The following events take place in chronological order….

It’s Friday night around 5:30pm and I’m chilling in my boxers watching TV and surfing useless shit on the internet.  I clicked ignore on the eight stupid Facebook invitations to clubs I’ve never heard of and caught up on the latest MMA news.  Julie is out with her girlfriends for the night, so me and Jackamo are gonna chill and watch the hockey game.  I was getting extremely hungry so I shuffled through my junk drawer to find a sushi pamphlet and I ordered up some spicy salmon rolls.  I should probably shower because my ass is sweating from my sauna condo, but don’t really feel like it.  As I continue to sit and sweat, I get a MSN message from Eskal..

“What are u doin?”
“Nothing, watching TV with Jackamo. Why what’s up?”
“Fuck all, I’m spun, I want to shoot…”
“Yeah I don’t feel like shooting, I’m stuck today and I feel like garbage. Wanna smash the Anderson Silva fight ?”
 “Nah, odds are too shitty ):”

I go on to ignore his next few messages and start flipping through the channels. Then I look down at my laptop at the last flashing message from Eskal.

“Let’s go to Fallsview, we’ll bring $1000 each, play roulette, and smash it”

I get a warm tingly feeling in my stomach, almost like I’ve read that message before.  It’s weird because I don’t even like to gamble, not at all really.  I find playing something without an edge is dumb, I’d rather just go splurge and buy a TV or something.  But for some reason I couldn’t ignore this message from Eskal.  I knew that he was just talking shit, but still, I wanted to gamble.

“I know you’re not being serious right now, but I’m in. So if you want to continue being friends with me, you’re going to get in your Audi, pick me up, and we’ll be there in an hour and a half.”
“Umm…wtf?”
“Wtf nothing, lets roll”
“Fine”’

I call the sushi restaurant to cancel my order, and got an ear full from some woman who couldn’t speak a word of English.  I told her fifty times I was sorry, it was an emergency and I had to leave. Then I just gave up and finally told her she can do whatever the hell she wants, I won’t be here to pay for anything, and hung up.  I jumped in the shower like I was getting ready for a big game.  I had this surge of energy; was so pumped for some reason.  I found myself shadow boxing in the shower till I almost slipped.  I got out, loaded my body from head to toe in Axe, baby powdered my ass and got dressed.  In the back of my mind I knew I was going to look at my blackberry and get a message from Eskal saying ‘we’d do it another time,’ but to my surprise, no message.

We pull onto the Gardiner and still haven’t said anything to each other.  Some car cuts us off and Eskal pulls a snap show, we both laugh and immediately start planning out the night.

We both made a pack that there was no way we were losing more than $1000 each.  No matter what, not even for gas money or food.  We had  two grand total to use for everything.  At the end of the night, if some how we come out ahead, we’d split everything down the middle.  We started rambling about what games we should play.

“Black jack.”
“No I hate blackjack, lets play 3 card poker”
“That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard”

And so on and so on…

We pull up to the round-about at Fallsview where the sign points left for self-parking and right for valet.  We glance at each other and smile as swing right and pull out 10 bucks each.  Walking into the casino, we looked like two guys on a mission.  We could have seen a man drowning in the fountain and we probably would of walked right on by.  All of a sudden I started to get this sick feeling in my stomach, kinda like butterflies but not really.  I stopped walking. Eskal’s like, “what the fuck, lets go.”  “I gotta take a shit,” I say. “I’ll meet you in there.”  I race to the washroom and relieve my growling stomach.

Every time I walk onto the casino floor that burst of oxygen they pump into the room accelerates all my senses.  That sickly smell starts giving me flashbacks of all my casino visits.  Some good, some bad.  

Eskal and I decide to walk by the poker room first to see if we know anyone in there and check out the action.  We had no plans of playing poker, but it’s nice to see some familiar faces.  As we glance through the poker room like hawks, I zero in on one face that hasn’t been on my radar in awhile.

“Oh shit”, I say.
“What”
“See the guy in the table in the back left corner? He owes me and Two $800. I haven’t seen that fucker in over a year”

I know this guy pretty well, and I know when I walk up to him he’s going to be super nice and pretend like he forgot he owes me money.  Or he’ll just say hi, act like he’s all focused on the table, and try to ignore me.

