An epic performance
21 Nov 2005 
in the early afternoon 
Matt Winckler
On Friday I and a few hardy souls headed to Walla Walla to take on the inimitable Mr. Price in games of chance and skill. Despite gastrointestinal difficulties (the Obsidian Stout seemed to not settle too well with the hastily-eaten gluten/egg/dairy-free pancake dinner), the evening was perhaps one of the most remarkable to date, for me anyway. Really, for me there were only two hands in the entire evening that mattered. And now, I will tell you about them.
The first came about an hour into the evening. We were playing a game that I have come to know as a vile reptilian mutant form of poker called Anaconda. (It involves passing a bunch of cards around like hearts, then playing a 5-card poker hand by flipping up one card at a time and betting after each flip.) After all was said and done, I was left with a handsome straight flush, A2345. We all flip the first card, and I play cool with a dime, not wanting to scare anyone off. Second card: 2. Another dime. Third card: 3. People begin to murmur now, and I up the bet to a quarter. Price calls and raises another quarter. At this point, things are looking good, but not certain. Price has a 2, 3, 5 of hearts showing. I call. Next card: I flip the 4 of clubs. Price flips the 6 of hearts, and my heart sinks momentarily. Still, what are the chances of him having the inside 4? I go fifty cents (the maximum bet), Price raises 50 cents, I raise another 50 cents. Now it’s just me and Price and an unfortunate bystander whose cards tell us that he cannot possibly beat a straight flush (he was counting on both of us bluffing). As I recall, Price came back with one more 50 cent raise, which I naturally called, and we then flipped the last card. He had the 4 of hearts! Woe! My A2345 straight flush was flushed down the drain by a 23456 straight flush. This was disheartening to say the least. I was crushed. Crushed by a flush.
After that, I was down by several dollars. The rest of the evening was just a slow downward slide, losing 10 cents here, 40 cents there, winning 10 cents over there, and so forth. It had come to the last hand of the night. We were playing Texas Holdem, and I was dealt 89 offsuit in the hole. The flop was A27. Seeing a slight possibility for a straight, and since it was the last hand, I raised a dime. The next card flipped was a 10. So now it was getting interesting! I had 789T…all I needed was a 6 or a Jack and I would be set. (The suits were all garbage; as I recall, a Jack-high straight would have been pretty much the “immortal nuts”, the unbeatable hand.) This called for a more serious bet. I raised a quarter. I was gratified to see Mr. Price come back at it with a fifty cents of his own! So the man has confidence…I grimly called the bet. The dealer flipped the final card.
The Jack of clubs!
Ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding dinnnnngg!! Somebody in my chest cavity flipped on a ten-thousand volt Tesla coil, and my heart did a happy dance. It was all I could do to keep the dance music inside me quiet enough so as not to tip off my hapless opponents. Here, at last, was my chance to take back what was rightfully mine, from the very man who had taken it from me earlier! My bet was a foregone conclusion: fifty cents! I was delighted to see Price not only call the bet, but raise it another fifty cents! Now I was down to my last chips, down $8 on the evening, and I had to dig for folding money. A green Washington came out into the pot: “Your fifty cents and I raise you another fifty cents.” Price never saw it coming, and called the bet without thinking twice.
The look on his face as I casually showed him my cards was priceless. “Straight - Jack high.” He and the other fellow who was still in just sat there numb for a moment, not believing it. Evidently he had completely missed even the possibility of a straight, and thought I’d been drawing for a flush (which was impossible after the last Jack came up) and, having failed, was just trying to buy the pot. So after being down $8 just moments before, I ended the night up $2. That hand was truly the great equalizer: Price ended down fifteen cents. A beautiful thing!