If the question has ever dawned on you: “Hey Justin, where can I go to play the WORST legit No-Limit Texas hold-em?” after tonight’s experience, I have the answer: BAR FREE ROLLS. Wow. Woowww.

So I go a bar nearby called Carlos O’Kelly’s (which is also a Mexican restaurant). It starts off interestingly enough so I have at least moderate hopes that my night could go well. There’s 40 and 50 year old men drinking beer and soda and a few of them smoking and a table already playing poker with clay (professional looking) chips. I sign up (arriving about 15 minutes before the tournament was supposed to start) and I go to a relatively empty table where the youngest looking people are. There’s a guy close to my age sitting down and he’s got an pretty trendy looking hat, studded earrings, and a sweater with skulls on it. I’m even more intrigued by this dude because he has these two scars on his lips. My mind started coming up with stories about him like he’s a card shark and he got in a fight and someone slammed his face into a broken bottle (because the cuts were about that far apart on either side of his mouth.) His eyes were a pale blue that always makes me think: troubled past, maybe he’s playing here to rope people into the gambling “underworld.” I bet he had a rough life growing up and had to gamble and hustle to survive. So I greet him and an average looking guy at the table and introduce myself. It turns out the guy’s name is Jesse and I later find out is 24. He offers to play pineapple with us (which I learned is basically Texas Hold’em where you start with 5 cards and discard a card per round instead of betting… which was a good idea because none of us had any chips yet.)

After a few rounds of pineapple, one of which Jesse had a really good hand, the tournament began. And… from the start of the tournament everything went downhill. I couldn’t get a decent starting hand to save my life. I went the entire time without a pocket pair (even a low one) or two face cards. To my utter surprise Jesse got knocked out before me (I compassionately nodded at his bad luck) and about 20 minutes later I met a similar fate. The person who beat me had a better kicker than I did, (King Jack to my K 6), which I didn’t feel too bad about losing to because I hadn’t had a hand better than Ace Seven all night.