A Tip

Cash games in Dublin, during one of the largest tournaments of the year. It's a €1/€2 NLHE game, but as usual some people are taking it very seriously indeed.

Drunk player to my left: Expensive clothes, carefully shaved stubble and the dilated pupils of the totally wasted. He plays like a typical live player, but is keeping himself to himself. Eventually, he manages to get all-in badly in a three way pot where he wins a side pot but loses the main (I'll spare you the details).

He spends the next five minutes swearing, ranting and complaining about the state of the universe. But then, on the next hand, he decides he got shortchanged. He decides that the side pot was only a third the size it should've been. The dealer was completely correct: I make sure I always know the pot size in live games, as should've stubble-guy. Half the table backs her up, explaining what happened. Unfortunately, he just refuses to understand.

He starts swearing at the dealer - fucking bitch, stupid whore, blahblahblah, doesn't she know who he is? She calls the floorman over, who says it's too late and the dealer was right anyway, please shut up, thank you, goodbye. The dealer says nothing but "I correctly awarded the pot sir", but he just will not shut up.

I'm sure you've all crossed paths with dicks in the poker world, but this guy was in a league of his own. He just wouldn't shut up, was getting more and more offensive and more and more agressive. The floor didn't help the dealer a bit, though the rest of the table is telling him to shut up by now.

As soon as play finally resumes, I end up trap/stacking him - again, I'll spare you the details - but he's lost control and he got it all in with not a lot of anything.

He's getting up to leave and is shouting at the dealer saying he should've had more money in and he'd never have lost the hand if it wasn't for her, and how it's unfair that he was born with a tiny penis (my memory is hazy, perhaps that's just what he meant to say). I ask the dealer what he started the hand with, I take those chips out of my pile, I look up to him... And then I tip the dealer his entire stack.

He leaves, seething. Fortunately for my health, I haven't run across him since...