Nice job on reaching 5K posts. (So I assume that the prize will be a rack of Jack Detroit 5K secondaries, right?)
Story:
I was playing in a new venue, a multitable tourney in an American Legion hall. Every so often, I would hear someone in the room shout out the single word,
“Science!”
A while would go by, and then it came again:
“Science!
A lull. Then:
“Science!”
For the life of me, I could not figure out what this mysterious new poker term could possibly mean.
Finally, a flop came out on my table — K8x rainbow — and the middle-aged guy to my right yelled out, triumphantly:
“Science!” Here was my big chance to solve the riddle.
“What the hell is this
Science thing all about?” I asked him.
The deal was that a bunch of guys in the hall used to play in a home game with another guy who was by all accounts the worst poker player who ever lived. Truly terrible. He had some ironic nickname, which I forget, but let’s call him The Shark.
The Shark was superstitious, unable to calculate basic odds, loose/passive/station-y most of the time, then running obvious bluffs in all the wrong spots. If there was a mistake you could make at the tables, he would make it. The Shark committed every imaginable poker sin.
So, one of The Shark’s many theories about Hold ’Em included the idea that Kings and 8s appear more often on the board than any other cards. He was sure of it. Kings and 8s.
One night, the guys in the game were razzing The Shark even more than usual about his K8 theory. He finally got fed up with getting mocked and said,
“Fine! I’m gonna prove it to you! Come back next week! You’ll see!”
At the next game, The Shark strode in with a big, smug smile on his face, and carrying a yellow legal pad covered with notes. What he had done was to run 100 hands at his kitchen table, and write down all the boards. Then he tallied up how often each rank of card had appeared.
And by god, he determined that Kings and 8s
had hit the board more often than other cards.
The Shark slammed the legal pad down on the table, and exclaimed:
“There! I proved it — with SCIENCE!”
I guess The Shark no longer plays poker. But the guys from this game still yell out “Science” whenever a King and and 8 hit the board.
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Coda: This meme needs to spread. Someday (after, of course, I ascend to the status of Poker God), when I’m playing 100/200 with $500 straddles in Macao, I hope to see K8x hit the flop, and then hear some random player from a land far, far away yell out “Science!” Only then will my poker journey will be complete.