A Month in Mulvane

There are a million great quotes from Seinfeld, but one of my favorites is when George casually mentions the city of El Paso, Texas, and Kramer says, "El Paso? I spent a month there one night."
Well, I think I spent a month in the city of Mulvane, Kansas this past weekend.
We hadn't been up to see Missy's family in El Dorado, Kansas for quite some time so we scheduled a weeklong trip. There's a fairly new casino about 40 minutes south of there with a poker room, so we figured I could get a couple of sessions in.
I had heard they had good Omaha games, and I had also heard that I needed to get there early if I wanted a seat in them, as they fill up quickly. On our way up, I stopped into the casino to check it out and talk to a poker manager. It was 5 p.m. on a Thursday and the casino was packed to the gills. Unlike most casinos, there were nice restaurants and the air smelled fresh, not the stale smoky smell I usually get to enjoy. There was already an Omaha game going with a decent list.
We continued on to El Dorado and I decided to come back Friday to play. On Friday, I called the poker room number but nobody answered, and it sent me to an automated messaging system that proved to be a good source of frustration for about 15 minutes until I finally gave up on talking to a live human being and decided to just go to the casino.
Pro poker tip: On days you intend to play poker, make sure to get really annoyed right before you play.
I got there at 2 p.m. and was surprised to find that there were zero people on any Omaha list. In fact, there was only one list going, for $1-$3 no limit hold em, which was not something I wanted to play. Oh well, I figured the Omaha would surely get going later, and since I had just driven 40 minutes I might as well play the no-limit hold em game.
Pro poker tip: Always waste several hours playing a game you don't want to play. That way you are both irritated and tired when you get into the game you actually want to play.
So I sit down in this $1-$3 hold em game. I fold my first hand and pull out my phone to text Missy and let her know I made it safe and that I'm dutifully playing this hold em game instead of playing craps or just setting my money on fire, both of which seemed like reasonable alternatives at the time.
"Sir," the dealer said, "I can't allow you to have the phone out while you're at the table."
 I gave a disbelieving stare to the dealer before standing up to complete my text. I noticed that players at other tables had their phones out, so I went to the front desk to inquire. The dealer up there said there was a loosely-worded policy about phones but as long as I wasn't involved in a hand it was fine, and most of the dealers would never say a word about it anyway.
I was starting to feel like I was in an episode of Seinfeld, because there are always random people being jerks for no reason at all. This would be a recurring theme of my weekend.
I glanced up at the waiting lists and noticed that there were now interest lists forming for nine different games, all of which had the same one person on them. These were all variations of Omaha, but with slightly different rules or buy-ins. Essentially, however, they were all one list, because the same people were going to get onto all of the lists, and if they opened one of these games, the other lists would die out.
I asked the poker manager which Omaha game would run. He said he had no idea. Different one every day. You never know. 
Needless to say, this is a pretty stupid way to run your poker room. It would be the same as Sonic offering the following drinks: Ice Tea, Coke, Vanilla Coke, Cherry Coke, Cherry Vanilla Coke, Caffeine Free Coke, and Caffeine Free Cherry Coke. Nothing else. And then telling their customers, "We have Ice Tea available right now, but you'll have to get on a list to get any of the Cokes, and you'll end up with whichever one gets nine votes first." Just pick one Coke for each night so that people know which game is going to run.
Pro poker tip: I'm sorry if that didn't make any sense at all.
Being the genius that I am, I figured I could manipulate the list slightly by not getting onto the two or three lists I least wanted to play, even though they were all very similar. That way my game of preference would be more likely to get chosen.
I ended up playing the $1-$3 hold em game for several more hours, and I was doing pretty well. After awhile I got thirsty and asked a waitress for a bottle of water. She came back with one and I grabbed a $1 chip off my stack to tip her with, since water is complimentary at every NORMAL casino in the world.
The waitress looked at me sideways and said, "The water is $1.75, and we don't accept poker chips." What?...and WHAT? I've probably played in 20 or so different poker rooms in my life, maybe more, and never heard that one before. Why couldn't they accept poker chips as payment? Kansas state law, they said. Good law. Glad they got that one on the books here in the Sunflower State.
So I grab my wallet and notice I only have $15 in there. I gave 20% of it to the waitress for A FREAKING BOTTLE OF WATER and decided I'd have to go get tap water myself for the rest of the night.
I glance back up at the Omaha lists and notice that there are 7 or 8 names on all of them now...except one. This list now has 20 people on it, and the casino is going to start this game. What the smoke?
Luckily, it's one of the three lists I WASN'T on. I go to the front desk. What the heck, bro?
"Oh, Charlie and AJ called in. We let them start a private game."
Every poker player in Oklahoma knows Charlie and AJ. They really should have their own reality show. It would be the Duck Dynasty of poker. These guys are crass and funny. They have a lot of money and they like to blow it playing poker. They have double-handedly springboarded the poker careers of some guys I know who now play at the highest levels in the world. 
