Weed

Marijuana is about as common in the poker world as tobacco, and is possibly even more so. A majority of players smoke weed. You do it at home while playing online, you do it at a live table if they let you vape inside, or you do it on the balcony or in the garage if you have to. But you do it. 

I don't. I've never sat at a poker table while high, and honestly I have no clue how you guys pull it off. When you all take bong hits, you can think about balancing ranges and ICM. When I'm baked, the snozzberries taste like snozzberries and you can't take me anywhere. I'm in awe. More power to the lot of you. 

However, I have witnessed some incredible things from my stoned poker friends. For example, I recently took a short trip to #theDIRTYDIRTY and shared a room with an old buddy of mine whose blood type is THC+. I had run like shit and was stuck a fucking metric ton, so I was holed up in the room trying to banish tilt. I had the covers pulled up over my head when I heard the electronic door lock grind into motion, and shortly thereafter my friend careened inside. 

"I'M TWEAKING MY FUCKING BALLS OFF!" He declared as he ripped his backpack open before stripping down to his boxers, and then proceeded to cock a fist and let 'er rip straight into the safe (fortunately, both fist and safe were unharmed). Clearly he'd taken some sort of stimulant earlier, another common practice in poker, and now needed to level out. I want to say that he pulled his vape out of his pocket, but that can't be true because most pairs of underwear don't have pockets, so I'll assume that the vape simply materialized out of thin air or apparated from somewhere in Hogsmeade (most likely The Three Broomsticks). He switched on the TV, turned the volume all the way up, and began committing the room service menu to memory:

"BACON CHEESEBURGER SIXTEEN DOLLARS."

Take a hit. 

"BACON CHEESEBURGER SIXTEEN DOLLARS."

Another hit. 

"BACON CHEESEBURGER SIXTEEN DOLLARS."

A third "Q."

"BACON CHEESEBURGER SIXTEEN DOLLARS."

The batman symbol. 

Ten minutes later, he was fast asleep. His vape looked lonely, bored, and neglected, so I cheered it up and gave it a job. Just like that, my sweatshirt became hilarious and my tilt dissolved. 

It's really hard to overstate how fortunate I was that it was not just readily available, but actually accessible. If you've been on the road without your preferred delivery system, you know exactly what I'm talking about. Is there anything more ghetto than the emergency bong you make in your hotel room at 3:00am when you literally can't come up with any other solution? You managed to find weed in an unfamiliar town, so good for you, but you need a vehicle or it's as useless as a eunuch. You prayed to the green god, and he answered, but you should have been more specific. The conversation probably went something like this:

"Dear dank deity, please provide."

"Of course, my child. Blessings be upon you."

"You have my eternal gratitude. Could you be so kind as to supply a conduit?"

"Lulzy. Here's three inches of tape, an old plastic water bottle, and a pen. Good luck."

You've been immediately transported back to the 8th grade, a time when you smoked out of whatever you could MacGyver together or face the horror of possibly remaining sober. It doesn't matter how much money you have if the thing you need to buy isn't available when you need it, so you get creative. Since you're intelligent and dedicated, it works out, and before long you're observing changes in the topography of spacetime. 

Major live events are different because absolutely everyone is doing it, and therefore someone will always have something you can use in a pinch. Weed is so prevalent during the WSOP that people have had to be told to not simply light up in the hallways at the Rio. It's absurd. You can get anything you want in Vegas at any time, but you have to actually make an effort to avoid marijuana during the series. It's everywhere, and we love it, because all poker players love a good time. 

Speaking of good times, right about now seems perfect. 

HighFi indeed.

Tournament Breaks

If you're an MTT grinder, you live and die by your tournament breaks. Even if you rarely play tournaments, you love the breaks. Live or online, they're our chance to decompress, compose ourselves, run to the bathroom, laugh, give each other pep talks, and check email and social media. They also provide an opportunity to smoke a cigarette (and whatever else you might deem appropriate, but I'll save that for another post).

When the major online sites implemented synchronized tournament breaks, we all squealed with joy. Gone were the days of hoping we didn't miss a hand to go to the bathroom or (for some of you) pissing in a bottle. At last, we actually had a few minutes to attend to the business of being people every hour instead of being machines non-stop for an entire day. Heat up a slice of pizza, have a smoke, grab a fresh drink, and resume the grind feeling awesome. And if you were incredibly lucky, maybe you could even squeeze in a quickie every so often (no, I've definitely never done this, why do you ask?).

