Long story… If you don’t have the patience, please skip it!
Like many I played “poker” occasionally in school and after. But it wasn’t real poker. These were $5 or $10 game nights, featuring variations like baseball, follow the queen, etc.
So while I knew hand rankings and some basics, I was not a poker player by any stretch of the imagination.
Enter my on again/off again friend Morty (not his real name).
Morty is a character. As he loves to tell both friends and total strangers, he used to be extremely rich. He also used to throw his money around recklessly… For example, hosting an annual New Year’s champagne and caviar party for a huge number of people. Or buying his girlfriends expensive jewelry. He’d also indulge in fancy suits, antiques, cars, art, etc.
But he mismanaged the business he inherited from his father, disastrously not evolving it for the internet age. He borrowed more and more money, during the time when banks loved shoveling home equity and other loans out the door pre-2008.
Eventually Morty went bankrupt, which is another long, bonkers story—but the short version ends with him squatting in his mansion for 10 years without paying the mortgage or property taxes, while fighting the bank. Finally he was evicted.
Anyway.
Morty can be fun, but also can be a pretty annoying guy. Entertaining, full of stories, but also pompous and abrasive. Self-centered beyond belief.
So at one point, almost 20 years ago, well before he went bankrupt, I’d had enough. I told Morty our acquaintance was at an end and not to bother me.
Things were quiet for a while. But we live in a small community, so you sometimes run into people you don’t want to see. Both Morty and I got separately involved with the same community group; I tried my best to steer clear of him.
One day there was some ridiculous argument among the members of the community group, one of whom publicly lit into Morty in a particularly vicious way.
For whatever reason, I decided to speak up, noting that while I’d had my own issues with Morty, the nature of this particular criticism directed at him seemed unfair, and that in any case its nastiness was inappropriate to the group.
Of course the next day Morty called and with a sigh I picked up.
He thanked me for standing up for him, then in his typical way went for broke and said maybe we could be friends again.
As I was hemming and hawing, trying to find a way to deflect the suggestion and get off the call, Morty quickly mentioned that he had been playing in a good poker game in a neighboring town—maybe I’d like to meet him there?
This struck me as an OK compromise: We’d be at a neutral site, with other people around. I wouldn’t have to interact with Morty just one-on-one. Remembering my goofy college games, I thought “what the hell” and agreed to meet Morty for poker a few days later.
The game was held in the basement of a log cabin house. Two table tournament, $35 buyin, with rebuys. The tables were custom built, and despite the stakes (which felt higher back then) the players took it seriously. This was not your usual baseball/follow the queen fest.
Even as an inexperienced player I quickly realized that Morty was the whale in the game. Just terrible at poker. And I could see that the regs found him irritating. But he was the biggest donator, and thus tolerated.
As such, it was not surprising that when Morty said he wanted to bring a friend to the game, they were licking their chops — another mark!
As so often happens, though I was pretty clueless about real poker strategy, I had some beginner’s luck and cashed in 3rd place. And kept going back. And back.
Over the years, that game evolved into a $50 tourney and then $100 then a $150 league. It moved several times, including briefly to Morty’s mansion before he lost it.
Finally I inherited the game myself… Running it for several years as a tourney/league, with cash after. Then after a pandemic hiatus, I switched it to a one-table cash game.
Morty played in the cash game 2-3 times, but between his incredibly bad play and impoverished state, he finally wised up and begged me not to invite him anymore—for his own good.
So everything kind of came full circle. Despite our differences I do have to thank Morty for getting me into “real” poker. His invite also led to me to host a game of my own (and buy better chips, tables, seats, cards, etc.).
Now as a senior citizen Morty drives an Uber and lives off a small military pension plus Social Security. He’s doing OK, and sometimes asks about the game, but has just enough sense not to give it another try.
And I know from those that have ridden in his Uber that he gives every passenger his whole riches-to-rags saga, so I’m not telling any tales out of school!
