High Card Hand
Brushing up on the usual ways of losing as you do— and do well by local reputation— this is the worst hand, worst of the sorriest bunch of worthless losers to apologize for. You’re as much acquainted with the hand as you are with the insistent host next door who invites you to these late-night down-low high-octane real-stakes sessions: too much, too often. It’s also the hand you will draw repeatedly like any other poker player who plays over a lengthy chunk of their cursed lifespan, the highest mathematical probability of getting stuck with five cards which, proverbially speaking, refuse to dance with each other at the junior high prom. In more informal terms, you hear this hand being referred to by players as nothing, garbage, slop, dogshit and worse, placing greater and greater emphasis on an angry enunciation of these in this specific progression as the night continues in drunken abandon, and which you employ yourself while the other players offer superior hands on a frequent basis. Of particular note in this hand you’re perpetually wielding is the shabbiness of your kicker— not even a face card to make it look respectable or crack an empty joke about at the table. A lowly four or seven standing there instead, looking at you with its hands in its pockets, whistling nothing better to itself than “With or Without You” or “Blurred Lines.” Another player there may further suggest, A common way of losing for a common player, in so many indelicate words chosen at the table. Taking offense as you should, you will stumble outside with a trail of obnoxious jeers behind you. Maybe a short break with a Razzberry Hype cartridge in your vape pen will settle you enough to make the right cards come your way and shut the fat mouth of that dealer who, now that you think about it, seems to be acquainted with you from somewhere else, though you don’t remember anything about meeting them. And when those right cards don’t materialize in the clutch, every single four or seven card showing up in your hand for the remainder of this wasted session will remind your murky hype-laden ambitions that it can’t carry a decent tune to keep you out of crippling debt, much less save your rational self from a fear of players one-upping you in subtle ways.
One Pair
The patronizing consolation prize of all losing hands, especially if the card pair aren’t face cards, what gets you momentarily excited when you pick up after dealing and grow cautiously hopeful you may have something solid, only to realize it’s just a pair of sixes ready to evaporate in the airy promises of its pillow talk. Try as you might to find that third six in the first pass and make a substantial go of it, your bluff runs nowhere fast after the second pass. Therefore, you must either fold as you should (you really have been meaning to visit the local library for poker how-to’s to check out), or lay down a pair of sixes for everyone at the table to rightfully chortle at your failed gambit. The latter, of course, is what happens again and again. Get ready for a lot of this, your brain tries warning you to no avail. No, a whole lot. Have a spirit of choice handy nearby to raise to your mouth, preventing your saying anything before the next hand is dealt. Have two, even. Savor those traditional ancillary benefits to get your bruised ego through the other players’ constant needling and boasting. Visualize emptiness.
James Bond Hand
This doesn’t involve any particular pairs or runs, only the accurate perception at the table that you have a bum hand, leading to your being dealt a card on the final pass which inexplicably turns your bum hand into an unbeatable winner (which you expected right from the start), and with a huge pot piled on the table courtesy of your sly nemesis on the other side, a pro’s pro who has stumbled into this cagey ruse and grinds their molars into dust upon grasping their mistake thinking they could upend your hotshot bravado. The remaining players who have folded smile and nod at you in stubborn respect and, perhaps, latent sexual admiration. If only, you sigh to no one paying attention, watching your money get swallowed up instead by the ever-loving arms of said sly nemesis.
Dead Man’s Hand
Quick-draw maestro “Wild Bill” Hickok’s other claim to fame in these edgy United States. By some accounts. What’s certain was his poker-related death at the avenging hand of the son of one of his many victims, compounded by a fatal mistake in the Wild West of having his back towards the door— something you know you will never repeat after that time the host dropped ice cubes down your shirt. What’s not certain according to various competing histories, as you learn while brushing up on amateurish pro tips on-line, is what in particular Hickok was holding when the kid plugged him through the cranium, though popular lore eventually settles on a pair of eights and a pair of aces, both clubs and spades, with the kicker’s true identity forever shrouded in a circling mystery of numbers and suits and faces. “Spook city,” your company at the table mocks your erudition trying to distract them with all this fancy stuff. Message received. You step outside to suck on some Wintergreen Is Coming, yet to no discernible effect. This hand retains for you a mythical aura beyond the usual reasons, however. You have never drawn it yourself or seen anyone else do the same. But this most deadly of possible losing winners remains in the constant employ of your abstractions as you play along, as do anxieties regarding the detractors in your curtailed social life, how far they would be willing to go to embarrass you in public, failing to mark the considerable financial hole you’ve dug for yourself in the meanwhile. You start thinking Bill could have stumbled into it right. The only best way to die if you hang with this sadistic game long enough with strangers pretending to be bigger strangers than they are: completely oblivious.
