They are called ear drums but about a dozen pairs around Will Kassouf can’t listen to another beat following yet another hand’s ponderously slow resolution…
The latest concerto of solipsistic echo chamber music reached its nadir movement with four cards face up on the table: Ah Qc 9c Jc.
“Babble babble babble,” said Kassouf verbatim, betting 26,000. David Barnes was in the pot and his ears were perilously close to the source of the unsolicited emanations.
Barnes called the turn and the river was the exciting Ac. It was as if the dysphonia was being played on a loop and someone had accidentally sat on the fast forward button. Yet the tape never ran out.
“Babble babble babble, babble babble,” yer man charged with transcription caught a hand cramp as the best tournament director in the world, Nick O’Hara, was summoned to the scene of the crime. He was told by no less than four members of the table and the dealer that both time and sanity were under assault in a spirit hostile to all mellifluousness and civility.
The opposite of a fat lady, we suppose, and we had much time to suppose as this hand slowed to a crawl, is a skinny bloke — and shrill inquisitions peppering the peace are the opposite of singing.
75,000 was bet in Barnes direction, who moved all-in for 107,000. Not 107,000 more, but 107,000 total. In other words, it was 32,000 for the broken record to call, the pot easily over 250,000 chips. Yet we waited and waited and waited. Complaints were filed, clocks called, babbles babbled, and finally O’Hara began the count down.
Barnes promised to show his hand either way, in effort to end everyone’s agony. Convivial din had given way to cacophony. He kept his word when the pot was surrendered to him, showing As-Jd.
The kazoo wanted to show and tell what he had taken years off of everyone’s lives in order to fold — Kc Ks. But no one was listening.
