Pick Me a Winner

This column carries a "G" rating – G for gross, that is. It is not recommended reading for anyone under the age of 13, anyone with a weak stomach, or anyone who has just eaten a full meal.

First of all, please be assured that this column is based on a true incident. Remember the old saying, "Life imitates art?" Or is it "Art imitates life"? I can never remember which. Anyway, a few weeks back someone had a rather startling post on RGP, the poker newsgroup. It stated that a certain poker player was escorted out of and then barred from a Las Vegas casino. Was his offense ringing in chips? No. Starting a fire in the cardroom? No. Picking a fight? No. He was picking his nose!

According to the report, the player in question also deposited a booger under the table. Now, don't say I hadn't warned you. This is a pretty sticky story.

It happens that I know the player from numerous home games. He is not exactly a household name, but he has had his share of tournament wins and cashouts. Anyway, a week or so after the post I ran into him and asked him about the incident. While considerations of delicacy constrained me from inquiring about the booger-under-the-table part, I did ask if he had been barred for excavating his orifice, and he nodded.

My mind was immediately flooded with a myriad of thoughts. First of all, I felt deep sympathy for my friend's humiliating punishment. Next, I made a mental note never to shake hands with him again. I also worried about this malicious report spreading and embarrassing him. But my most urgent consideration was: How can I get a column out of this?

Rumination on the subject soon brought to mind a quotation quite appropriate to my friend's predicament. It is from the works of the illustrious Homer. (No, not the Homer who wrote The Iliad and The Odyssey. I'm talking about Homer Simpson. The quote goes: "You can pick your friends and you can pick your nose, but you can't pick your friend's nose."

Does any of this make sense now? I thought not. Very well, enough of the literary allusions, let's get into the practical applications to poker. As many of you will recall, in past columns I have outlined definitive guidelines on assessing penalties for throwing cards off the table and for uttering the f-word. I will now go where no sane person has gone before to do the same for picking one's nose.

How deep is the ocean, how high is the sky? The first consideration should be for depth of penetration. Should a player's finger go in no deeper than the length of his fingernail, chances are he was merely scratching his nose. Reacting to an itch should carry no culpability or penalty. However, a finger that penetrates between the fingernail and knuckle would carry a minimum five-minute penalty. Between the knuckle and wrist, 10 minutes. Up to the elbow, 20 minutes.

Size does matter: Should a booger be removed, further penalties may be assessed based on its size. Up to the size of a grain of rice, an additional five minutes. Between a grain of rice and a raisin, 10 minutes. Up to the size of a walnut, 20 minutes. The size of a football, two months.

The time factor: Should a player immediately dispose of the extracted matter, no additional penalties beyond those quoted above should be imposed. However, protracted public display, either by holding the object up for inspection or by lovingly rolling it around between thumb and forefinger, would carry the additional sanction of one minute of penalty time for each minute the booger is available for viewing.

Method of disposal: If the player at least has the decency to immediately get rid of the booger by placing it in a tissue for proper burial in a wastebasket, no additional penalty time would be assessed. For other disposal: on the player's own garments, five extra minutes; on the floor, 10 minutes; under the table, 15 minutes; on the table, 20 minutes; on the cards, a half-hour; on an adjoining player, variable, depending on who the player is.

I have also worked out sensible penalties for number of nostrils involved, color and consistency of said booger, and so on. However, I am beginning to get queasy myself, so I will offer up one more, very critical category for calculation of penalties:

Ultimate penalty: Finally, anyone found guilty of putting the booger in his mouth would be barred for life.

And now you know the meaning of the journalistic terms "digging out the news" and "in-depth reporting." All I can say is, let's hope the player in question – let's just call him "Booger Boy" – never makes the final table of a World Poker Tour event, because that would set poker back 100 years. I can just visualize Mike Sexton's commentary:

"And here we are, folks, at the final stages of another exciting World Poker Tour spectacular, this time at Big Denny's Card Casino. We now have a tremendous heads-up match pitting Booger Boy against the big boy himself, Big Denny.

"As the action resumes, Big Denny makes it fifty thousand to go from the button. As you can see, Big Denny has two queens. Booger Boy has big slick. No, those aren't his cards – he has big slick on his finger. We can't see his cards because his glass area is all covered with snot.

"Now Booger Boy is thinking … thinking hard. Uh-oh, there goes his finger into his right nostril – well past the knuckle. He's scratching around in there. Look at that finger rotating, just like a flywheel. He's found something! Here it comes. Wow, is it big! Sort of the size and shape of a lima bean. Can we have a close-up on camera number three? Wow! That's a keeper. I just hope he keeps it for himself.

"Booger Boy just wiped his finger on his chips and reraised another 100K. Big Denny is staring at Booger Boy's booger. He's starting to get angry. Uh-oh. He sticks his finger in his ear and pulls out a big gob of earwax, which he, yuck, pastes on his pile of chips and raises again for another $200,000. Booger Boy does not like being challenged. He's inserting two fingers into his left nostril. He's going deep, very deep. And he pulls out what looks like a small sweet potato. I'm not sure of the color. Let me ask my color commentator, Vince Van Patten. Vince? Sorry, he seems to be having a gagging fit and can't talk. And now Booger Boy moves all in for $2 million in chips lavishly smeared with sweet potato booger. Big Denny is staring at the mess glassy-eyed. What will he do? He passes – passes out, that is! He is unable to continue and is disqualified. And Booger Boy is our new champion!

"Oh, my God, he's coming over here to be interviewed! No, no, Booger Boy. Go see Linda Johnson. She'd love to talk to you. Just don't try to shake her hand."