Evidently, they are allowed to start a game with whoever they want, so they get some of their friends who are also bad at poker and they start a game. As soon as they call in, the poker manager alerts the local professionals, who send out a mass text and all show up at the same time. They have an arrangement with the poker manager to put them at the top of the list. Then all the idiots who actually signed up at 2 p.m. are at the bottom of the list.
Pro poker tip: Don't get left on the outside when the best poker game you've seen in 3 months opens up 3 feet away from you.
Luckily, I don't know these Kansas poker pros or the poker room managers, so I was about 21st on the list.
At about 7 p.m., they did open up another Omaha game, a small-stakes one. I had won a bit at the hold em game, so I just figured I'd go over and win a little more at the Omaha game. Plan B was not winning a pot the entire time I was there.
I played one pot against a dude who obviously didn't know what he was doing. He was dumping money left and right. I got all in against him with what I thought was the best hand, and I had a good draw to improve my hand as well. My draw didn't come in, and it turns out this dude had the best possible hand.
As this guy takes the pot in, an older black guy on my left offers his analysis. Talking to the guy who won the pot, he says, "I'll be honest with you, I didn't think there was any way you were going to win that pot. I wasn't sure you knew what you were doing. But now it looks like this other young man might be the one who doesn't know what he's doing."
Thanks.
I tried to exact revenge on the poker analyst. I got all in with him in about as good a shape as you can ever be against someone, but he found the right card on the river and spoiled my plans to bust him for spite.
Pro poker tip: When someone says something to anger you, make sure you immediately double him up. It's good for team morale.
So, Plan B was going along perfectly, and by now it was 10 p.m. so I was getting hungry. I decided to splurge for a quality dinner. It cost $15 after tax and tip.
The waitress brings it and I absent-mindedly grab $15 in chips off my stack to pay her. I forgot this was a felony in Kansas. So I grab my wallet. I forgot that I now have only $12 in cash in my wallet. Not wanting to break a $100, I shrug my shoulders and give her a credit card. Now she has to walk back to the restaurant, run my CC, bring me back a slip to sign, then walk back to the restaurant again. As George Costanza says in another favorite Seinfeld quote (after randomly stealing a clock from an ex-girlfriend), "That's one for our side!"
At 2 a.m. I finally got my seat at Charlie and AJ's table. Of course, I'm now playing with Charlie, AJ, and six professional poker players who have 90 percent of the chips on the table. All the other amateurs have left. I'm also totally exhausted from already having played 12 hours of poker. And this was after not sleeping much the night before because Addie kept waking me up.
Pro poker tip: Sleep is very important when you are winning. When you are losing, it's irrelevant. You just keep playing. And if you can play for higher stakes than when you weren't tired, that's even better.
When I sit down, the guy next to me says he recognizes me from Riverwind. I don't recognize him, but he seems like a cool guy. He proceeds to tell me how stupid it is for me NOT to come up here every time Charlie and AJ show up, and he is curious as to why I am not regularly playing nosebleed stakes poker. I tell him I can't afford to play nosebleed stakes poker, and he proceeds to act like I just told him I have leprosy. He pretty much didn't talk to me the rest of the night.
Which is what I wish the rest of the pros had done. Instead, they all team up on the outsider to make fun of me for playing very conservatively. Never mind the fact that I've only been at the table 30 minutes and haven't had any good hands. Charlie and AJ make fun of me too, but I actually know them. At this point, however, I am so tired that I neither care nor respond.
At 6 a.m., Charlie and AJ called it a night and the game was over. I broke even at their table but I had lost earlier so I was still down a decent amount. After playing for 16 hours on no sleep, I was a walking zombie.
My plan was to drive back to El Dorado, but after wandering around the parking lot looking for my car, then sitting my car staring straight ahead for 5 minutes not remembering where I was, this didn't seem like a good idea.
There's a hotel attached to the casino, so I decided to go in and see if they had a room. I also wanted a late check-out, for obvious reasons. They had a room and I could check out at 2 p.m. There is a God.
The room cost $108 after taxes, and I was sick of having $12 in my wallet. So I peeled off two $100s from my poker roll to pay. The lady went into her office and brought back my change -- all in $5 bills. That's all they had. So my wallet went from a size 0 to Lane Bryant in 30 seconds.
It was 7 a.m. by the time I got back to sleep, and despite my 2 p.m. checkout time the front desk decided to repeatedly call my room phone beginning at 1 p.m. How sweet of them.
Pro poker tip: When your sleep bank account is at 0, and you just lost a decent amount of money playing poker for 16 hours, you might as well get 6 solid hours and an annoying wake-up call and go right back at it.
I got on all 9 different Omaha lists and went to grab a bite. I ordered a burger and fries. Nothing else, and not a special order. I was Order #42. They called #39, 40, 41, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47 and 48 before they called mine.
I'm telling you, These people hate me for no reason.
I played all day, got back most of what I had lost the night before, and went home. I put in a solid 24 hours of work for a net profit of -$250. That's what you call Living The Dream.
Pro poker tip: Find a real job.
Never have I been so happy to see my in-laws.