Honeymoon in Vegas—With Me! (Part 1)

Note: if you enjoyed my previous post, you might want to see the comment that the great Lee Jones himself left in response to his critique of his decision in the hand.  You can go directly to it here.  

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As you probably know, when I first started playing poker in casinos, and even when I first started blogging, I was strictly a 2/4 limit player. I was having really fun sessions and picking up amusing anecdotes to tell my friends from these 2/4 games.  And as I’ve explained often, those anecdotes I was relating to my friends turned into many of my early blog posts when those friends encouraged me to start the blog.  

Recently, I’ve been reflecting back on my days of playing 2/4 and kind of missing them.  I’m almost thinking of them as the “good old days.”

This is not because my recent run of poker has been bad—although it has.  Yes, my bankroll would likely be better off if I had been playing 2/4 limit instead of 1/2 NL during this downswing.  But that’s not the reason I’ve been thinking more fondly of those days. 

It’s because I miss the fun.  Back when I first started playing NL cash games, when the blog was just a few months old, I did a post about the differences between the limit and no-limit games.  You can—and should—find that post here.  At the time, I was concerned that if I played NL full time, the kind of fun I was having playing poker—and the kind of fun stories I was getting from it—would vanish.  That post was actually introduction to my post about meeting my now good friend Prudence.  That was key because my first session with Prudence helped me convince me that I could play NL and still have really fun, really crazy sessions that would also provide me with quality blogging material. 

It’s a good thing, because honestly, sooner or later, I really wouldn’t have had much choice but to switch to NL.  Limit poker is increasingly hard to find in Vegas.  When I first started playing it, my favorite poker room (then referred to as “BSC”) always had multiple 2/4 games going whenever I walked in (even though there were always more 1/2 games going).  It became my favorite poker room because of the great 2/4 games.  These days, they virtually never get a limit game going (it would be 3/6 if they did). It’s been over two years I’m sure since I’ve seen one there.

Now of course, I’ve played in fun, crazy NL games plenty of times since then, and hopefully those sessions made entertaining blog posts.  But games like that occur much less frequently at the NL level than at the low limit level.  And it just seems like it’s been quite a while since I’ve played in one of those really fun games.

There are two ways a poker game can fun (maybe there are more, but for now, let’s go with two). One, it can be fun because you’re winning.  Winning is always fun.  As I’ve documented here, winning has been a rather infrequent occurrence for me lately.

The other way is with a great group of fun players, or perhaps just one particularly entertaining player bringing great conversation to the table.  Or outrageous conversation.  The more outrageous, the better.  It helps if said player is female.  Female isn’t mandatory of course, but those outrageous and slightly (or not so slightly) provocative women I’ve encountered in the course of my poker endeavors make for my personal favorite blog posts, starting with Prudence. It was my pal Woody who coined the term “woman said” and I love writing posts that merit that label—they are my favorite. But I haven’t run into a “woman behaving badly” in a long time—over a year, I believe. My dry spell in scoring stories starring fun ladies runs longer than my bad run of poker.

So, in thinking of this recently, I remembered there was one story, featuring a very fun female, that goes back to my 2/4 days that I’ve never written up for the blog.  It’s perhaps ironic, because it took place just a few months before I started the blog. In fact, this story is definitely one of the ones that my friends Woody & LM had in mind when they pushed me to start the blog.  The email thread about this particular night is quite long and very entertaining in and of itself.

So why have I avoided posting this before now?  Well, I guess there are a couple of reasons. One, there is somewhat of an embarrassing element to it that I always had a problem coming up with a way to talk about to the general public (as opposed to my really close friends, where I can say anything).  Second, it took place right around the same time as a particularly painful incident in my life occurred.  Furthermore, in some odd way that I cannot reveal, this story ultimately played a small part in painful incident. 

You see, this story took place on my first night of poker in Vegas in May, five years ago.  And although I wasn’t totally aware of it at the time, by the time this trip was over I was about to enter one of the most painful periods of my life—and as I said this story played a small (but not insignificant) part in it.  Thus I had trained myself to not think about this story too much, least I relive some painful memories.  And in fact, just starting to write this post brought some unpleasant stuff back to me that I’m better off not revisiting. Sigh.  But it’s been a long time and it is time to soldier on.

So on this night, I arrived in the poker room and there were two 2/4 games, as was pretty standard for that era.  I got on the list and looked over the two games (which were right next to each other).  I couldn’t help noticing that at one table, there was an attractive young woman sitting behind one of the male players.  She had long, brown hair and was wearing kind of a flowing white dress that was rather low cut. She was slim but had a very nice figure. So yeah, she got my attention.  And when she leaned forward to talk to her man, she revealed some cleavage.  Just on the basis of having a pretty face to look at, I kind of hoped that I would get a seat at that table as there were no pretty faces—just guys—at the other one.

