*** The ridiculously ugly:
When I sat down at 2/5, a giant hand was in progress. The players were:
* A young African-American man in a leather jacket, and some mall bling (gold watch, chain, etc.);
* An older Italian guy in a suit, starched shirt, and fancy reading glasses that he keeps taking on and off.
I didn’t see the earlier action, but the older Italian guy is all in on the turn, and the blinged-out guy is pondering a call. The young guy asks the dealer to spread the pot.
He finally calls with the effective nuts, though in theory some river could cause him to lose. His hand holds up. (Think it was the nut flush vs two pair.)
The older guy goes ballistic. First he says the dealer shouldn’t have spread the pot. Then he says the request was a needle since the guy was obviously calling.
Things escalates from there, as the older guy goes on a 10-minute rant. The younger guy isn’t saying anything, not taking the bait.
Then the older guy’s comments start to take on a racial tone, though he tries to add some plausible deniability to his slurs.
For example, he says “You and your people should go back where you came from. [Long pause] To Rhode Island.” On and on.
Dealer does nothing.
I finally say, trying to defuse things: “Listen, I just sat down, so I don’t know what’s really going on here. But I came to have some fun playing poker. Could we tone it down and get back to the game?”
Older guy glares at me, then keeps digging at the younger guy.
Finally he goes too far, “It’s typical of your kind to have no class.”
There are shouts of “Yo, hold on now” from the rest of the table and the younger guy calls the floor to complain about the racist remarks.
People at the table confirm what was said, and the floor leads the older guy away for a talk. When they finally return the old guy apologizes and is allowed to resume play.
Things are pretty glum for a while. No one is talking. I ask the floor for a table change, but the only other 2/5 going is a must move.
So I sit back down.
The older Italian guy, who apparently is a long-time immigrant, eventually starts chattering with his neighbors (me and a couple others, not the younger guy) in an effort to prove he’s not such a bad guy.
He reminisces about his love of baseball, starting with how his dad took him as a kid to see Joe DiMaggio as a kid. Talks about how he used to be a degenerate dice player but wised up and quit I time before he lost everything.
Then he showed me the stump at the end of his leg, where he lost a foot when he crashed his Maserati, he said. Wow, OK.
In the interest of avoiding another blow-up we all kind of played along with his patter and he did get some fist bumps hours later when he won a big parlay bet on the Red Sox game.
Just another day at the casino. One of the things I love about poker is sitting with all sorts of people and personalities. But I could have done without the early tension.
