of the dismal attendance, were just fine. Maybe because we had that we will overcome spirit, or because Rob was trying to forget his fight with his son, Andrew, who ended up walking six miles home. And it didn't hurt that the Bose boys knew they had the following week off, because normally we would not play with four. There were no vaunted poker history moments, although Dwight (the publicity hound) tried to claim one when he won both on a Pass Ordinaire game: sixty-four low and a straight heart flush to take high, pummeling my four queens. Yes, it does hurt the most when you've already counted your winnings. The final game, 'roids, Rob overcame three to one odds to beat Mark, but that sums up Mark's last few months, or is it years?

So where was everyone? We know that Bryan forgot. That's the lamest excuse, a better one is Brian's, he went hunting with his brother and Stu who claimed he could have played the previous week. With Holly out, Dave was home alone with his two kids and then there's the excuse-less Larry Kaplan and John Brezack who have missed the last fifteen years. But the best excuse and maybe the only one Dwight will ever accept is Wayne's- he's still dead.

February 2003

The yacht's powerful engines were at idle and Rob, with his fresh squeezed on the teak table to one side and an eager for another piece of chum, Lennon, at his feet, grabbed his twelve foot deep sea rod with both hands and cast his lure far into the water. It landed with a splash and slowly began to sink. I've seen the same pose, the same cast, hundreds of times, and I've seen him land many fish -often the Great White Goodman-but this time, Bryan was elsewhere. Rob knew there was only one bottom feeder circling his boat, and that was the wide-mouth, slack gilled, vacant eyed, Curly Miller. 

We were playing 727 aka airplane, a split pot game, with the best low hand a 7,the best high a 27 but the winning hand often a half point shy. He and I were the only ones going low and my hand sucked. A two showing and a face card in the hole but a hand that could force an opponent to give up their own low strategy. That is if the other guy is not sitting on a perfect hand. Rob was showing a three , and with just a hint of concern on that usually implacable face, he passed the first time a card was offered. Reel in that line, add another chunk of fresh, dripping bait and cast again. This one landed at eye level, and beckoned. 

Another round of dealing and it was soon evident that Dwight and Dave were locked into that agonizing climb to 27 while Rob and I were staying low. The problem with this game is the same thing that makes it attractive to play. Each round of cards is followed by automatic betting rounds, no raising, but no abstaining either. If divine providence smiles and slips you a 7 or a 27, this is a no strain, all gain, game. If not, you sit and watch your funds dwindle. Like its cousin 2-22 this is a suck-em dry game. For that reason I often bail early, but tonight with only four of us playing and that bobbing bait in my face, I decided to stay. I might also add, that like Ahab and his nemesis, Mr. Dick, there is no one and I mean NO ONE, I'd rather beat than Rob. In poker that can be a fatal obsession.

About the fourth deal, and only down a buck, I was still waffling. Studying Rob more closely, he again, with a twitch of his eyebrow, turned down a card. I was sure then, that I had him. But the master had merely snapped back on his line, and set his hook. With a smile on his face, he took a sip of his OJ, propped his feet on the spit-polished brass rail and began reeling me in. Sitting on seven, a four in the hole, he had been counting his money since the cards were first dealt. The only question had been, how much money. Like many before me, I believed his feint, crossed my fingers and tossed in my quarters like so many shiny pennies down a wishing well. I shook his hand when the game ended but what I really thought about was pissing on his grave . Except that he knows it and he knows he has nothing to worry about because he knows I'm going first. That, I can see in his eyes.

Yesterday I read an article in the Boston Globe previewing a new book by Andy Bellin , "Poker Nation:A High-Stakes, Low Life Adventure In the Heart of a Gambling Country," Did you know that:

1. You can call for the cards to be cut at any time during a hand.
2. The odds of getting two aces in the hole is 220 to 1.
And of particular importance,
3. If you have played in more than three games of poker in your life, you have probably sat at the table with someone who was cheating.

That's it for now, got a game next week, March 19th.
One last word on that fisherman above. Tell me the bastard didn't bait his hook again with this email reply a day after that game:

"I also figured that you would think I was bluffing...mostly because 3 of the possible fours that I needed to have "7" were already exposed on the table. What was the chance, I had the last remaining four??? If I were you I would have done the same thing."