I took a seat at an empty table and waited to be called.  It didn’t take that long and I was called to the game I wanted.  However, when I got there, I was disappointed to see the attractive woman was gone, as was the guy she was sitting behind.  Guess that’s why the seat was open.

I played there for about an hour, sitting in seat 4.  The limit games were always 10-handed, so either 5 or 6 were my preferred seats (for purposes of vision), 4 a bit less so.  When seat 2 opened up, the floor man brought over a new player, a young guy.  Then I noticed there was a young girl with him and the floor man turned to her and said, “You’ll be first up.  What’s your name?”  She said it was “Sheila” and he put her on the waiting list.  And then Sheila pulled a chair up behind the new player to observe. 

Since it had been an hour at least, I didn’t even recognize the girl initially.  But when she leaned over to talk the guy, it suddenly came to me that this was the girl I had noticed sitting behind a player before I joined the game.  So of course I assumed that she was sitting behind the same guy as before.

In fact, the player in seat 1, who had been there the entire time, said to him as he got settled in, “You’re back, huh?”  The returning player, who we will refer to as “Bruce” from now on, replied, “Well, we had to eat sometime.”  At first I thought I might have detected a British accent from Bruce, but in fact, I soon overheard Bruce tell seat 3 that he and Sheila were visiting from Australia and were on their honeymoon. I’m always upset with myself when I make that mistake, I’ve encountered enough players from both Australia and England that I should be able to easily tell the difference.  Usually I do, but sometimes I goof, like this time.

Meanwhile, I was doing lousy at cards, barely winning a pot.  Suddenly the guy to my left, in seat 5, left the game.  Because I was losing in my current seat and because I prefer seat 5, and only for those reasons, honest, I told the dealer I would slide over to take seat 5.  I was not remembering at this point that Sheila was next on the list and would be taking the open seat.   But of course that's what happened...she took the seat that I had just vacated.

It was really fortunate.  Because it put her only one seat away from her loving groom, and basically right across from him. So they could easily converse during the game. It was real nice of me to do that, even though that's not why I did it.

However, when Sheila took the seat on my immediate right, I couldn’t help noticing the cut of her dress.  In addition to being low-cut, it had this sort of crisscross design, meaning from one side it was possible to see a whole lot of Sheila.  To see a “whole lot,” you had to be on her left side.  And as it happened, I was on her left side.  Oh dear.  I guess I should mention that it was obvious that Sheila had not bothered to put on a bra when she left for her evening of poker.  Was I perhaps in position to see something I wasn’t supposed to see?  

Spoiler alert:  I was.  You remember the famous Janet Jackson “wardrobe malfunction” from the Super Bowl, right?  Well, one time when I was conversing with Sheila, I got a better view of her than I ever got of Janet Jackson.  Oops.

Oh well, so what?  It was just a quick nip-slip.  And what did it matter that some guy she’s gonna be playing poker with for an hour or two and never see again saw it?  Back then I thought, “Wow, this is fun story to tell my friends.”  If it happened today, my thought would be, “Wow this will be a fun story to blog about.”

But what happened over the next 6 hours changed my perception a bit.  Yeah, six hours.  That’s how long I played with Bruce and Sheila. 

Now of course, being a gentleman, I spent that entire time trying my damndest to not experience another Janet Jackson moment with Sheila.  I tried really, really hard not to see anything I wasn’t supposed to see—that I had already seen—again.  And again.  And again.  You all believe that I tried really hard not to see it again, right?  You do believe me, I’m sure.

I suppose the surest way to avoid a recurrence would have been to move to other side of her.  From her right side, I’d be able to see nothing. For reasons I am unable to explain, that though never occurred to me on this night.

Ok, we’ll get back to the wardrobe malfunction later. Actually, it will be in part 2, sorry. Let’s return to the conversation.

It turned out that Sheila was a really nice, really fun, really interesting person.  The same could be said for Bruce.  Soon after she sat down next to me, I confirmed what I heard, that they were from Australia on their honeymoon.  Just Vegas?  No.....they came to the U.S. for six weeks. They flew to NY and drove across the country, and were having a great time. BTW, it was tough driving here at first because she told me they drive on the wrong side of the road in Australia just like they do in England.  Vegas was their next to last stop.  The next morning they were planning to drive to L.A. and fly home from there.  They were going to Disneyland. Sheila had been there when she was five-years-old but Bruce had never been. But they would be returning to Vegas first for one more night—a last minute decision. Saturday night was a special "Glee" show at Mandalay Bay and they wanted to come back for that since Sheila loved that show. Actually Bruce said "they" love the show but Sheila said he was just being nice, it’s she who loved the show.  They were staying Saturday nite at Mandalay Bay.  They’d had four nites in Vegas—two at Venetian, two at Caesars.  I wondered why they were at BSC in that case. Had they seen a show there? Nope, just came to check it out.  

