1-800-GAMBLER

The only monster here is the gambling monster that has enslaved your mother! I call him Gamblor, and it's time to snatch your mother from his neon claws!
--Homer Simpson

"There's a half kill," I noted with some surprise as we studied the board. "It's going to play bigger than I expected."

"You want some extra cash?" SoxLover asked.

"Nah, I'll just play a bit tighter than normal in the kill pots," I said as I fanned five hundred dollar bills on the counter and prepared to take a seat in the 10/20 game. "Thanks though."

Five minutes later I had invested $120 into a kill pot holding 93o, having made a pair of nines on a board showing two overcards. So much for playing tighter than normal.

SoxLover and I had decided to check out a relative newcomer to the New York poker scene on our way to a birthday party at a nearby bar. Overall, it's a nice club, this "new" club, with the usual accoutrements - flat panel TVs, massage service, and food and beverages on premises. The floor and the brush could both charitably be described as "brusque", but that's a minor complaint, and really who cares? I'm there for the action, of which there was plenty. I expect guys playing in the New York clubs to have slightly better skills than random casino tourists, but there was plenty of EV at my table to make it worth my time, even despite misplaying a few hands.

The 10/20 seems to go off every day. In fact, there were two tables last night, in addition to two 2/5 NLHE tables and four 1/2 NLHE tables. There was also an interest list for 20/40. As we were leaving, the floor said he thought it would probably get going a bit after midnight.

I've become such a limit holdem junkie again. It was the game on which I cut my teeth four years ago when I started playing holdem, but at that time capped buyin no limit holdem was sweeping the country, and limit games became impossible to find in New York (at least, at stakes I could afford). With this 10/20 game, and potentially two different 20/40 games, so easily accessible in the city, and with the diamond mine that is the 10/20 and 20/40 games on Saturday at the Borgata just two and a half hours away, there's a real danger that I'm going to turn back into a huge poker crackhead. Online poker is all fine and dandy, but the truth is that it's a pale imitation of the real thing.

Oh yeah. My pair of 9s? They were good.