Home game drunkenness goes too far

We had our weekly home game last night. I need to provide some background before going any farther. We play 2 $10 SNGs with somewhere between 6 and 15 players each week. The money is meaningless. The pride of winning is what counts. Some folks enjoy their alcohol. Last night, things got out of hand and almost everyone was drunk beyond any semblance of good decision making. After getting knocked out of the first tournament (via a tremendous bad beat), I had built up quite a bit of liquid courage and decided to play online while waiting for the 2nd tournament. I sat down at $5/10 NL and before I knew it, I had lost and re-bought enough to be $2500 in the hole. Liquid courage stone cold bluffs on every other hand are bad. Bah! Damnit….more alcohol!

That ties my biggest lose in a night…not a good feeling. Having your friends talk about it as if you're not even in the room doesn’t help. The 2nd tournament is about to start and I can’t get that money out of my head. We play at my house you see, which is even worse because I have the opportunity to play online at any drunken moment and that is unfortunately what I decided to do. Screw the $10 SNG crap, I gotta get my money back. Straight to $10/20 NL while the rest of them shuffled up and dealt. $2000 buy-in and I’m ready to go. Many of these players also play $5/10, so I’m confident, whether it be by liquid or not, who knows.

2nd orbit and I’m proud of myself for not tightening up too much when the blinds doubled from my normal game. Actually now, I think this was just liquid courage acting again. Anyway, I’m down a few hundred when I pick up AA on the button. There is a raise and a reraise before me. I yell out to the live playing gang to come watch. I reraise to $700. Both call and they both have over $5K so they’re obviously playing this pot against each other instead or worrying too much about my puny $1100 stack that I have left over. The flop is QJ3. 3-way all-in and the crowd goes crazy. My house might have been loud enough to be declared a menace to society. The turn and river appear (don’t even remember what they were) and the hole cards flip up. My beautiful rockets appear first, then the next guy's JJ. Then the next guy's QQ. Blam. What just happened?

I somehow became an outcast circus monkey to all my ‘friends’ who were acting like I had leprosy or some other highly contagious and lethal disease. I’m down $4500. “Damn man, if I had $4500 to lose, I would just buy a fucking car”. “$4500 gone just like that man…that sucks”. “Are you going to tell ?”. The comments were numerous and every one of them just turned the knife that much more.

I had left the table and my Stars account was down under $150. Their daily deposit limit is $600, so no more play for me there thank God.

I double-fist alcohol for the next hour while watching the SNG that I can’t even play in now because "they’ve already started". It's $10! Let me in ya jerks. My house and I'm forbidden from the game.

About an hour goes by when I innocently walk over to the computer to avoid suspicion from the mob and look at my UB balance. I have about $6K there. The $25/50 game is running and curzdog is eating it up tonight. I watch for a bit, but it doesn’t take long for my drunk “courageous” self to sit down with $5K and try to get back to even. After only a few orbits, the table starts to break up. Curz sits out to go do something and it is 4-handed. I’m goooot short-handed (or at least I am sometimes). This could be it. I’ll school these guys, get back to even and be on with life.

#$!@, 3!@$!#@, Mother.ca7u23 ad=341, 1q23097r,

$5K gone just like that. Flop a set against a str8 and flush draw. All-in on the flop. Flush hits. Boat misses. -$9500

"What are you doing over there? Are you playing again?"
"No, just surfing the net"

Rebuy! I just recently had my deposit limits increased at UB to be $10K, which I guess they do without prodding after you’ve played there enough and have a long enough history of successful withdraws and deposits. I reload from neteller and sit in again. I think 10 minutes passed by at most before I had lost another $4K. -$13500 (or so). 4-handed against aggressive players makes the variance incredible. Flush draws are gold it seems (and they hit every time against me). Rebuy up to the 5K again and keep marching. My mind and body are so numb. It is like I’m not even there. I’m just watching from outside my body as entertained as ever. It doesn’t even occur to me what is really going on. I have a feeling that I’m the best player at the table and it’ll all come my way as the cards even out.

I’m not going to bore you with hands, so I’ll just say that it was one of those nights. I didn’t have a good read on the other players, they hit every draw, and I hit nothing. I dropped the full reload and everything that was in my account. Basically $16K from UB and the $4500 from Stars. By then a good friend had busted out of the tournament and had been standing behind me. I didn’t even know he was there. I close UB and Stars. I brought up Full Tilt where my balance is about $4200…as displayed at the quarter Razz tables on WPBT night.

I started looking for a table to sit at on Full Tilt when my buddy unplugged the computer from the wall. It took me about 20 seconds to realize what had happened. 20 seconds! That is how drunk I was. I finally realize what happened and swirl around. WTF Man! What do you think you’re doing!? “Saving the rest of your ass” was the response with that stoic, yet stern tone that brings back memories of your childhood when you were wondering why you couldn't have that cool new toy.

All the wind went out of me. Like getting slapped across the face, I finally realized what I had just done. I felt like a fool and it is the worst feeling I’ve had since I can remember. I was in shock and couldn’t say a word. Instead of trying to act cool, explain myself, or finish out the night with the boys, I just walked upstairs and curled up under the covers. I never fell asleep. I just walked in my office to type this up so maybe it'll be off my chest and I can get some sleep.

My bankroll stands at $6K give or take a few dollars. What to do now? I think $5/10 is out of the question, especially with my play as of late. I guess I could play $2/4 NL or the occasional $3/6 NL. I could just play SNGs and build it up slowly. Who knows? I’ll think about it over the next couple weeks while I take a required break from poker. I still can’t believe I did that. I’m mentally numb at the moment. The Aruba win was the height of my poker hobby and within a week, I’ve reached the abyss.

I’d ask for backers for the $5/10 NL game, but I’m sure nobody would be interested after this display of stupidity. Am I an alcoholic? Don’t answer that. I don’t want to hear the answer. Good luck to you all over the next couple weeks. I’ll see you then.

Please don’t comment on this post. It is depressing as it is. If you want/need to say something, highlight the following section and the white font will show up:

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April Fools! ... as if it weren't obvious
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  ¶ 8:10 AM |