Sheila had been watching Bruce play poker and decided it looked like fun and would try playing. This was her first time ever playing real poker.  She said she plays on her Blackberry, but that was not with real people or real money.  But she was losing so much money at the video poker machines she didn't think she could do any worse at a real poker table, and this was more social.

I asked if they had come to the U.S. immediately after getting married.  Not quite, they were married in March and Bruce had been busy in court.  So I asked if he was a lawyer or a criminal. Sheila laughed.  He’s a lawyer, as is she.  She was quick to point out that they are corporate lawyers, not those “personal injury lawyers everyone hates.”  So Bruce was in court on a case. I asked if they wear those wigs in Australia like they do in England.  She said they do!  But not Bruce and her.  It's a little different down there.  Although they are actual lawyers and work for the biggest law firm in their city, they have not passed the bar exam yet.  Sheila was hoping to soon.  It is only the barristers who are allowed to speak in court (and wear the wigs). All they can do is take notes. 

After a few minutes of chatting, Sheila introduced herself and Bruce to me by name and asked my name and where I'm from and what I do.  Sheila immediately noticed that I knew all the dealers and asked if was a local.  I said no but that I’m Vegas a lot.  

And that’s where I’m going to end Part 1.  Part 2 is now posted and you can find it here.

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A Trip Down Memory Lane

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Busy Week

This is not a “real” blog post.  It’s a blog post to explain why I have no blog post for you.

As the title indicates, it’s been a busy week for your humble scribe.

Let’s start with this past Saturday.  I didn’t play poker.  Instead I saw my friends, LM & Woody.  And then, during the day, we walked into a Verizon store and I ended up with a new phone.  So did Woody.  It was totally unexpected.  LM just wanted to ask a question and so I figured I would check about getting a new phone.  I wasn’t quite “due” for one yet but frankly I was seriously unhappy with the phone I’ve had for nearly two years (you can see here for the story of how I got it).  In fact, the phone I was using was actually the second LG G3 I had, as the first died about year into my two-year contract.  The replacement had a different set of problems.

Anyway, much to my surprise the folks at Verizon were much more accommodating than they had been two years ago and they made me an offer I couldn’t refuse, so I decided to get a new phone right then and there.  It’s the Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge.  Woody got the same phone.

Well you know how it is when you get a new phone.  We spent hours in the Verizon store getting things set up.  Part of the problem for me was that I had no idea I’d be getting a new phone that day so I was quite unprepared.  When we were done, there was of course the process of setting things up and learning Samsung all over again after being used to LG for a couple of years.

This took a considerable amount of time not only Saturday night but on Sunday as well.  It was actually a miracle I was able to find time on Sunday to write the post I got up then.  But the phone took away any time I had to get started on another post on Sunday, which was my original plan.

Then came the work week.  And I have been swamped at work of late.  Both jobs hitting me hard this week.

The big summer series are all set to start in Vegas right about now.  That’s a busy time of year for me, as I have to enter all the info on all the tournaments for every series into the PokerAtlasdata base. That’s a lot of tournaments, folks. Now in a perfect world I would have gotten all this entered a long time ago.  But as you all know, we don’t live in anything close to a perfect world. 

Since all of these events pretty much start at the same time, it would be nice to have the all the info I needed to enter them at least 2-3 months early so I would have time to enter them one-by-one, without any deadline pressure.  Sounds reasonable, right?

But I am at the mercy of the poker rooms running these events.  Some got me the info timely—even early.  But this year, a few rooms were late with their info.  Some were very late.  Some were very, very late.  Now, it doesn’t matter how early they announce their schedules.  I can’t really enter the tournaments until I have the structure sheets—or at least all the info that one would normally find on a structure sheet.

I am not going to call out any poker rooms for being less than prompt in getting me their info.  That would be impolite.  It would be bad form.  It would be unprofessional.  And if you dare to guess which rooms I am referring to, I will steadfastly refuse to confirm or deny.  But let’s just say that with minutes to go before the summer—poker wise—officially starts in Vegas, I was still working on getting everything listed before any series in fact is underway.  Actually, I’m writing this on Tuesday night, and I certainly hope to be finished by the time this is posted.  Crossing my fingers. 

As a result of this backlog, I am putting in more hours than usual trying to beat the deadline.  This leaves less time for writing blog posts. 

Another reason this is a busy time for me is that this is the time of year that Ante Up moves up its deadline a week so they can go on hiatus for the (partial) summer.  So instead of the deadline being next Friday (6/3) as it should be, it is this very Friday.  That means I have to spend a couple of evenings this week writing my column instead of working on the blog.

Phew.

I tell you, I’m going to be a happy camper when the weekend finally gets here.  I might even find some time for some poker.  Hopefully that will give me something to blog about it.

