What happens when you play “perfect” poker – that is, when you only play premium cards, when you only push your chips in with the best hand, when you make smart lay downs, when you read the table well and avoid getting caught up in silly action, when you do everything by the book to a tee – and still wind up getting your ass kicked? Well, two things. One, you can react emotionally and cry, rage, rant, kick the cat, yell at the wife, get on your flat roof and scream at the moon, smite your temples with your fists, get soused, take pills, kick the cat (I said that already) and so forth. Or, you can react with the equanimity and smoothness of one of the calmer professionals, like Huck Seed or Phil Ivey or Jesus Ferguson who take the good and the bad with equal composure.

I must admit that when I play well and still get my ass handed to me, I don’t react well. And this is one of the leaks of my game that I do not think I will ever rectify. For instance, I was at a home game recently and one of the fellows there – I’ll call him Randy – a diminutive man with Dumbo ears, close-set eyes and a speech impediment, was playing very aggressively. I noticed that he in particular liked to raise from the blinds, especially on a limped pot. Of course, limping is usually a weak play, but if you can get in cheap with marginal holdings in a multi-way pot, why not – there’s no telling what can happen. So Randy, the small aggressive man, enjoyed his raises from the blinds. He found that his continuation bets, regardless of what fell on the flop, were being uncontested and he was picking up pot after pot. Then he started re-raising raisers from the blinds, a risky play even with premium holdings, but he seemed to be enjoying the same level of success. Guys were folding their hands before the turn and river whenever he made a big post-flop bet.

All this didn’t sit well with me – I’d been card dead for two hours when this was going on. In addition, Randy, with his garbled manner of speaking (whatever condition he suffered from made his tongue thick and oddly dark so that it appeared he had a black rubber glove or something like that stuffed in his maw) was giving the guys around him little pointers about how to play, or at least that’s what I gathered from his sputtering. Finally I was served up a pair of pocket Ks in the cut-off and I went in with a raise. Randy, in the big blind, re-raised immediately. I pushed all my chips in before he could unfurl his tongue to say anything. He blinked, shook his ears, and called. When he turned over a Q-8 unsuited I felt ticklishly delighted. I wanted to start braying and mocking the fucking stooge. I glared at him while the flop hit the table and when I saw his eyes pop I knew I was in trouble.

I looked at the board: Q-Q-8. I thought, Jesus Fucking Christ. I crossed myself and felt my shoulders trembling and my neck nerves coiling up. Meanwhile, Randy started mumbling to the fellow next to him that Q-8 was one of his favourite hands. I had to restrain myself from vaulting across the felt and grabbing him by the ears. Needless to say his full boat held up and I was so disgusted I just left. Had I remained I would have likely committed an assault. The point is: you’re always going to find Dumbo-eared cretins at a table, who think they have a few moves, who’ve read in a book somewhere that pure aggression wins, and yes, these idiots get lucky.

But that doesn’t mean you have to emulate their bad play or lower the game to their level, commit violence, or lose your sanity. I will take pocket Ks over Q-8 every single time. If that idiot keeps playing Q-8 against my Ks for the rest of time in the end I will not only take all of his chips, I will take his car, his house, his wife, his children, his patrimony, his legacy, whatever that may be, and even his soul. Do you understand? I’m trying to understand myself.

Q-8! Who plays Q-8 like that! I raged in my car driving home from the game that night. And no amount of smooth and wise self-talk would shake me from my funk. I sat in the car and pounded the steering wheel, suppressing Bad Lieutenant screams and soul wracking. I should have stayed at the game and busted that moron right out, but you know, it was better that I didn’t stay. I would have continued to lose, no doubt. You can’t play with such emotionality. You just can’t. It kills your game. It makes you vulnerable. If your passions do not permit you to sit at a table with a certain individual then do not. As I walked into my house I saw the cat stationed by the stairwell, licking its paws indifferently. Yes. I thought about it for a moment. But I did not kick the cat. Why kick the fucking cat?

Kicking the cat is simply not a solution.

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