TUNICA, MS - Floor managers, dealers and players present in the Grand’s poker room last Thursday all confirm that a severely intoxicated holdem player experienced great difficulty separating the similar yet distinct realities of online and physical poker.
The drunk, identified by casino staff as Michigan tourist Evelio Alderdice, first drew attention to himself by asking players to stop “hiding their numbers”. When pressed, Alderdice explained “I should be able to see their numbers, their chip numbers. They’re hiding them, that’s cheating. Waitress!”
Other players were at first confused, and allowed the comment to pass as Alderdice sunk back into inebriated silence. After the next outburst however, player Justin Lowry put two and two together. “He started going off, very loudly and like, out of fucking nowhere, about how he had ‘clicked post’ before he went to the bathroom and so he should’ve be dealt in,” recalled Lowry. “It didn’t really hit me until he said something about having a time bank and how he could totally piss in under 2 minutes. Then I was like shit, this guy thinks he’s playing online.”
As the evening progressed, Alderdice displayed even clearer signs of his inability to distinguish between the online and physical versions of the game, including yelling ‘raise any’, ‘call any’, and ‘fold to any bet’ before action was anywhere near him; becoming frustrated when his chips did not move themselves to the center; not tipping the dealer and constantly wandering over to the cage to see how much money he had left in his ‘account’.
“On one hand, I felt kind of bad for the guy,” said player Mike Hutton, “but on the other hand, it was pretty fucking funny. I mean, here’s this guy who just keeps poking the rail like there are buttons there, who keeps talking out loud to himself and gets shocked when other people can hear him … man.”
” I’ve been pretty drunk before at a poker table,” Hutton continued, “and like sometimes I’ll forget what game I’m playing, like I’ll confuse limit with no limit or forget I’m in a tournament. But I’ve never been so drunk that I tried to intentionally disconnect to activate all in protection in a live game.” 