I walk over to the table like I was looking for someone else.  We make eye contact. “Hey Jay,” he says, all happy go lucky. “How are ya?”  We chit chat for a minute or two. Then just as I say “By the way, you still owe me and Two that $800,” the whole table goes quiet and looks at both of us.  I got a nervous feeling for some reason.  He kind of chuckles and says “oh yeah right, I’ll get that to ya,” with a crooked smile the cameras could catch it was such bullshit.  Then he kinda brushed me off and had the nerve to ask me to wave down the waitress if I saw her.

I start to walk out of the room; my face is half red.  I’m not sure if it was anger or embarrassment.  All these lines kept racing through my head of things I should have said.  I get to Eskal and he can see I’m steaming.  He doesn’t really say anything to me at all.  And I know it’s because he doesn’t want me to explode.  His body language is telling me ‘let’s just forget it and go gamble.’ I stand there for another second thinking of what to do.  I never used to deal with any of this shit back in the day; Two handled it all.  He wouldn’t even have to say anything.  He would walk up to the person with his hat low and a hooded sweater on, and the chump would hand over the money without him saying a word.  But with me, that piece of shit brushes me off like I’m a child, almost laughing at me right to my face.  I started to steam.

Without even thinking I start to walk back to his table. As I walked back to the table I had no idea what I was going to say.  For some reason Eminem lyrics were going through my head and I started to feel tough.  As I approach the table he says “hey did you find a waitress?”

I smile and gently lean over him; put my hand on his shoulder, slightly gripping his collar bone, and start to whisper in his ear….

“Listen, you fat mother fucker, if you don’t give me that $800 right now, I don’t want to have to say what I’m going to do to you.  And when I’m done with you, I’m going to do the same thing to your family and anyone who knows you.”

I lift my body and can feel 10 sets of eyes staring at me as I walk away.  I start to walk towards Eskal, and think to myself, ‘What the fuck did I just say? Did I threaten his wife? Fuck, this guy is going to start a war with me, I better call Two.’ Once again, Eskal doesn’t say a word, but he knows exactly what happened.

“He’s walking this way”
“Really? Ok be cool, fuck him”

As he approaches me all I can see is his disgusting chest hair bushing out of his V-neck sweater.  He has a chip rack curled behind his fore arm and hands it over to me.  “Let me know if you ever hear of any tournaments in Toronto,” he says. “And give Two my best.”
I don’t say a word, and walk away immediately.

“Well, now we have $2800 to work with,” I laugh to Eskal as we start to scope out roulette tables.  At this point it’s almost 10:00 pm and we haven’t gambled a penny.  I was thinking we start out small and start to bet bigger if we’re winning.  But Eskal had a different idea.  He grabs two stacks out of my rack and puts $200 on red.  I don’t protest at all, that’s not what this trip is about.  It’s about going for it.  And if we have to go for it big off the bat, so be it.  

Click…click…clank. “Black 26”

Great start!

For the next hour or so we are up and down like a roller coaster.  We build our roll to $3200 then it drops to $1700 then back up, then back down.  We both look at each other and know we’re going no where fast playing like this; we need to mix things up.  We see a blackjack dealer standing at a table by himself, which is weird for a Friday night.  We didn’t question it; we coloured up and walked straight over.  A waitress starts mumbling in our ears as we sit, but we don’t hear a word she says.  The dealer’s name is Frank.  “Frank the tank” Eskal says. “We’re going to crush you.” He chuckles.

And crush him we did, we were on fire.  Actually, Eskal was because he was the one sitting. I stood behind like a drunken cheerleader.  It was the sickest thing I’ve ever seen.  We were betting $500 a hand and couldn’t lose.  We’d be dealt 16 vs an Ace and make 17 to watch the dealer bust.  Pit bosses were watching us non stop.  But they knew we weren’t counting shit because we would stand up and cheer after winning every hand.  At one point I counted we won 11 hands in a row.  Even when they switched dealers we just ran hotter.  Our chip stack looked like a rainbow.  We were on such a high we weren’t even keeping track how much we were up.  We were doing stupid things too.  We’d have 9 and the dealer showing an 8… Eskal would look at me; we would nod like idiots, and double down.  I don’t think I’ve ever felt a high like this.  It was incredible.  And instead of waiting for us to start losing to stop, we looked at each other and knew we had to get up.  Eskal colored up the chips.  He stuffed them in his pouch of his hoody, and we made our way to the diner.

