A Poker Homegame in Antwerp, The Gambler And His Big Pickle

Teaching Mr. V How To Play Poker

So, Mr. Big Pickle took out his deck of cards. With Leonard Cohen, an artist I didn’t even know about, in the CD player, he started to explain Mr. V how the game was played. At first I could chip in a little, just a few things that Mr. V didn’t comprehend. But after a while I grew silent, listening to his words of wisdom regarding poker.

Our First Official Underground Poker Game In Antwerp

It became quite a night to remember, after some real Belgian mussels, bought from the nearby German shop “Lidl”, talk about “real”. We played our first game of poker, 3 handed, 0.10$ blinds and 5$ buy in. We were awfully short stacked, but we didn’t know better. I remember one hand where I had Q5 on a Q52 board, went all-in against Mr. Big Pickle and got busted by his QQ hand! I thought Q5 was a good hand to play, especially short-handed, but I was proven wrong, time and time again! Mr. V often lucked out with K2o kind of hands against Mr. Big Pickle’s nice plays and/or good hands. Often, Mr. Big Pickle, who always played in much bigger staked games, would get really steamy because of such suckouts and played as a total mega-aggressive maniac, which would usually net me a big profit or get me busted for a lot of buy in’s.

Looking back at that second phase of my poker career, I was a total donk. I couldn’t play at all. I was way too passive most of the time, and when I bluffed or had a good hand, it was way too obvious. My game lacked a big amount of “je ne sais quoi” and was totally devoid of any improvisation or even any system.

My Own Humble Beginnings In The Wonderful Game Of Poker

I was a big donk. There, I said it again. I sucked at poker. So don’t feel bad if you start out and you feel that you can’t win. Everything needs time and experience, together with a good amount of well-reasoned thinking and listening to more experienced people, like reading books.

I’ll end with those obvious words of wisdom, but that’s what words of wisdom are, obvious, but only after you heard them. Like almost all of Leonard Cohen’s words; “Suzanne takes you down, to her place, near the river …”