Breaks in live events are even better because we get a chance to catch up with our friends face to face and trade stories. That shitty beat you took still sucks, but it matters so much less when you can vent about it to a buddy who actually gives even a fraction of an airborne fuck. It works the other way too; when we have good news to share on the break and people are happy for us, it puts us in a spot where we feel fantastic and play our best games. I love being able to make the "hey mom, I'm the chip leader!" phone call, even though my mother knows precisely dick about poker and has previously told me to consider cashing out after winning a big pot in a circuit event (I've been playing for 10 years and this is still happening).

And glory be to the dinner break! Not only do we have time to do just about everything we could want to get done, but people often binge on heavy food which slows them down mentally and makes even otherwise competent opponents play their worst poker of the entire day until the food coma wears off. That guy who'd been giving us a run for our money for most of the afternoon may now donate half his stack since his bloodstream is saturated with beef fat, grease, and sugar, whereas we knew to have a large but delicious salad, a piece of fruit, and perhaps a coffee or tea as well. Fuck, I want a tea.

Somebody go get me a tea please. I'll wait.

Thank you. That was fast (that's what she said).

Pink Chips

The lore of the pink chip dates back to a time when dinosaurs roamed the Earth, and possibly even earlier then that when it was considered completely socially acceptable to play at the Tropicana in Atlantic City. The pink chip games in those days were notoriously some of the easiest games around in an era prior to the poker boom when the game had not yet been widely popularized and fucking nobody played no limit hold'em. All of the action was at the limit tables: limit hold'em, limit Omaha hi/lo, or some repulsive stud variants, and when it came to action, nothing topped the pink chip games. People would stumble in from off of the beach or out of their cars, buy a couple racks of pink, and cheerfully watch as it disappeared a bet or two at a time to people who could actually do math. Anyone with so much as the slightest understanding of limit poker could and did make money hand over fist. So whenever anyone hears a rumor today that a pink chip game might come together, we all start salivating like the fucking Pavlovian dogs we are and make our way to the casino with dollar signs flashing in our eyeballs, imagining ourselves counting our profits in the cashout line at the end of the night like Scrooge Shitgobbling McDuck. This mentality has become so pervasive that it has bled into the younger generations; players who couldn't have possibly played in those first pink chip games even with the best fake ID money could buy will gleefully put their names on the list if they see a pink chip game running or an interest list on the Bravo (myself included). Even though the pink chip games today aren't even close to as good as they were in their prime, we still love them and will find any excuse we can to sit in one if it's available. Give me 7.50/15 LO/8 over NL any goddamned day.

But we love pink chips for more than just the pink chip limit games. Even when we're sitting in our regular games, we still have a collective boner for the pink chip and the people who bring them to the tables when they sit down. This is because a pink chip usually means that the player who has it came from the blackjack tables and is buying in with whatever remained after getting brutalized when the dealer revealed that the card underneath that 5 was somehow a 6, and then drew the inevitable paint card right before he let out an unconvincing apology to the table as everyone's money was swiftly placed in the rack. This player gazes ruefully downward at his pink chip, a reminder that he'd actually hit blackjack at some point earlier and maybe even been ahead for the night before this incident took place. "Fuck it! I'm going to play poker. I can win there," he says. But alas, he rarely succeeds. He's already tilted from spewing in the pit, so the chances he can play anything resembling acceptable poker are quite slim. He tells himself he'll focus and calm down, that he'll feel better once he gets AA and it holds up. It never occurs to him that whatever money he brings to the poker room is more or less already gone. It becomes ours. And we fucking love it when their money becomes ours.

Hello and Welcome!

Grab a drink, have a seat, and relax. Stuff Poker Players Like is here, and we're going to enhance your existence by talking about all the things that make you happy from a unique, hilarious, and filthy perspective. There will be at least one new entry per week, and possibly more if we have time (ha!). Mostly, we'll stick to things that aren't incredibly obvious (you won't be reading about name pros or the Main Event at the WSOP here), but are instead underappreciated although vital threads in the fabric of our culture.

I am your hostess, HiFi, and I'll be your guide thorough the jungle of things we grinders love, and of course, also some things we love to hate.

My first real entry will be soon. Possibly very soon. Check back!