VOX CLAMANTIS IN DESERTO

I've accrued a lot of Dartmouth friends and acquaintances, mostly via a certain MRhe. My freshman year I went out with a girl from Dartmouth (whom I met completely independently of Mike) and between the two of them, it became my school-away-from school. Among the many things imported to my life from Hanover are kitchen-table pong, a position as Russia in a PBEM diplomacy game, a lot of slang, and, most recently, this really sweet email from a friend of Mike's who is currently a prop player at the Hollywood Casino:

5-5 pot limit at hollywood park, the game i've been playing for the last few months. i'm rolling, and have about 1400 in front of me when i pick up two kings. there's a straddle and a limper, so i make it 50 to go, get a caller to my left, and demetrii (who loses somewhere between 100,000 and a million a year in this game) makes it 200 to go from the small blind. i flat call, and dude to my left calls. flop comes 5-6-7 with two clubs, he checks, i bet 600, he moves me all in, and i call. "i've got a straight" he says. i almost puke. the dealer deals off a three, and a queen, i shrug and flip up two kings. he shows me an ace and throws his hand into the pot. "you got the pot" he says. i count it up at 2,885 dollars. what a monster fucking pot.

about an hour later, i'm planning to leave before the blind hits me. my last hand, i pick up 7-7. call the 5, demetrii makes it 25, and there are 2 calls to me. flop comes 5-7-9 with two spades. i bet 105, demetrii calls, others fold. turn is a five. i want the pot to be huge, since he's probably drawing dead, and will hopefully get there, so i bet the max, 315. demetrii thinks for a while, then says "you really don't want me to buy it, do you?" then he calls. i know he's either drawing, or trapping me (he thinks) with the trip 5 he just hit. either way, i'm check raising him on the river, so he can bet his draw if he hits it, bluff if he misses, and so i can double up if he's trapping me with the trip fives. dealer peels off a queen, and i give a quick check, trying to convey extreme weakness. i love it when he says "bet the pot" so quickly and ferociously that i think he probably missed his draw. i have some second thoughts as i'm pretending to ponder what i'm going to do, but remember what my instinct had told me. 'if he's got a hand, he's probably got trip fives, or maybe even fives full, and he'll definitely pay me off.' i push all in for about 2,400. demetrii hesitates for five seconds, and i think he might even fold it. then he begins a tirade

"if you have two queens in the hole, son, you have just made the best bet in your life. otherwise, you have just made the worst. i am calling you with nines full." he flips them up. i grin, "alright. see yall tomorrow." the net loss was four hundred, but those two minutes was every penny of three grand.