"Poker. Tonight," Meathead said to me tonight. "You in?"

It was a tough call. I planned on spending the evening tidying The Fortress and loafing. I haven't had much Me Time over the past couple weeks and needed to catch up on a couple things. I even canceled a date with The Girlfriend so I could stay home.

"Of course I am," I said (once an Unemployed Gambling Addict, always an Unemployed Gambling addict). "What sorta table we looking at?"

"Twenty dollar buy-in, 40 rebuy."

"So my $17 probably wouldn't be enough?"

This proved to be a major obstacle for me. The game was about a half-mile from my house. My bank was about three miles away. Seems like an awful lot of outta the way driving to get some cash. I might've be able to scrounge up another $3 but I was seriously screwed if I needed more chips.

Call me cheap if you want, but I hate paying silly ATM fees. There was a bank on the way to the game, but BofA-holes charged two bucks for the convenience of using its ATM. Seems like an awful waste of money just to get your money. My bank was near my mom's house: if I could find an excuse to see her, I could justify going to the ATM. Normally I go over her house on Saturday to do laundry but I didn't have enough dirty clothes to fill up my bathroom sink let alone a washing machine. I looked at my soda cans: I normally leave them at her house so she could recycle. But since I was looking at about 24 cents worth of cans, it was hardly worth the gas to drive there. I look around my house for something--anything to take over there. I couldn't find a dang thing. No pots I borrowed. No DVDs to return. I couldn't find any legitimate excuse to swing by her house.

I knew I was beaten. It was silly for me to drive completely out of my way to avoid ATM fees--I'd just hafta win that $2 fee back (yeah, that's a great idea: play $60 poker to win two bucks). As much as it killed me to do it, I really saw no other option. I was beaten--had to go to the ATM and pay the fee.

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Thanks to television, poker has become a huge phenomenon over the past five years or so. I have to admit, I'm a part of this. I might not watch much poker on TV, but I like it a lot better than I did five years ago. But because it's on TV so much, any fool with ESPN thinks he knows how to play poker. I find it appalling how many idiots think they know what their doing just because they watched the World Series of Poker.

I know I don't know all there to know about poker (at least I know that much--ya know?). I play for fun and usually with very little money. I win some; I lose some--and become a little bit better player with every game I play. I know my limitations and don't do things just because that's how the pros do it on TV.

Last night's table was filled with fools. Guys we're going 'all-in' before the flop--risking $30 to win a $3 pot. I don't feel like getting into the specifics of poker right now, but that's not a good idea--even an amateur like me can tell you that. If you have crummy hand, it's a horrible bluff: you risked $30 to win a lousy three. If someone calls, you're hosed. And if you have a good hand, you want people to call so you can take a good-sized pot. But few will unless they have a good hand too--and there's still too many cards out there to risk that kinda cash. You're better off building up the pot with smaller bets and then going all-in.

But like I said, these folks probably learned poker watching ESPN and see the pros yell 'all-in' all the time (probably not realizing the games are taped and edited, airing only the exciting parts). The first 30 minutes of the table included one person going all-in preflop of every hand--ridiculous.

Once I got a feel for the table, I made a killing. The fools kept losing all their money and rebuying more chips--while I kept gladly taking it from them. Granted, I did have a couple monster hands--but they let me take pots that were way too big.

Maybe I'm just cheap, but there's no way I would ever keep pulling out $20 bill and $20 bill for a home game. Most people ended up buying $60-80 worth of chips (if I didn't hafta work in the morning, I woulda kept gladly taking it from them). It's like they couldn't learn their lesson: saying 'all-in' doesn't guarantee big winnings--you gotta do it on the right hand (when I play, I rarely say 'all-in'--I usually like to bait my opponent into it). I don't know where these folks got their money from, but clearly they weren't attached to it. After two hours of playing, I walked away up a significant amount--a number unusually large considering the blinds were 25 cents. I wish I stayed later: I probably coulda won enough to cover my taxes.

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