TC Part 1

TC The Table Coach - Part I

By "Lorinda"

This column will document the adventures of TC, the table coach. His dual aims are to become the best player in the world, and also the best known player in the world. He is actually approaching these in reverse order, although he thinks he has already mastered the first half"

This month, allow me to introduce you to TC and his friends. You probably already know more about him than you realize.

TC is a table coach. He believes himself to be the best player in any game that he plays, and he wants his opponents to believe it too.

TC is unpopular. He knows that he is unpopular but has always attributed this to the fact that he's such a big winner. It has never occurred to him that it is actually because he is such a fundamentally dislikeable character.

He learned to play poker from a poker forum. He read an article that said "Play tight preflop." and it improved his results. Of course he doesn't play very tight preflop because he didn't read the rest of the article, but he thinks he does. He also thinks that poker ends when the flop is dealt, unless his opponent is drawing, in which case they are stupid (He read that once) or unless he is drawing, in which case he's making a decision based on pot odds. (He read that once as well).

TC recently learned about the World Series of Poker and has decided to earn the money required to play in the main event.

I think I'm going to go out to win some money." TC told his girlfriend.

"You might as well get some downtime", he added.

"O.K. TC. Good Luck." replied Angie, his girlfriend.

"Angie, dear, poker does not contain luck." reminded TC.

"O.K. TC."

TC picked up the phone and dialed Patch. In the local bar, the one-eyed barman -- known as Patch to his customers -- went to answer the phone. He returned a moment later and announced to the bar. "TC is on his way, he wants to play some poker."

Several of the customers grabbed some empty bottles and chocolate wrappers and rushed into the back room. They sat around the poker table that was stored there, scattered the gathered litter around the floor, pulled up their money, and began to play. A short time later, TC entered the bar.

"Good game today TC" said Patch. "They've been at it for hours. A couple of them left when I told them you were on the way." he winked.

TC went into the back room,"Half no limit hold 'em ?", he asked and pulled up $200 and sat down to play.

The other players were the regulars, their lineup (as known to TC, who didn't know, and had never asked their real names) was:

Seat 1: Ears. Ears was deaf
Seat 2: The Fish. The Fish was the local shark
Seat 3: Shorty. Shorty, was, of course, 7 feet tall
Seat 4: TC
Seat 5: Fingers. Nobody knew why he was called Fingers, but TC had explained it wasn't poker unless one of the players was called Fingers.

TC liked these particular players the best. They liked him, they understood him, they knew they were lucky if they beat him.

This group of people was the first group he had ever met that really, truly seemed to like him. TC put it down to the great nicknames he had thought of for them all.

"Yeah, er, that's it, Half no limit" stumbled Shorty. The other players all nodded, except for Ears of course.

"You see", explained TC, "I have this innate ability for working these things out. Have you guys ever known me to guess the game incorrectly?"

"No, you haven't" he answered, in case anyone beat him to it. "I always guess right"

"It's pretty incredible" remarked The Fish.

"Incredible!" echoed Fingers, rolling his eyes.

"So let's play some poker!" enthused TC, and The Fish dealt out the first hand...

It was all TC could do to keep the players at the table. He knew they were fascinated by him and so he gave a running commentary on pretty much every hand. Comments such as "What were you doing in that pot?" and "Do you know the odds of that?" at times when it was obvious what they were doing in the pot, and didn't matter what the odds were.

His favorite topic, naturally, was himself. "I play online you know. I pay my rent out of my winnings each month. I'm going to move up soon, when my win rate of 53 bonus table dollars per session hits 60. I worked out all the odds for the important hands myself...." and so on.

The other four players, all of whom were regular readers and posters on the newsgroup that TC had learned his preflop play from, just ignored this. They liked to boast that they could just let it bounce off them, although secretly they still each got just a hint of that desire to keep punching TC until he stopped talking.

12 hours and $1,200 later, our hero TC was all in for the final time. His aces that he failed to raise with pre-flop on the button was cracked horribly by Ears' jack-trey3 in the big blind on a jack-trey-trey flop, and that was that, all the money simply had to go in.

"You're too lucky" TC screamed at Ears.

"He doesn't know just how lucky he is" commented The Fish sarcastically.

"That's right, he doesn't" continued TC. "He will never understand the subtle play that I just made, and just like the rest of you he will eventually give back all my money and more."

With that, TC picked up his coat and stormed off home. The others waited for what seemed to be an appropriate length of time and headed back to the bar.

"Looks like you're buying, Ears", said Shorty.

Ears just peered up at him. "I forgot again", shouted Ears, before putting a finger in each ear and removing an earplug from each.

"I wish I had thought of that Pete", Shorty complained to the now un-handicapped Ears.

"You guys are just evil" piped up a voice from elsewhere in the bar. "Cheating that poor man out of his money like that."

"We don't cheat" explained Bill (The artist formerly known as Fingers) "We play each other as well, but he's so bad that it's worth our while to play him".

"How can you be that much better than him?" continued the inquisitor.

They looked at each other before nominating Frank "The Fish" to recall the story of their first encounter with TC. "We met TC over a few beers and a game of Rock, Paper, Scissors. He had been chuntering all night about how he could outwit anybody at poker for any stakes they liked.

Well, we didn't have any cards available, so we all played him at RPS for $100 a game. Jack there went first and told TC that he always played Rock. A big grin came over TC's face, and they played. TC played Scissors, Jack played Rock.

You should have heard it, TC thought that Jack was a little backward or something and demanded to play someone else, someone who wasn't an idiot.

Anyway, one by one we all did the same thing and suffered the same abuse, the man is incredible. He tried to teach us that playing idiots is a bad thing, apparently they can't be predicted well enough."

"Deal me in next time." replied the voice.

Back at home, TC sat at his desk and turned on his computer.

"Hello, I'm A.N.G.I.E." came a voice from the speakers. "Artificial New Girlfriend Intelligence Emulator" it continued.

"I'm going to get my revenge on those idiots" screamed TC, and picked up the phone.

"O.K. TC" agreed the chatbot.

Patch returned to the bar. "That was TC. He wants to play a World Series satellite.... here.... next week"

"Well" replied Frank "We always play the game he tells us we're playing, let's get it organized!"

To Be Continued....

Lorinda