User blog:MarkT/Careful what you say when the action's on you!

Last weekend, I was at my usual home game with Evangel, Calvin, Von, Tu, and most of the gang. We play low-stakes no-limit hold 'em about once a week or so (well, I play it about once a week - the guys have a game more like twice a week). We were a couple hours into the game, so people had reasonable size stacks. Evangel, in particular, had about 50 bucks in front of him and was on my left.

We were talking about the previous week's Poker After Dark shows which featured among other players the young Annette Obrestad. Von couldn't remember what country she was from. I answered, as I folded, "I think she's Dutch."

"Dutch?" said Von. "What country is that?"

While I pondered whether to make a joke ("Deutschland, of course!"), or just answer "The Netherlands", Evangel looked down at his cards and said forcefully into the momentary silence, "Holland."

The action froze, and everyone looked at him. Evangel is a tight and careful player. We play with blinds of 25 and 50 cents, and there had been two limpers. No one could believe what we'd just heard. It doesn't translate well in the written word here on the blog, but trying saying what Evangel said, out loud. That single word, said alone with no context, sounds identical to "All in."

Evangel going all in for 50 bucks into a three dollar pot wasn't possible. But we all thought we had heard it, and were staring at him in shocked silence. He looked up, quizzically, and said "What?". We looked at him. "She's from Holland," he said. I finally got the misunderstanding, as did everyone else. I'd been thinking that the answer was The Netherlands, so hadn't even thought of the country's other name, so I wasn't expecting to hear that. Nobody else was, either.

Ah-ha-ha-ha!

Be careful what you say when the action's on you! Personally, I recommend not answering trivia questions when it's your turn. What if someone asks what that hit single was that Blondie had in 1980? Or what the name of Tampa Bay's baseball team is?

LOL.