Was it the killer kale salad? Or maybe it was the nap. Why was tonight’s poker session extra awesome? Three times I found myself basking in the bliss of poker nirvana. The third event was so profound that I rushed home to type about it.

Topping off at Oaks

After Covid, when poker players were once again huddling up to love and kill each other, I got the call. It was my bestest local poker buddy, Lee Jones.

“Do you know what’s going on at Oaks these days?” he asked.

“Do tell!”

“It’s the $2/$3/$5 game. You can straddle from any seat, and now everybody is agreeing to play winner straddles pretty much all the time. The $2/$3/$5 is now $2/$3/$5/$10.”

“You’re telling me the hive-mind moved in unison to double the stakes?”

“Exactly that,” Lee said. “Maybe Covid spooked people into thinking they should get all the action they can, while they can.”

Oaks Card Room is minutes from my house and has been since I moved to Oakland ten years ago. But I hadn’t played there yet because my sweet spot is $5/$10 to $10/$25. Lee knew that a loose $5/$10 game might lure me from my lair, and he was right. After a few dips into the Oaks pool, I decided to be a reg again. This time it would be part-time, and party time.

I like it that the game plays like a $5/$10, but the max buy-in is only $1,000. It incites reckless all-ins. Like many players, I stay topped off with no fuss by keeping a stash of $100 chips on hand, and adding on when my stack falls below $900.

Nirvana Story #1

New game. Erwin bought in for $500 as usual. Then he limped in half the time as usual. Erwin is a fun-loving old white guy who likes to get it in there.

The first hand I played was heads-up with Erwin after he limped, I made it $60, and everybody else got out.

The flop was J-9-2 rainbow. I had pocket nines. Erwin and I performed the old bet-raise-raise-shove-call dance step, to the tempo of Comfortably Numb.

On the flop, when I called Erwin’s shove, I courtesy-rolled my set of nines. Erwin eyed my cards, then he turned over one of his hole cards: a jack. He was wearing a smirk that said, “I got one measly pair and you got me crushed, so I’ll go ahead and show my pair, just to let everybody sweat the runout, because if I somehow hit runner-runner to win this pot it’ll be wild and wonderful!”

You already know what happened, right?

The dealer dealt the turn card. A ten.

The dealer dealt the river card. It, too, was a ten.

The final board was J-9-2, 10, 10.

Erwin’s face was one big grin. He rolled his other card, a ten. His tens-full bad beat my nines-full.

The Exact Moment of Loss

Loose-passive players have what Lee calls a see-the-flop poker range. Erwin has a see-the-flop range, and jack-ten was well within it. When the turn and river came ten-ten, I was unthinkingly aware that if Erwin’s other hole card was a ten, I’d lose. This was not dread or fear. It’s just poker. When you have the best hand, your opponents are either drawing dead or not. And if they’re not, then you might lose. Next hand.

Anyone who has played lots of live poker can tell if their opponent is going to muck or show, just by how they approach the cards. Erwin’s hand took the low and slow approach. I knew right then I was beat. With elbow flourish, he rolled his wild and wonderful ten. By the time it was over, I was already over it.

The hive made sympathy sounds. Before the groans faded, I snap-paid $500 to the pot from my stack and topped off to $1,000 using chips from my pocket.

Actually, I didn’t “get over” that hand. There was nothing to get over. This was one of those tilt cycles that didn’t happen, where I bypass the need for recovery. Watching Erwin’s story unfold, it was like I wasn’t in the hand. He was so gleeful that I couldn’t help but smile along, inside and out.

When my first big swing is down, sometimes my mood will sour, my body will twist, and my best mindset becomes inaccessible for a while. But just as often, I can lose my first big pot of the session and it’s so painless that I can still have a fun exchange with the winner. That’s usually followed by a joy surge when I realize that I just got punched and it didn’t hurt.

Poker-nirvana symptom #1: painless losing.

Nirvana Story #2

We’ve all seen this scene before. Somebody loses a big pot, and the very next hand they come out firing. We have to ask ourselves: Is this a cosmic inflation? Like the early universe? Did this player’s raising range suddenly expand?

The next hand, I got AK in the cutoff.  Five players limped for $10 because California. With the smell of suckout still in the air, I got animated and goofy and said, “Let’s play for a hundred! And this is not a tilt raise!” Chuckles were heard.

One guy said, “You got every right to tilt after that brutal beat.” Others nodded. And he was right. According to The Book of Sanctioned Poker Emotions, I was supposed to be unhappy right now, but instead I was giddy.

Poker-nirvana symptom #2: unsanctioned jocularity.

Nirvana Story #3

My stack gathered dust for half an hour and then I lost a couple hundred when Ned opened for $40, I made it $200 with pocket jacks, and Ned called $200 all-in with six-five suited because we were sitting on the Hayward Fault, so why not?

That hand left me with $750 on the table.

I reached into my pocket to pull out two $100 chips and… Uh oh, something’s wrong. There should be ten chips in here. My fingers are feeling far fewer than that.

Then I remembered that I’d reloaded for $500 after the Erwin hand, and that’s why I had only five chips in my pocket. And then…

::: WOOSH :::

That was the sound of my mind witnessing its own nirvana: I just lost a cooler and then went half an hour without it coming to mind. And I wasn’t even aware that I was stuck.

And I have proof.

During that half hour, if I had recalled the 99 vs JT hand against Erwin even one time, then I’d have been forced into remembering that I was stuck $500. Which means I would not have been surprised to find only five chips in my pocket when I went to reload after losing the JJ vs 65 hand.

This was two simultaneous symptoms of nirvana. One was forgetting about the cooler. The other was not knowing that I was stuck. Maybe my omnipresent cash game strategy of always having a $1,000 stack had put a spell on me, or maybe it really was the kale salad. For whatever reason, for those thirty timeless minutes, it was as if the hand against Erwin never happened.

Poker-nirvana symptom #3: severe memory loss.