Special Class

I don't know if he ever did it live, but on one of Bill Cosby's first recordings (a record, if you remember those things) he did a bit about kids in Special Class. I don't remember much about it other than what the kids in the class used to say as they were leaving their regular classroom to go to their Special Class. "Well, uh-huh, they're going to special class, uh-huh and then they're taking us to the zoo, uh-huh, and then we're going to a lot of special, uh-huh places, uh-huh.
I play cards 2 or 3 nights a week (My remembrance was pretty good, I just checked it out on You Tube). I play only during the week when I am know that Massiel is happily watching her novelas. Novelas are soap operas for my non Spanish speaking audience. Women in this country love their soap operas. Most of the soaps shown here are made either in Columbia, Venezuela, or Mexico. I am not aware of any that are produced here in the DR. Never having watched a US soap in my life, nor paid attention to one here, I am, nonetheless aware of the difference between Spanish and American "daytime dramas". Sometimes I am using the computer while Massiel is watching and I can't help but observe a little of what goes on. First of all, here they are on at night. Spanish soaps are violent, noisy, and overly dramatic. The yelling and screaming have been known to drive me away from the computer and out of the room. Someone is always beating someone, there is always a jail and hospital scene. I think that women watching this believe that this is really the way the way life is supposed to be. The rage of the women on TV reminds me of the hotheadedness of Dominican women. I have come to believe that women here learn how to behave by watching these programs as children.
G-d bless Ginko Biloba. Thanks to Ginko my memory is as sharp as it ever has been. I started this as a Poker entry and thanks to these wonderful pills I still remember why I started writing.
I once wrote a fictionalized description of the people with whom I play Poker for a gambling magazine. I had to exagerate a little to try to bring some humor to the article. I don't have to do that any more. The game is No Limit Hold'em. The blinds are 100-200 pesos (the US equivalent of $3 and $6). The minimum buy-in is only 2000RD (about $65 US). I might be the only player that buys in for enough. I start with 8000. Most of the players buy in for the minimum which means that the big blind alone is costing them 10% of their stack. What this does is change the betting. There are no such things as probe bets, teasers, slow plays. There is no strategy whatsoever. There are only three things that the other players do after the flop. They all try to limp in before the flop and after they check, fold, or go all in. That's it. The majority of the players believe that the game is 90% luck. As the laws of probability dictate, they take turns having their lucky nights. When it is their night to be lucky it confirms to them that that what the game is about. The fact that I win 8 or 9 times out of 10 never seems to enter their thinking. The majority of them are really Special Class candidates.
Here are a few of my favorites:
Myra: Myra owns a colmado, a small bodega, which affords her a pretty good income by Dominican standards. She has been a Poker player for at least 8 years and has never seen two cards that she won't play. She folds probably one hand out of 10, maybe less. Her real weakness is that once she has put in the first 200 pesos, she can't bear to lose it. She will call all of her chips once she has anything invested. Last night she called a big raise preflop by the BB while she was on the button with J9 offsuit. The flop came K 9 2, rainbow, and the BB bet all in. Myra pushed her money in so fast to call that she almost burned the sides of her hand on the felt.
The big blind had flopped a set of kings. Myra trusts no one and always thinks that the bettor is bluffing.
Barbara. Barbara discovered casinos about 6 months ago. She started to play Poker shortly after that. She loves the idea of gambling. The excitement gets her juices flowing. Someone told her that I give Poker lessons, and she paid me my normal fee of $10,000 pesos (a little less than $350 US) for lessons. Barbara works as an architect and is a really intelligent woman. She learned everything I had to teach her in the 10 hours we spent together. She even went so far as to buy 5 books that I had recommended and is in the process of reading them. She aspires to be a great tournament player. There is only one problem. She is playing for the excitement. In order to make her time at the table as exciting as possible she does things that she knows that she shouldn't do. Poker, if played well, is basically a boring game. That doesn't work for her. As I have said to her several times, "You can bring a horse to water, but you can't make them drink". I hope that someday she takes control of her game
El Pensador (The Thinker). I don't know his real name and don't know who gave him this nickname (I have to think that they were being sarcastic) but it is now the only name he answers to and is the only way he refers to himself,usually in the third person. "The thinker calls, the thinker raises, "etc. This is the guy that Special Classes were implemented to help. Plays almost every hand and when bet into always looks at the board trying to figure out a reason, no matter how remote, that he can call. He is one big tell. He chatters nonstop when he makes his big bet with top pair, lousy kicker, silent as a mouse when he has the nuts, and never bluffs. Now here is the best part. I can't beat this guy. Against me he is the walking, talking definition of a luck box. I don't want to turn this into a bad beat story so suffice it to say that his Kings beat my Aces, his Aces beat my Kings, and his gut shots always materialize. I know that the educational system here was recently ranked as the worst in the world and this guy is a proud product of that system. Special class or no.