Rugby & Poker

This night happened two weeks ago and my memory is a bit fuzzy so bear with me. I had mentioned in my trip to Avignon that I had laid some bait to try and generate some friends and it worked. The saturday following the trip to Avignon France was playing England in the semi-finals of the World Cup of Rugby. I was planning on watching the match in Paris somewhere by myself, but I received a call from one my coworkers, Greg, asking me if I wanted to join him and his friends for the match. Of course, I said I’d like to and we arranged to meet at an Irish pub called Cocoran’s @ 8:30.  I arrived about 15 minutes early to find the pub jammed with people. 90% of which where english, or at least english jersey wearing fans. Greg found me and said that his friends were at another pub. So we walked a few blocks to find his friends. We found them in a small pub without a view of a TV to see the match. Now this part surprised me. When Greg greeted his friends, all guys, they did the kiss on the cheeks thing. Previously I had thought that this was only for when a guy greeted a girl or when a girl greeted another girl. So my first thought was “Hmmmm…. gay?” This thought was later disproved when just about every guy had a girlfriend. Greg turned to me and said we are going to find another pub to watch the match. We wandered a few more blocks and found a pub that had a table reserved for people that had not showed up yet and if they didn’t show up in 5 minutes we could take their table. The people ended up showing up and we had to scramble to put some chairs and a table together in a small part of the pub, but it ended up working out pretty well. The match started shortly after we ordered our first round of beers. Greg’s friends spoke a little english but it was enough to joke around and have a good time. Greg explained some of the rules of rugby I didn’t understand as well as some swear words/slang. I also explained some english slang to him and his friends. Everything was going great until France lost the match. The pub was 50/50 French/English fans. Greg and his friends were bummed but it passed soon after we left the pub. We paid our tab and went outside where we were trying to figure out what to do next. It was 10:30 and the two options that it narrowed down to were to go to some more pubs and talk to some girls or play some poker. I was in favor or talking to girls. I fully prepared myself before I went out that night to do my best to try and pick up a french girl no matter how much of an ass I made of myself. Poker ended up winning the vote and we headed off in the direction of someone’s apartment. On the way we picked up some really greasy gyros (friggin awesome) and some whisky. I was a little nervous playing poker with these guys. They kept asking me if I was any good. I consider myself slightly above average but nothing great. I kept telling them “Comme si comme sa” which means “so-so”. They were happy with this answer. Greg decided to setup an Unholy Alliance between him, one of his friends, and myself. The idea was to avoid playing big pots with each other and try and knock out the other guys first. This is when I made my first mistake. I agreed and then for some reason I thought it would be a good idea to tell Greg how much $ I have won playing poker, which comes to about $4K more or less. “C’est vrais!?” (This is true!?) was his response to this. I smirked and nodded realizing I just screwed up. He ran up to the rest of the guys and told them the news. I heard a some swears from a few of them and then some joking around about how I shouldn’t play, etc…. We arrived at this guys apartment and immediately started eating our gyros. After which we split up the chips and started to play. The structure was 5 or 10 euro tournaments with winner take all, initially. In the first tournament I ended up getting heads-up with Greg and turned a straight to his top pair. I thought that second place at least got his money back and tried to give him some of the pot. He refused but him and the rest of the group agreed to 2nd place getting their buy-in back. I had a blast playing with these guys, drinking, playing cards, and shooting the shit (albeit in two languages). I couldn’t ask for much more. We initially intended to play two tournaments. Well, two turned in to 6 or 7 and making the last train @ 12:15 turned in to catching a 6:30am train. While playing cards and drinking I kept thinking “Finally, I’ve made some friends here.” When we eventually finished our last tournament which just happened to be when we finished our bottle of whiskey I realized I may not be friends with these guys anymore. I either won or got 2nd place in every tournament. Now that I think about it I think I won all but one tournament in which I got 2nd. We wrap things up and the other guys say “You play well” and we decide to try and get some sleep before the sun comes up. I thank them for letting me hang out with them and head outside with Greg and one of his friends to catch the metro. Greg shows me on the metro map where I need to transfer to catch my train to Versailles. At this point I’m feeling the whiskey I’ve been drinking for 5 or so hours and pretty much just smile and nod my head in agreement.  We get on the metro and Greg’s friend gets off first and says goodbye to my by doing the kiss on the cheeks thing, which caught me off guard but didn’t phase me. Greg then tells me the next stop is mine and I need to run to Line # whatever to make sure I make my train to Versailles. I hop off the metro and run up an escalator and find the nearest map because I have already forgotten what Greg has told me. I find where I am and realize that there is an easier way than what he told me. I turn around and decide that I’m gonna run down the up escalator. Luckily there was no one else around but it took me almost 2 minutes to get to the bottom and I only fell once. At this point I don’t remember anything. I vaguely remember waiting for my train to Versailles. My next memory is I wake up at my stop in Versailles to a police officer with a big dog telling me to get off the hell off the train. I was more than happy to oblige. When I got outside the train station the cold air really woke and sobered me up. I looked at my watch and it read a little before 8am. I was starving and knew I had almost no food in my apartment, but the market would open at 9 and I could get food there. I stumbled home from the train station, showered, and walked to the market just as it opened. I looked like hell but I didn’t care I wanted food and sleep. I remember looking a little puzzled when I first dug my hand into my pocket to find so much cash, but quickly remembered it was from poker. I bought my food and went back home and crashed until 5pm. I felt a little refreshed but had no enthusiasm to do anything. When I tried to piece the night together I realized that the friends I had made last night, I probably lost them by winning just about every tournament. Oh well. C’est la vie!

~ by Paul on October 29, 2007.