So Saturday night was Ace & Anthony’s poker night. We took the kids with us because I didn’t want to fork over $60 for poker AND $50 for a babysitter. Ace & Anthony were okay with that, and I knew Meredyth & Jonathan would appreciate seeing Toddler Daughter and Infant Son.
A&A had invited over some neighbors from down the block, whom we’ll just call Female and Male since I doubt we’ll EVER be spending any time with them again and it’s not worth trying to remember their names. Female and Male told us that they are trying to conceive a child, so I figure they are child-friendly (always a bonus at parties inhabited by children). At some point Toddler Daughter tries to grab some food she’s not allowed to have, and let’s out a HUGE scream when I take her hand away. It ends quickly enough – she generally doesn’t scream and calms easily. So anyway, as the loud scream is ending, I see Female give Male a look. You know the look. The “I wouldn’t let MY child scream much less bring her to a party for adults” look. Yeah, whatever, honey.
So I mentioned The Look to Ace, and he’s horrified and says something to the effect of “your child is more welcome than they are”, which made me feel good. A little while later I put Toddler Daughter down for the night in our pack/n/play in one of the bedrooms upstairs. But then Infant Son starts in with the screaming. And he’s not like Toddler Daughter – his screaming isn’t easily pacified and can go on forever. For about an hour I attempted to calm him down – I knew he was just fighting going to sleep. Denis at some point took over and gave the boy a bottle, which calmed him down until he eventually fell asleep. While I was still trying to settle the little guy in another part of their house, apparently Female and Male weren’t winning any points with the other folks attending the party.
At some point Ace came over to me and said, “I just don’t like them”, which cracked me up (that’s what you get for inviting over your new neighbors before really getting to know them!).
So anyway, once CootieBoy was settled and near asleep, we started in with the poker. We had nine players and opted to go with No Limit Hold’em instead of our usual Limit Hold’em. Male went out on the third hand because he challenged Denis and lost (Flush beat Set). I went out next because Denis had a higher kicker than I did on a Pair of Aces/Kings. Slowly more people went out until it was finally down to Denis, Anthony and Female, who despite never playing poker before had won a couple of BIG BIG hands and was the chip leader). All of a sudden Denis started winning a lot of hands – not because he had better hands but he was able to get Female to keep betting and eventually fold. Hand after hand her chip stacks got lower while Denis’ grew larger.
In the end, we decided to end the game before getting to heads up. Anthony basically kept his $30, Female took home about $75 (a profit of $15 on their two buy-ins), and Denis took home $165. A nice cool $105 profit on two buy-ins. On the way home we were cackling about how we took Female’s huge chip lead. It makes me wish we had kept playing so he could have taken a bit more from her.
All in all it was a good night – FABULOUS food (and lots of it!), good poker playing, and fun at someone else’s expense. Good times.
Glad you had a great time. We loved finally hosting it. In my eyes, CootieGirl and CootieBoy were fine. I base this on the fact that nothing got broken. *grin*
You are correct in saying that we will probably never have Male & Female over again. Too many Pithy comments for my liking.
Looking forward to White Elephant!
That’s too hilarious. Ya know, at this point, I barely hear when kids are crying – your tolerance for that kind of thing grows the more you get used to it. It’s like white noise – just loud white noise. 😉
Glad you had a good time. I look forward to playing some poker with ya’ll sometime soon.
I said the same thing to Meredyth about not hearing the crying any more. It is like white noise if you are around it all the time. If you’re not, I can understand how it could get to you. It used to get to me before I had little screaming kids. But like Jaynee said, if they are going to have children, they are in for a rude awakening when their child screams. All kids do. At least Meredyth doesn’t want kids.
And yes, when there are fewer people, you can play aggressively and steal pots, as I did hand after hand. Especially with players like FEMALE who aren’t very good, just getting lucky. Let’s play again soon. Ace, know any more patsies?