When a Good Fish Goes Bad

Part 1 ~ The story:

Flynn had the rare opportunity to benefit from the really bad, really drunk, heavily bankrolled fish at the Aria the other night. It was truly a dream situation. Off the bat DrunkFish is aggro. No one knows him, he is a tourist, big guy, mid aged, Native American we thinks. He is pleasant to his neighbors, and immediately loses his $200 shove on the river to a crying call by seat #2, a younger man from France, who rarely speaks, and barely knows English. Frenchie wins with bottom pair. DrunkFish fish pounds his chest, points at Frenchie and gives him respect for calling him down. Over and over he ‘respects’ Frenchie for calling his bluff. Needless to say, the rest of the table makes note. DrunkFish re-buys max ($300).

Next hand, same scenario. DrunkFish (DF) bets whole way, gets called to river whole way, Loses in ‘hood of $150 with nuthin’. 3rd hand, he calls 1st action to river, then shoves, loses with bottom pair against a paired Ace on flop. By now, entire table is drooling when he re-buys again for max. 3 others have made $ from him.

On 3rd re-buy, it’s Flynn’s turn. Pocket 10’s. Flynn bets, insta-call by DF (all other players fold because we are sharing the wealth). Flynn bets whole way, no 10 appears but Flynn is not worried, cause.. well…history. DF calls river bet with a $100 bill because they have not even had time to bring him his re-buy chips yet. Flynn takes the pot easy-breezy. Re-buy.

DF is a bit quieter now, but his MO has not changed. He folds one or two hands, but then ~ yep, to the river he goes. Seat #1 (RunPure) wins this hand ~ he’s another kid who has not said a word in two hours, has had earphones in, and has been running pure against the real players long before DF arrived. The 2nd hand DF plays with his remaining $, he loses to Frenchie again. Re-buy.

DrunkFish has been on the table for all of maybe 45 minutes. He has had 3+ shots of something hard & 4 Coronas. On his 5th buy-in, he encounters RunPure betting out 1st on flop and turn. DF calls (in for a penny, in for a couple hundo, right?). The large bet on the river by RunPure brings a disgusted look and comment under the breath by DrunkFish.

And so it begins. RunPure takes his earphones out (he legit did not hear what DF said to him) and asks him what he said. DF pulls the ol’ “You heard me. I am tired of you and your partner cheating”.

We have RunPure in #1, Frenchie in #2, Rando #3, and DrunkFish in #4.

RunPure looks confused. What? DF repeats his accusation, pointing at Frenchie. DF accuses RunPure and Frenchie of talking to each other all night, conspiring about hands. They deny it. The rest of the table stays silent, the dealer does nothing except try to get DF to either make the call or raise. Frenchie is also confused. He is putting it together, but his limited English has him about one sentence behind everyone else. Both RunPure and Frenchie try to explain, very calmly that they have not spoken to each other (or anyone else) the whole time they had been at the table. DF does not give up, he escalates. The dealer does nothing. DF demands the floor be called. The dealer pushes the button.

By this time, RunPure has had enough. He had been very calm, and remained so, but said in no uncertain terms that to accuse him of cheating was not to be tolerated. He demanded of the dealer that the floor be called to pull video. Frenchie realized what was happening, and also tried to explain (by pulling out his passport) that they could not have been colluding as they did not speak the same language. The dealer softly called for the floor (who was never gonna hear it), and again tried to get DF to play his hand. DF had latched on to the ‘video’ request and began yelling that someone look at the tapes.

Enough was enough. Voices were finally getting louder, and one of the three involved yelled ‘floor’ loud enough to be heard. Everyone else was silent and Rando in #3 had been slowly moving out of his chair to literally get out of the middle. The Floor arrives.

As always, a consummate professional, Floor listens to both sides of the story, and the dealer’s rendition (which was not much). He asks if any physical threats were made (no). He eventually gets DrunkFish to sit down, tells him he must stop making accusations or he will be asked to leave. DrunkFish continues to argue that RunPure and Frenchie were colluding, and he wanted someone to look. Flynn tells the floor that the two boys have not spoken all game, and there was clearly no collusion.* (more on this later). Floor repeats his instructions. DrunkFish sits down, Floor walks away.

Okay, now you and I both know this is not gonna happen. No way, no how. In under 30 seconds, DrunkFish says something, and Frenchie responds with a calm “Shut up”. Yep, heavy accent and all, that was the phrase he knew to express his frustration with DF. DF is livid, is out of his mind, and Frenchie repeats his request for him to “shut up”. It is honestly a quiet request, not aggressive, however, understandably it does not go over well. In another 10 seconds both are out of their seats, nose to nose. Everyone at the table yells ‘floor’ at the same time.

DrunkFish gets picked up, and escorted out for the day. Seats #5 – 9 are kinda sad, as we all wanted some of those bucks (lucky Flynn!). Seat #3 resumes his seat, safely. RunPure and Frenchie put their earphones back in, and we all go back to somewhat boring poker.

Part 2 ~ Thoughts on this incident

Good players want the fish, especially the drunk well-funded fish. This man started out downright jovial. He smiled, was friendly, and gave good action. He did not get lucky with his horrendous play (as it seems so many do). It was the perfect set-up. It is not surprising that he became frustrated with the number of times he had to pull out his wallet, and it is not surprising he targeted the ‘next’ person he lost money to, considering it was the largest (and second largest) stack at the table.

#1 oddity: The dealer’s reluctance to solve the problem. He didn’t call the floor soon enough, he didn’t assert any authority, and he did not report the facts in their entirety. For the Aria, this is unusual. Mind you, he was not a bad dealer, he just seemed oblivious to what was going on. Maybe that was his strategy ~ to stay out of it and to hope it would go away.

#2 irritation: One of Flynn’s competitors told Flynn to not say anything when he piped up to the floor in defense of the #1 & #2 seats. Okay, this is BS. Of course someone should come to the defense of the players who were behaving themselves. If the dealer is not going to do it, then some other neutral party should. Yes, the floor is astute enough to realize who the trouble-maker is, but it never hurts to have some confirmation of this from a witness. No, not every single person at the table should be chiming in, but at least one person should. And if not a person, then a flamingo will. Not loudly, not interrupting, and by uttering only one sentence during the inquisition. If someone was accusing Flynn or Ollie of collusion or other shady play, I would hope that someone comes to their defense. So yeah, don’t tell me when Flynn should or should not talk. As a matter-of-fact, just shut up.

Fin

Flynn