At least it's better than losing
By pjrnemtpMay 01, 08 10:58 PM
SC has no legal poker rooms, but as any of you know that have played poker, you can always find a game. In 2007 I was playing poker a lot. By a lot, I mean 30-40 hours a week at live games and another 30 hours a week on line. I never gave a tremendous amount of thought to security at any of my live games but one night that all changed.
I was working one Sunday and received a text message that the high hand jackpot at one of my regular games had reached $5800.00. Not too shabby. I decided to get off early and take the 30 minute drive to see if I could get my hands on that jackpot.
I arrived at around 6:00 and put name on the board as the third person waiting. It didn't take long to fill the table in the back room and I was making my contribution to the jackpot as well as a few players stacks. Around 10:45 I decided to move to the table in the front room to see if those decks would be kinder to me. As it turned out the decks were a little kinder and the move to the front table was well timed. Right about 11:00 there was a huge hand in progress. I had folded pre-flop but was paying close attention to the two players still in the pot. I think that it was just before the river card came out that we heard someone from the other room "HE'S GOT A GUN". Now let me pause here and let you know that I not a small guy nor have I considered myself on the fast side. I was sitting between to very young and I would say in shape guys. Even so, I beat everyone in the room to the front door. Of course the front door was locked and after, what seemed like an eternity I got the front door open and stumbled outside in the dark. As I was turning the corner of the house in my feeble attempt to seek cover for my not so small frame, I heard the window to the side of the house breaking (sounded kinda like a gunshot at the time). I found my coverage behind a car and after a quick mental calculation of the odds of being seen by the "HE" with gun walking out the front door, I considered a very big bush another ten feet away as somewhat better cover.
There are a lot of thoughts that go through one's mind as he sits in a bush waiting for an outcome that could include your death. My primary though was getting my big butt to my vehicle and putting 30 miles between me and my current position. I did think about the $300.00 in chips that I had sitting on the table but their worth, given the current circumstances, had really declined.
As I was thinking about my family at home and how pissed at me my wife would be if she had to tell our kids that I was dead, a man walked out the back door of the house in just his underwear. Yea, just his underwear. It was my first clue that this dangerous situation had dropped a couple of notches in intensity.
I heard movement off to my left and asked who it was. It was the guy that had been sitting on my right. He stated that he was the guy that came through the bathroom window secondary to the log jam at the front door. In the process of doing a superman through the window, he had cut his hand and was bleeding pretty good. We walked out of cover as we saw some of the players coming out on the front porch to smoke.
As I started to piece together the events of the evening, I found that the hostess had went to answer a knock at the door. The person on the other side of the door gave a familiar name but when the hostess went to open the door a group with masks busted in. They made some threats, some ran away when they heard the commotion in the front room, they did get some cash and toys but thankfully nobody was shot.
I got my money back and I didn't get shot so I should be satisfied with the outcome but it still felt a little like splitting a pot when you have a great hand. I don't play those underground games anymore, I miss them. But you know what someone at the table always say's when the pot gets split; "At least it's better than losing".
