"Look Down Here"

I was playing the $500 NL game at Hollywood Park when a semi-regular player took the seat to my right. About seventy-five years old and five foot one inch tall, he's a cantankerous eastern European who has caused a few heated disputes in my previous sessions at his table. As is the case with a surprising number of poker players, his deficiencies in English don't dissuade him at all from taunting and complaining about the other players.

Anyway, this ornery old man sat down next to me with a stack of mostly $1 and $5 chips. To me it looked like he might have had less than $500 there. I wouldn't really care except that the rules require players to buy-in for at least $500 in this game, and I didn't want there to be an issue later on. His left arm was blocking my view of his stack, so I asked him, "do you have 500 there?"

He looked at me rather disgustedly but said nothing. "How many chips have you got there?" I asked. Pushing back in his chair, he turned to me and yelled"Count!" pointing at his chips. I counted them and there was exactly $500 in chips. "Looks like 500," I said.

"Look down here," he snarled at me. At his waist, out of sight of the dealer, he was giving me the finger. I laughed and just said, "Okay, thanks. That's wonderful." About an hour later he was kicked off the table after a confrontation with another player.