Greasy Flush
Doled out by that annoying player next to you who was invited only because they are someone’s cousin with their Friday paycheck quickly cashed, and won’t stop eating gas station fried chicken at the table. They wind up leaving a filmy residue over what should’ve been your respectable winning hand of all clubs in full view of the other players, then remark in derision, “Shit, you can keep that Flush,” promptly nailing you with a Straight Flush while licking their fingers.
Two Pair
A slight cut above Dead Man”s Hand since the specter of violent death is removed, but it does want to suggest unkindly that you’re still mucking around in a pre-school sandbox with the bedwetters. Worse still, the game’s secret cheating heart is revealed to you when you have two pairs of face cards, which look impressive from your seasoned vantage at present, then you get sideswiped by another player’s Full House of two fours and three deuces, which doesn’t look impressive at all for crissakes. How can that be? your mind starts racing in furious anguish, this hand’s fantastic— two kings and two queens! Plus I didn’t need the fifth card! It’s the sort of bothersome conundrum which sends you down the rabbit hole of academic research on YouTube later to ascertain how any respectable poker player, past or present, has believed a Full House of number cards (especially on the low end) should always beat Two Pairs of face cards, up until you get distracted by a link to a webpage dedicated to the inspiring accomplishments of the Earl of Sandwich.
Something Completely Different
With only fifty bucks in their pocket to start, the brand-spanking new player no one has any intel about to share beforehand, including the pressing matter of whose friend they are to begin with or whose annoying cousin they’re married to, winning multiple hands early on despite obviously having little to no conception of what they’re doing. What appear to be losers to them get magically transformed into winners by explanation from another player whose patience is wearing thinner than the den carpet below everyone’s shuffling feet. “Beginner’s luck, I guess,” the supposed first-timer (and now last-timer) smirks at the end of the night with their sweet sweet payoff for such predictable ignorance. Sans the uproar of laughter, this is the closest you will get to a Monty Python skit playing out in real life.
Impossible Muffuletta
The Earl of Sandwich infecting your obsessive pursuit for the truth of what is assuredly your delayed win, you get this odd tactile sensation from a fresh deck of cards being used mid-session which feels like thick cardboard in your over-sensitive fleshpads, conjuring old travel memories best left forgotten to subsequently meander into that amazing stack of salami, ham, mortadella, provolone and giardiniera you had in New Orleans, but at the time you were drunk on multiple Hand Grenades and almost meeting Lil Wayne on Bourbon Street, what was the goddamn name of that place? Poof. You accidentally throw away an easy Straight. Fried chicken cousin stares at you for the rest of the evening, not in an unpleasant way, either, as though you’re the greatest meal ticket to fall into a poker player’s lap the day before Christmas.
Who Knows
Somewhere in the middle of yet another fruitless evening when every hand resembles all the other losers you’ve pulled: possibilities here and there among the table scraps to build a banquet, nothing but Scraps Wellington your underheated kitchen winds up churning out for the impatient, snobby guests. Not that you want to suspect the other players are resorting to low-level cheating, by the way— this is already a given for you thanks to the luxury of what may constitute cheating to middle-tier apprentices such as yourself. That said, there swirl unusual, sinister forces outside your resignation which are allowing the other players to consistently get dealt Three of a Kinds without breaking a sweat, while you can’t get the suits to match up for a run. Statistics and probabilities, insist your better angels, it’s gotta come together in the next hand. By then, however, an unexpected guest drops in, often a neighbor out on parole coming from a different session where they’ve rolled everyone, also the injection of new money never hurts to spice things up, your host reasons to the table’s approval. Sure. Sure. The mild Citrus Confetti in your weather-beaten lungs swaps out the surprisingly vast number of ways this latest torturefest can make you lose for a tastier conviction of how your fortunes will be turning in a delightful manner with this unforeseen player on-board, which you can’t quite picture for yourself regardless.
