“No you’re not, you’re not playing the game right.”

“Yuh-huh, I’m gonna win $100. Look how many words I found.”

“You’re not following the rules. You’re only supposed to scratch off your letters.”

“Look how many words. I’m gonna win $20,000!”

“You can’t win $20,000, you’re 11 years old.”

“I’m ’bout to win $20,000!”

“No, you’re not. Those cards were already scratched off, that’s why someone left them behind.”

This finally quieted the boy for a moment. Then he looked up at his teacher and told her, “Yo, you bad luck!”

__________________________________________

While playing at the Hollywood Casino at Charles Town Races, I watched a regular with a set get all-in against a flush draw and lose on the river. “You always do this shit to me!” he shouted at the dealer, in such an exaggeratedly angry way that I assumed he must know her and be joking around with her, because how could you actually be that angry at the dealer?

It quickly became clear, from the way the other regulars reacted, that this clown was serious. They tried telling him to call down, but he kept on. “No, you guys don’t see it all. It’s just her, and she’s been doing it to me for months. Stay away from me!” he told the dealer.

Finally an old Chinese man sitting to his right chimed in. “What you yell at her for? She don’t shuffle the card, the machine shuffle the card. She don’t do nothing to you.” You know you have a problem when an old Chinese gambler tells you you’re too superstitious.

While I’m amending recent blog posts, I also have to admit to backsliding on my “don’t judge assholes” philosophy. I split a cab with fellow PokerStars Team Online member Andre Coimbra, whose flight was half an hour before mine, so I got to the airport plenty early. That was good, because the customs line was massive and there were only two agents working it. People all around me were just losing their minds with frustration.

When I got to the front of the line after nearly an hour of waiting, I heard someone say “Next!” I looked around but didn’t see an open station. I did see someone stepping up to one of the stations for non-US citizens, so I assumed that was what I heard and went back to waiting. Someone behind me shouted, not gently, “Over there!” I looked around again, saw the open station, and started walking towards it. As I did, someone else shouted, “Get over there, kid!”

My first instinct was to get flustered. I had, after all, made a mistake that slowed the line down by several seconds. But I forced myself to take a deep breath and calm down. I didn’t stop walking, but I did turn my head and slowly scan the line behind me until I saw the person who’d shouted. I could tell it was him because he was still red in the face and waving his arms at me. You could tell he was the sort of guy who shouts at strangers in the airport. I met his eye for a minute, smiled broadly at him, and then went about my business. I know it would have been better to ignore him, but I must admit it felt good to needle him.

Speaking of which the customs agent gave me the needle when I finally found him. Our conversation went something like this:

“Traveling by yourself?”

“Yes.”

“What were you doing down here by yourself?”

“Playing poker at the Atlantis.”

“What place did you finish?”

“Nothing good enough to remember.”

“How much cash do you have with you?”

“About five thousand dollars.”

“How much cash did you come down here with?”

“About eight thousand dollars.”

“So you lost?”

“Thanks for rubbing it in.”

“Go ahead.”

So kind of an unpleasant start to my day, though I had a nice chat with Andre in the cab and he gave me one of the (very expensive) pictures he bought from one of our PSTO dinners. Also I’m playing peek-a-boo with a little girl a few rows down from me in the terminal and I’m returning from what was all in all a great week in the Bahamas, so it’s all good.

Anti-Ballin’: I’m bringing a small pantry with me, because it kills me to pay $20 for a sandwich.

So wish me luck, and please be patient if the blog and Twitter feed are quiet. Historically the internet at Atlantis has been atrocious and expensive, so while I’ve pre-written a couple of posts, I may or may not be blogging from the Bahamas.

Last night I was there for the second time in two days. My girlfriend has been cramming for the GRE and just had her bike stolen, so I wanted to get her a treat. At the bakery counter, they sell these mini chocolate mousse cakes that she likes.

The couple ahead of me in line were in their late 60′s. They looked lifelong outdoors people, he with scraggly beard, she with close-cropped hair and weather-worn face, both rail-thin.

There were two mousse cakes left in the display case. The woman behind the counter handed one to the old couple. “We need two, please,” the man corrected her. The last two.

The woman took out the other cake, inspected it for a moment, and then showed him a small blemish. Perhaps 0.5% of the icing had fallen off. “It’s a little broken, do you still want it?”

“We get a reduced price, right?” the man asked aggressively, leaning over the counter.

“No, I’m sorry.”

“It should be a reduced price, if it’s damaged.”

“I’m sorry, we don’t do that. We donate imperfect items to the food kitchen, we don’t ever sell them at a discount.”

“That’s not right,” the man insisted.

At this point I was strongly tempted to jump in and offer to buy the cake at full price. I don’t think that in principle there would be anything wrong with doing so.

The thing is, if I’m honest with myself, securing the cake for my girlfriend would not have been my true primary motivation. They sell other things she likes. The guy was being a nit, and I wanted to call him out on it, embarrass him.

Chastened, I held my tongue. The employee resolved the whole situation with an offer to get more cakes from the back. “That sounds good. It’s my birthday!” the man declared with childish delight. The woman disappeared for a moment and returned with a whole tray of cakes. “How much for the whole tray?” the man joked. He was starting to grow on me.

Meanwhile a second employee came over to ask what I wanted. “One to of those, too, actually,” I told her, pointing to the tray of cakes.

“You’re going to buy a whole tray too?” the man asked me jovially.

“They are so good!” his wife chimed in with an endearing, grandmotherly smile.

“Yes, but I think my girlfriend would kill me I brought home a whole tray.” She laughed earnestly. These were turning out to be very nice people, maybe on a fixed income but eager to celebrate a birthday. I was glad I hadn’t been rude to them.

On my way to the cash register, I dropped my cake. It was inside of a plastic container, so it wasn’t ruined- the icing just got a little smashed against the lid of the container. They probably would have given me a different one if I’d asked, but that didn’t seem like an option. It would taste the same in the end anyway.

The police recovered Emily’s bike. The thieves had actually stolen our landlord’s entire bike rack (it wasn’t bolted down) with two bikes still locked to it, but for unknown reasons perhaps owing to the logistical difficulties of transporting a large steel bike rack with two attached bikes had discarded in the bushes of a neighbor’s property barely a block away.