Two Plus Two Newer Archives - Sick slow call, slow roll story (very lightly embellished)

About half way into a no limit session in an LA card barn a goofy, chatty friendly sort of player (I’ll call him “GCF guy”) sits down on my right. After a while between hands we engage in some goofy, friendly chat, mostly about stuff unrelated to poker.

Then this hand comes up.

GCF guy makes an average size raise UTG and I re-raise with aces. The rest of the field folds. The flop comes A-Q-4 rainbow so I’m pretty happy with top set. Fortunately for me lots of money for this size game goes in and before the turn betting the pot is about $500 or so.

The turn brings a ten completing the rainbow. GCF guy checks and I push all-in, which is a little more than the size of the pot. I have GCF guy covered by about $150 or so but sometimes the over-push with actual chip movement looks more like a bluff (as an aside I would simply declare all-in with someone who has played me before whether bluffing or value betting).

GCF guy goes into the tank. He asks the dealer to count my chips. The dealer tells him I cover but he asks for a count anyway. Meanwhile I have my head down maintaining total silence with my hands sort of covering my face and forehead. This is standard practice for me after I push. I’m an old man from the old school and don’t figure I need to practice looking animated or interesting in preparation for some future TV appearance or endorsement contract.

Through my partially covered eyes and ears I can feel, hear and almost see that GCF guy is huffing and puffing, scratching his head, shaking his head, moaning, sighing, and looking very uncomfortable. To put it more precisely if you were to take away the head scratching and keep him in his seat he’s sort of acting like a woman during real bad sex. This goes on for about three minutes, or about the amount of time one might engage in the aforementioned sex.

Meanwhile I’m not thinking about sex; I’m praying for the call but at the same time making sure my prayers aren’t visibly leaking out of my head.

After another minute or so he shakes his head in resignation one last time and finally says, “call” but softly. The dealer verifies the call (a good dealer for the city of angles, you never can be sure of a soft verbal call) and we are off to the river.

Rooting for a blank won’t help your game but I’m human so I silently root anyway. I’m thinking he might have KQ or QJ so for the most part I’m rooting not to see a king or a jack, which of course could make a possible inside straight.

The river comes some sort of baby blank. Since there is no river action he technically has to show first per LA card barn rules. He hesitates for a few seconds and of course I’m 100% sure I have him beat. Since I don’t want to embarrass him by forcing him to show what was surely a bad turn call I table my top set.

GCF guy doesn’t exactly make a bullet fold. Instead he repeats his performance from the turn, except it is a little shorter and less like sex since who can perform twice in five minutes (except of course woman and pubescent boys [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]). Finally he turns over one of his cards. It’s a king of something. He pauses for another moment. At least he stopped moaning. Now slowly, with perhaps a hint of sorrow he turns over another card. I figure he wants sympathy so I’m expecting a queen. It’s a paint but to my shock and horror it isn’t a queen; instead it’s a jack.

Since it was a full table eight pairs of eyebrows rise up simultaneously and I think most of the table is looking at me. The experienced dealer starts to push GCF guy the pot while probably wondering if for the first time in my poker “career” he might need to call security to make sure I don’t explode in a homicidal rage.

Somehow I maintain my composure and the next hand is played in a strange sort of silence. A hand or two later while the dealer is shuffling I turn to GCF guy and decide to help him a bit.

I start rather calmly, “Before I start I want to assure you that I’m not the type of guy I’m about to describe so you have nothing to worry about, especially given we had such a friendly conversation just ten minutes ago.”

“First, I want to make sure you did know you had the stone cold nuts on the turn.”

GCF guy says rather tepidly, “Yeah, I knew”.

I resume, “And you took about three minutes to call, pretending to hate every moment even though there was no further action possible. Then you took another minute to show the nuts on the river after I had the courtesy to show what to me seemed to be a certain winner first. Now I want to repeat I’m not one of those guys but a lot of players in this city would jump over the table and strangle you. And if you were in fact killed it might even be ruled justifiable homicide since you managed to combine a very, very slow call and a very, very slow roll all in one hand.”

GCF guy answers a little more brightly, “Sorry, but I just wanted to enjoy the moment.”

I guess the sex was better for him than I thought. [img]/images/graemlins/smirk.gif[/img]

~ Rick