The Rent

I meant to write during my trip, but I never really found the time to put a full entry together. I wrote a few paragraphs around the 30th when I was back in Santa Rosa and itching to play, but when I finally felt like finishing it, the itch had been scratched -- I had arrived in Sacramento and played live poker at Capitol Casino.

Now, I'm on the eve of my return flight to Vancouver and am only hours away from starting the 70k+ VPP quest. I'll get the official numbers once I'm home and hope to provide frequent updates, but right now I want to focus on something else.

I grinded quite a few hours of live poker this trip and most of the time had at least one of my three Sacramento-poker playing friends with me. One of them called me out the other day for never mentioning him in my blog, so I'm going to make it a point to call him by name -- Nick Santillano. He probably should get more shoutouts as he gave me the basic framework of how to crush limit-hold'em which really helped my improvement in other games. Thanks again, buddy.

While at Capitol, I made a decent amount of money and had not surprisingly, had a fantastic time. However, one particular thing keeps bugging me. During the second to last night, a lady sat down at my table and bought in for $100. I vaguely remember her getting coolered/cracked, and losing most of her buy-in. She re-bought for $60, lost it. Then she reached into her purse, pulled out a handful of small bills and dejectedly laid them on the table in front of her.

"I knew I should have stopped. That was my rent money."

I had to take an orbit off and walk around. She could have been joking, I guess. But given her tone and body language, I highly doubt it. When I play online, I never have to see the consequences of my actions. Rather, the consequences of my victories. I don't have to see that pained empty look. It doesn't make me wonder if I just took food off someone's table. Live poker forces me to acknowledge it.

I've had this discussion with other poker playing friends of mine before, and most say something along the lines of "Well if I don't take their money, someone else is going to, so it might as well be me." I see their point. And I wish it I could feel that way, but I don't. Instead, I have that same pained empty feeling. Booking a few hundred dollar win or loss isn't going to break me, but it might break them. Sure, it's their fault that they chose to 'gamble' in that financial state, but that fact doesn't provide much solace. At least not to me.

Normally this is where I'd write some sort of conclusion that wraps everything up in a neat little bow. Not here. I've taken money from literally millions of people over the course of my career and for the most part, it doesn't bother me. But thinking about what that woman said and how she said it still makes me stomach turn. Maybe she was kidding. I hope so.