We get to the booth and start dumping our chips on the table.  The waitress walks over and says “Wow, you boys are having a good night’.  We smile.  I hand her a $25 chip and ask her to bring us two breakfast specials ASAP.

As Eskal counts the chips, I start blurting out in excitement, “How much are we up?! 10k, 12k, tell me 15k?!”  He looks at me with a blank face. “$27,850.” You know in the movies when that hallelujah song comes on and white doves are flying in the background?  I swear that happened that very moment in the Fallsview diner.  We try to give each other high fives in excitement but only miss and start bouncing around in our booth like we’re mentally challenged.  Our food arrives and we start barreling it down our throats super fast, like we were racing.  We were talking fast too.  Rambling and rambling not listening to a word each other were saying.  As we finished our eggs and hash browns, which were making me feel a little sick from eating so fast, we started talking about what we should do.  We listed a bunch of options which included; going home right now, splitting the 10k each and gambling the other $7,850, or getting a suite and sleeping on it till morning.

We walked back onto the casino floor without having made a decision yet.  We wound up in front of the poker room and see there are only 3 tables running.  Out of curiosity I ask the guy behind the desk what games are and he tell me there are two 2/5NL games and one 25/50NL game going.  Eskal gives me a sick look.


“Fuck off”, I say
“Why not?!? You know we’re better then everyone at that 25/50 game, and they’re all falling asleep and probably stuck”
“You’re sick. We need 5k each to sit down, and what if we run like cock? We’ll wanna re-buy and we could blow through that 28k in no time. No chance.  Let’s walk around some more.”
“How about this; we both buy-in for 5k and that’s it.  If we both lose we go home with the $17,850. No matter what, we won’t re-buy.  We’ll just play and try to run it up.”

“Jesus fucking Christ”

I thought about it for a second and realized this would probably be one of the dumbest things I’ve ever done in my life.  And that if we lose, that horrible feeling will take months to go away.  

Despite all that, I look at Eskal. “Fine let’s play”

The pit boss leads us over to our seats and I laugh in my head as he sits me beside my $800 friend.  Eskal is sitting on the other end of the table which is good; hopefully we don’t run into each other in many pots.

I felt uncomfortable right from the get go.  I could barely chip shuffle without knocking over my stack. It wasn’t even nerves; I’m not sure what it was.  I knew I was better than most of the table, but something about the whole situation wasn’t right.  I glance over at Eskal and he has a smile ear to ear like he’s been waiting for this day his entire life.

I get into a few small pots and lose which shook off some of the cob webs.  MMA fighters say it all the time that they truly don’t get into the fight until they get hit in the face. Well I got hit in the face and my stack was down to $3200 from my starting $5000.

For the next hour I didn’t really get involved in many pots, half because the table was really loose and half because I was getting shit cards.  Eskal was playing like a canon, a good canon though.  He was raising a lot of hands and playing real fast.  He was making small talk with the players, having a good time, while I continued to sit slouched in my chair with my hood on, keeping to myself.

Then the following hand happened.

I raise under the gun with AK of hearts, the whole table folds except for the big blind who reluctantly calls.  The flop comes 10,J,4 with two hearts giving me a royal flush draw.  The big blind checks and I lead for $275, he quickly calls.  The turn is black deuce.  The bb checks again, I bet $845, he calls again.  The river brings the 5 of spades, making me miss everything and leaving me with AK high.  The big blind does an over exaggerated check basically saying fuck off and just check please.  At this point I had no idea where I was at.  I was convincing myself he had KQ and shoved all in for my remaining $2400.  The guy thinks for a second, kind of mumbles to himself. And says, “fine kid, here’s a donation. I call.”  I wanted to puke.  I lean up from my chair to see what he has as he tosses K,10 to the middle of the table.  As he tosses his hand open to show the winning hand, his cards bounce off the huge pot in the middle and one card lands in the muck.  I pause for a second. I look at the dealer with a ‘what the fuck’ face.  He looks sick himself because he knows there’s going to be a discrepancy.  And yells “FLOOR” as a pit boss starts to walk towards our table.  At this point I still haven’t said anything; there was no point.  Me pleading that his hand should be dead would do nothing for the situation except make me look like a greedy prick.  I can see the guy who won the pot start mumbling about how there’s no way it’s a dead hand, almost thinking it’s laughable.  The dealer explains to the pit boss what happened, the pit boss nods and says “Ok, its a dead hand, he wins the pot” pointing at me.  He said it so nonchalantly I thought he was joking.  I look at Eskal and I can see he’s starting a small argument with the other guy explaining to him why it was a dead hand.  The dealer pushes me over the largest pot I’ve ever won, and I slowly stack my chips not saying a word.

