You gotta know when to fold 'em so you can get up for another beer

When dudes get together, we're one stinky mess of beer, greasy pizza and star-spangled banner belches. Mix in a poker game and our vocabulary resembles a trucker's who was just cut off by a MoPed.

That's our game in a nutshell.

When I was sentenced to the prsion work camp, one of the first things I scouted was the interest in playing some poker. Nickel, dime, quarter because we're high-priced bastards who could take down Doyle Brunson on a stone-cold bluff (What? You don't believe me?), some meatball subs if Wife is in the mood and pepperroni pizza when she has a headache, that's what I remember as a kid and what I wanted to recreate in my new home city with my new friends.

The Old Man and his crew would have a semi-monthly poker game back home, in our house, using my room as the poker den. Afraid his 40-year-old friends would loot my baseball card collection or ralph in the shoebox that housed my Florsheims (there's presedence for the latter, justifying my fear) I'd hang down there with the guys, adding new words and phrases to my 11-year-old vocabulary with each passing minute. The hell with California public schools, the best classroom for me was in my room on poker night with a dozen mountain hillbillies as my teachers. They didn't test my spelling on their favorite catch phrases, but how hard was it to spell "shitbird, cock hound?" Sure, my room would smell like a New Orleans drunktank the night after Fat Tuesday, but the lessons I took away about poker, beer, whiskey, peeing off the deck, drunk chicks on the Hill and farting "Sweet Home Alabama" meant more than them defiling my room.

To me, that's always been a poker game.

I've tried my hand at casino poker, but it makes me more nervous than a drunk driver being followed by funeral procession for a fallen motorcycle cop. I fear making a betting mistake and the dealer calling over the pit boss who will usher me into a secret underground lair where the casino owner and his henchmen will then proceed to yank out my fingernails and toenails, one by one, until I understand how to make correct change from the pot. It's just not the same. They frown when I call another player a "son of a Chinese whore" when he or she beats me on the river. Asking the other player, "If I raise it here, are you going to call," typically brings a rebuke from the Bossman Dealer. Showing my hand to the player next to me and asking, "What would you do with this hand," often gets me tasered by security and promptly shown the door. No matter how hard I try, a chorus of arm farts to the tune of "Freebird" will never erupt, and that just doesn't work with my personality.

That's why I enjoy our home games. Oh, we may get into a snit once in a while - I mean when you're playing for the amount of cash we're tabling, tensions can run high (no one wants to lose their snack and soda money for the week) - but it's over, especially when the snitter snakes a decent pot from the snittee. But the camraderie is what I'm there for. Don't get me wrong, I want to take their snack and soda money, too. I want to see them on Monday, groveling like Bob Cratchet asking Ebenezzer Scrooge for a raise, as I deam whether their request for a Diet Dr. Pepper is worthy of me handing over my spare change - hard earned spare change after weaseling it out of the fish in a spririted Screw Your Neighbor game.

Yeah, that's one of our games. We have Screw Your Neighbor, Blind Baseball, Blood Pressure, eBay poker, Stock Market, 7-27, Crazy Pineapple, and my personnal favorite - Anaconda. Somehow, like Rainman's illegitimate kids, we remember these games and their intricate rules (Baseball: 7-cards dealt face down, turn one up until you beat the other player's hand, 3s and 9s are wild, 4s give you another card but it costs you a whopping, bank-account rattling 25 cents. Try explaining that to the wife when you get home). We all have our favorites, and we all have games that chafe our ass. But we play them while throwing insults to the dealer if we find the game to be beneath our intelligence - which are very few.

So, if you got a poker game going and you're looking for a few chumps who can belch "My Heart Will Go On," and fart spring-fresh roses, then give us a holler, we'll gladly take your money after beating you three ways from Wednesday.