Sometimes passions get overheated during a poker game. It’s understandable. If you’re not running well bitterness creeps in, animus, negativity. If you’re running well you might have a tendency to show off a little, bully the table, make jibes and jokes about your opponents’ playing ability. Oftentimes the poker gods seem absent from these various scenarios; at other times they serve up just desserts and who are we to lament if we are culpable (and most of us are), that is, if we have offended the poker gods by ugly or stupid play.

I’m not superstitious, not at all. But I’ve mentioned before that I believe in the manipulations and caprice of the poker gods. But there are times when, in human matters, the laws and ironies of the poker gods are suspended, teleologically speaking, and the laws and passions of the human prevail by sheer force of will, and in circumstances like these one can only shrug and admit that the world is imperfect, that humans are fallible and that the scope of the poker gods after all is limited to the game.

Take this recent episode, for instance, I witnessed at a home game in a Woodbridge faux-mansion, just north of Toronto proper. I say faux because the entire place, though ostensibly lavish and sturdily constructed, was made of crap. That is to say, where one should have found granite and marble one found Formica and cheap stone; where one expected plaster drywall turned up; instead of ceramics vinyl was used; and anything resembling wood was nothing but particle board. I joked about this during the game when our host went to pee in one of the five bathrooms, all of them equipped with miniature toilets and sinks as if the contractor had in mind a joke about the owner’s diminutive stature. The owner of the mansion, a fellow I’ll call Fabio, only stood about five feet tall and he was a prickly little player, very aggressive, very put off by re-raises, very mouthy, very frisky, very annoying. So yes, the contractor, a man with a wicked sense of humour no doubt, must have had fun putting together the house. And I joked about being able to knock down the walls with a shoulder, indeed knock down the whole structure with a 10-yard running start. But none of the players, as miserable a lot as you’ll ever find in a poker room north of Atlantic City, thought it was funny. And when I said something about the absurdly small toilets, one of the fellows pointed out that Fabio had them custom-built that way. Ah, so the joke was on me after all.

Anyway, Fabio returned to the game and when we resumed play I sensed the scrutiny of the other players. After all, I had insulted the host, who though diminutive had a rather fierce and large personality. But I like to call things as I see them and I have to live with that and frankly the opinion of these donkeys meant nothing to me. We played, a fast $5-10 game with lots of chips flying around. I was down a grand and leaking badly. I knew it wasn’t going to be my night no matter what I did. Things were testy at the table; some guys were winning a bundle; some guys were losing more than I was. Card dead and resigned to a bad night I couldn’t even go on tilt. Nothing. I was ready to go home. Then I was served up a pair of pocket jacks on the button.

Fabio came out raising from under the gun, and this guy in the cut-off with a stupid beret on his head (I say stupid when I mean stupide) re-raised. Now as mentioned, I’d been card dead all night and the jacks looked like monsters to me and I wanted to get the hell out of that papier-mâché mansion. So I moved all-in. The blinds folded and Fabio insta-called, which still left him with a nice little stack, then buddy with the beret moved all-in and he had Fabio covered. Fabio called.

Now, violence is never condonable at a poker game, unless perhaps if cheating is involved and then, well, all bets are off so to speak. But attacking someone for making a play – good, bad or ridiculous – is never warranted. You may get arrested, you may get banned from that particular game, or the party you’ve attacked may be much bigger than you, much much bigger, and despite your ferocity you may wind up being hung up by your ankles in your own house.

Now when the cards were opened up Fabio had a pair of cowboys. But buddy in the beret, a big bastard when I took a better look at him, with a neck like a tree stump, and hands like anvils, only had a trifling pair of 7s. Fabio guffawed at both of us, there in his own house. “What a couple of saps!” he cried. “Moving all-in with johnnies, moving all-in with hockey sticks! I thought for sure one of you had aces!” Okay, fine, I thought, time to go home. But, as you know, poker is a funny game. The flop came 7-J-8. Fabio’s mood went from ebullience to despair in a flash. The river and turn changed nothing. I collected my chips for my pot and the gorille in the beret collected the side-pot. Fabio put his hands on the green felt. His face trembled with emotion. Yeah, a bad beat, but that’s poker. He directed his emotion toward the guy with the beret, whom I discovered later was called Dominic and used to play football for the Edmonton Eskimos.

“How could you move all-in with pocket 7s?” Fabio wanted to know, his face seething with cynical loathing and mockery. “Only a donkey would move in with pocket 7s.” Dominic laughed and organized his chips. He wasn’t going to tell the host to shut his mouth in his own house, no matter how flimsy that house was. But Fabio had worked himself up into a little froth and had more to say. “Only a fucking giant donkey would move all-in with pocket 7s!” Dominic stopped stacking his chips and said, “Yeah, so you stated already. Point taken.” Fabio stood up on his tiptoes and stretched his neck but this didn’t make him any bigger. He called Dominic a donkey again. But this time Dominic didn’t feel so tolerant. “Hey,” he said, pointing at the little man, “shut your mouth you fucking midget.” And on the word midget Fabio vaulted over the table and attacked the big man, knocking the beret off his head. He managed to scratch him up some but when Dominic got a hold of him it was pretty much over. He tossed Fabio into a wall, which collapsed like wet cardboard.

Needless to say the game was called – we divvied up the money and skipped out of there. I don’t know what happened to Fabio and his house. I did stop to take a leak before I split and peed all over the tiny toilet seat.

Emile Frendo of the Honeymoon City is a semi-professional poker player and winner of the 2006 Pirate Poker Open Championship.