Paddy’s Corner

Viagra in Vegas
Mike Sexton was at a table near mine in the pot-limit Omaha high-low at the World Series, so I dropped over to say hello. I asked him if he could really believe that there was nearly 800 runners in this event. He said that people have been playing for a month now and nearly everyone is broke, so it’s not the game that matters anymore, it’s the size of the buy-in. If it’s $1,500, everyone is in, if it’s more than that, they’re not.

During the break, I was chatting with some of the Irish guys and somehow or other the conversation came around to Viagra. Maybe some of them have spent too much time in their hotel room watching ads on TV, especially that one that warns you that you should contact your doctor immediately if you have an erection lasting longer than four hours. Nice piece of marketing.
I was telling them a story I heard about a poker player who’d fallen in lust with a young lady.

He’d got around to discussing making their relationship a little less platonic several times but it wasn’t working out too good. Being a poker player, he kept on trying anyway and was finally rewarded by being put on a promise one day. To maximize his performance, he decided to give the old Viagra a try. He didn’t quite know how it worked so he popped one in the middle of a cash game, in case it took a while. It worked a little quicker than expected, and pretty soon he had to leave the game in case the miracle that was happening under the table led to everybody’s chips ending up on the floor. He cashed out and headed off to claim his prize. Unfortunately for him, the young lady had had a change of heart and all bets were off. I was asked what he had to say about that but had to admit that that was all I knew.

The next day, I went back for day 2 of the tournament. We were near the bubble and I wasn’t in great shape, but being Irish, that didn’t bother me. I could only see the bracelet. Being Irish isn’t always a good idea and after about 10 minutes I put a quarter of my stack in trying to steal the blinds, half my stack in on the turn trying to steal all of the pot, and the final quarter calling a raise, drawing at getting half of it. I missed.

Walking away from the table, the money and the bracelet, I was muttering “for fuck’s sake” to myself, but I was laughing by the time I got to the door because I had just worked out what Viagra-man had had to say for himself.

Excellent Delivery
I got a bit bored in the $10,000 pot-limit Omaha tournament in the Rio. I was stuck between a Russian geezer who wouldn’t talk to me because he didn’t speak English and Howard Lederer who didn’t talk much to me because he didn’t want to. Hard to fault either of them.

To amuse myself I had to talk to Erick Lindgren, which was a bit of a problem because he was at a different table, but the trip was well worth it. He told me he’d ordered pizza one Sunday while passing the time by watching football on TV. When the pizza delivery guy arrived, Eric asked him how he was doing. “I’m doing great,” said the guy, “I’m living the dream.”

Padraig Parkinson is well-known on the European poker scene, both for his poker prowess and sense of humour. He was one bluff away from winning the 1999 World Series of Poker, but unfortunately got called. Padraig Parkinson plays at and is sponsored by BoylePoker.com.