Time Warp
Post-felonious neighbor at the table, taking advantage of a sudden pall in the conversation during a deal, fills the void to happily reminisce about this spectacular hand they had years ago in a desperate situation, the meticulous detail of which fondles the other players’ lustful imagination all the way down to the opulent tunic designs of the face cards. Lo and behold, that exact same hand in the story appears for the neighbor’s winner three or four deals later. Coyly they surmise “Funny game, ain’t it?” as their modest alibi, nudge your arm to change the subject pronto-casual by asking whether you’ve tried Limp Honey Fresh Bizkit or Black Currant Sabbath. See previous entry, and repeat.
Push
Even when managing to scrape something decent together and match a player’s hand at call, your kicker seldom comes through to deliver the win, as if it’s that former classmate who owes you a big favor stemming from your helping them through their adverse physical reaction to Melon-Melon Trampoline years ago yet telling you over the phone, I’d like to do this for you, but today’s my only day off this week, leaving you to follow up a week later and get lectured about hot water heaters and how child support payments work. Click. Dial tone.
Full House
Okay, okay now, here it is, yes, a done deal, this weird looking hand everyone and their mother would claim is a bonafide winner in a high percentage of poker scenarios, no doubt: a pair of Queens and three aces. Good. Fine. Dealer calls. You lay it down with authority— you win! Yes! No? Another player smugly tosses four threes. Table breaks out into hooting and hollering. You’ve been routed. Absurd. Outrageous. First, your employing the fifth card speaks for itself. Second, following that, you know how difficult it was to assemble this hand in comparison to the other— as if Four of a Kind requires any special maneuvering! Third, the aesthetic appeal of your hand oozes with far more quality and, unbeknownst to you, potential narrative extrapolation than the same fucking number repeated four times over. Alas, dear player, you have never read or at least heard of Italo Calvino’s The Castle of Crossed Destinies to bolster your waning argument against these Philistines. Cry yourself a river and drown in it.
Royal Flush
Vaping outside for the umpteenth time because the host apparently favors the smell of buffalo wing belches over your UltraFlan Blast, a lucid moment reveals to you that inevitability is, well, kind of inevitable. Endless hours wasted playing this game, stacks of money pissed away, gallons of e-liquid inhaled, numerous cohorts you could’ve had a somewhat intellectually stimulating time with, all gone for the sake of winning’s thrill. After that subsides, what redemption does winning get you for the massive losses already incurred? You stride back inside. This will be my last hand, you tell yourself, grand finale, the big kiss-off. Going full tilt at the deal, you’re resolved it will indeed be your last, as vicious and ruthless as you can play, seeing and raising, seeing and raising, while slowly becoming aware of an incredible hand shaping up below your tired eyes, the best you can fathom. You burn the last unscented drop of willpower needed to not let your facial expression blow it as usual when aces and kings land in your fold— though this is different. Much different. Seeing and raising, seeing and raising. All the other players get roped into this, sensing an opportunity. You pause. Dear lord jesus, the run is there in your hand. Everyone at the table is going all-in for this accrued motherlode of cash, clearly believing you’re bluffing, with good reason based on your past performance, too. Except you’re not this time. “Call it,” the dealer exhorts with a slight note of apprehension you detect, while the players cough up what normally are strong hands. Not so much as a blink do you give in response. You have your hand organized just right, and each card you snap on the fake walnut tabletop, starting with the devoted ten of hearts, working your way along those three staid faces in reverse order of succession to the throne, then finally this singular ace representing the precision shot you put through each of your opponents’ convulsing aorta to claim it. Ssssnap. Utter perfection. Yet the expected “Whoa!” or mixed shouts of profane incredulity from these players watching enrapt are replaced by a unified hush controlling their would-be editorials. Soon the silence factory gets awkward. At first, you’re not sure how to react. Following their past performances, you decide to sweep up the largest pot of the night, albeit avoiding eye contact with them, neatly assembling the pile of bills by denomination. No one’s about to say anything. Not a passing compliment in your direction. The final gesture left for your triumphant part, other than standing up and attempting a safe exit with your winnings, is to begin probing this vague terrain spreading before you. It may yet arrive at the battlefield of victory a curious Greek king wept upon many centuries ago when realizing he had neither friends nor enemies left in all of Chance’s creation.