I immediately wanted to cash out.  I started to feel like all the fish who have pulled hit and runs on me over the years.  But I know better. I was going to sit tight for about an hour, then get up.  That weird feeling I had in the beginning of the session miraculously disappeared.  I ordered a hot chocolate, sat back and was feeling good.

As I was making conversation with the new player to my right, I can see Eskal getting involved in a big pot.  He raised pre-flop, got 3 bet, and was now thinking.  I really didn’t know what to make of the hand. I know he’s capable of shoving with AA or 6,4 off-suit.  So if he shoved I would have no clue whether to be happy or not.  After about 45 seconds he announces “all-in.” The other player immediately asks for a count.   The dealer starts counting Eskal’s chips and gives the total as $4450.  I look at Eskal’s face to try and get a read if he was strong or not, but he was giving away nothing.  Face was blank as stone.  The guy thinks for about 2 minutes, and says “I think it’s a race. I call.”  Eskal flips over AJ off suit like it was the nuts; I was like ‘what the fuck.’  He glanced at me all happy, not even knowing what the other guy has.  The other player sheepishly flips over K,J suited.  Eskal mutters to me across the table that he shoved for value, no bluff.  I was amazed, I truly was.  Kinda like seeing a sick catch in baseball, wondering how they hell did he do that.  It would be fitting to take a bad beat here knowing our night can’t go this flawlessly, but not tonight. An Ace on the flop sealed the deal and we continued to win money like candy.

At this point the cash seemed surreal. We were throwing around thousands of dollars like it was nothing.  Every day I’m grinding 1/2NL and feel happy when I win a $200 pot.  But tonight we’d win $2000 and we would shrug our shoulders like we deserved it.

We played for another 45 minutes,  grabbed some racks and racked our chips, then headed over to the cage and watched the lady hand us over bundles of cash as our eyes sparkled.  I put an elastic around a stack of hundreds and it snapped.  I proudly asked the cashier for a thicker elastic.

I ended up making $3300 in the game and Eskal made $4500.  That brought our grand total to $36,550.  It was about 6am at this point and knew we had to go home.  We didn’t even bother telling ‘what-if’ stories.  We knew we had enough, and we knew this money was going to make us feel awesome for a real long time.

The car ride home was pretty sluggish.  We were both so tired we felt drunk, on top of still feeling high from the adrenaline rushes we had all night.  We both kind of talked about what we were going to do with our winnings but didn’t really listen to each other.  Just smiled and laughed as we talked nonsense.  Before we left the casino I ran into the gift shop and bought a gift bag with a ribbon on it.  I had this fun idea to stick all the cash loosely in the bag, write ‘To Julie’ on the card, and let her wake up to a nice surprise.  The whole drive home I kept picturing her reaction and how she was going to wake me up super excited.  We have to get our dog spayed in a couple weeks and that money will more than cover it.

Eskal drops me off and we give each other knuckles as I drag myself out of his car.  I nod at my concierge as he gives me a look wondering what the hell I was doing all night.  I creep into my condo quietly, trying not to wake up Jackamo.  I take all the hundred dollar bills out of the elastics and dump it in the gift bag.  I write on the card and set the bag on my kitchen table.  I take off my clothes which I felt like I’d been wearing for days, and slip into bed without Julie even batting an eye.

“Good morning hunny,” I hear as the blinds are being opened and the sun strikes my eyes like a laser.  “Good morning,” I say almost forgetting about the whole night.  Then I sit up excitedly and widen my eyes as I look at Julie.  “What?” she says. “What do you mean what?  Didn’t you like you’re morning surprise??” She giggles and says, “Well sweetheart I see that morning surprise every morning, will you put that thing away?”  I cover my midsection with my pillow.  I rub my eyes and Julie walks out of the room.  “Don’t tell me,” I say aloud. “There’s no way” …it was so real.

I get up as Julie hands me my breakfast and says “You and Jackamo have fun last night?”

“Yes” I say as I dunk my spoon into my cereal…………