Speaking of which…..well, my less frequent Vegas trips have left me a bit short on blogging material.  So I guess I’m going to have to keep digging into my archived notes to find things to blather about. This is probably less than ideal, but what else can I do?  I don’t want the blog to go dormant.

By the way…another thing taking up some of my time is watching the NBA playoffs.  The NBA is my favorite sport and I’m taking a few hours a night to watch the games.  OK, not really that into the Cleveland-Toronto series, but I’m totally into the Warriors-Thunder.  And honestly—who the hell saw that coming?

Anyway, since I don’t have my usual 100K word blog post for you are, I’ll leave you with a couple of links to some interesting reading.

The first is a post by my friend Kat Martin. Kat and I go back to the glory days of the AVP forums and you no doubt have seem his comments here on some of my posts, usually offering great insight into poker and my game and trying his damnedest to steer me in the right direction.

Anyway, he wrote a contrarian piece explaining why, as a cash game grinder, he hates WSOP time in Vegas.  You have to read it for his reasons why, agree or disagree.  As with most of Kat’s work, it is both insightful and extremely funny.  Here’sthe link to it.  Read it and enjoy.

The other piece is from Poker News and discusses the changes they’ve made in the big Colossus event at the WSOP, which is next week.  It discusses the new structure (almost a turbo structure) and is absolutely required reading for anyone planning to play in the event, or contemplating it.  I actually talked about the structures getting a little less player friendly last year, but this year it has accelerated. The article explains this in great detail and suggest how to best deal with it if you decide to play.  That link is here.  Even if you have no intention of playing in the event, I think you'll find it quite interesting.

I feel this is not quite the blog post my loyal readers deserve, so I will pad this with a few pics I’ve come across that I suspect at least some of my readers will find stimulating.

Now I gotta get back to work.

(Edited to add:  It's Friday night, 5/27, and I just sent off my column.  All the tournament series are complete, subject to last minute changes or corrections.  I can now breathe!)

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Olivia (She Wasn’t a Jack Off)—Revisited

Well, folks, I didn't get started on my next post last night until way too late to finish it for you today.  You can blame Steph Curry for that.  So rather than rush something out to you (or go without posting anything), I thought I'd "treat" you good people to a blast from the past--a re-post of one my very earliest blog posts.  In fact, this was the seventh post I ever made, back in late 2011, and remains one of my favorite stories from my days of playing 2/4 limit poker.

Reviewing an old post like this, I am always struck by how I feel my writing style has evolved over time (hopefully for the better).  I wonder if it's in my mind or if you folks can see a difference?

Anyway, one of the things I can do when I reprint an old post is spice it up a bit with a pic or two.  This post was so long ago it ran before I started putting graphics in my post.  To be honest, I wasn't even sure you could do that back then!

Since the star of the post is a young lady named "Olivia" (her real name, in fact), I've add a few pics of famous women named "Olivia."  So tell me, who is your favorite Olivia?

And now...take it away, Olivia...

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This story happened during a summer afternoon at BSC some time back.  I had been at this game about an hour and had noticed this rather young woman, barely old enough to be in a casino, playing at the 2/4 game.  She was cute and was there with her boyfriend, who was sitting at the other end of the table, and another couple.  The male of this couple was also playing at this game, but his girlfriend was elsewhere.  Although I didn’t know it at the time, the girl at the table was named Olivia.  And that’s her real name, and you’ll see why I didn’t change it when I get to the end of this story.

Olivia was a nice enough girl but was experiencing a run of extremely bad luck.  In the hour I was there (she was there for quite a while before I joined the game), I had not seen her pull in a single pot.  And she wasn’t even remotely quiet about it.  She was complaining quite a bit about losing so much.  She was bitching and moaning loudly and frequently about how unlucky she was.  No one likes losing but it can get to be annoying to hear someone bitch this much, and she was getting to that point.

She had just run out of money and had reached into her purse to get another $100 out for more chips.  Soon thereafter, in a hand I was mercifully not participating in, I noticed that on the turn, there were two Jacks on the board.  Olivia bet aggressively.  I assumed she had a Jack in her hand.  The river card as yet another Jack, and again Olivia bet aggressively.

No doubt to Olivia’s surprise (and delight), another player raised her.  That got me to look at the board more closely.  The last Jack was the Jack of spades, and the two cards on the board that weren’t Jacks were the King and 10 of spades.  So it was possible that someone had rivered a straight flush (if they had Queen & 9 of spades) or a royal flush (if they had Ace-Queen of spades).  From the betting I was convinced Olivia had the case Jack for quads.  This could be one bad beat if indeed the other player had a straight or royal flush.

The guy who raised was new at the table, he had only played about two or three hands before this one.  So there was no way to know what kind of player he was.  Perhaps he was as stupid as the guy who bet into my 4 7’s (although this story pre-dates my 4 7’s story).  It was too early to tell, but for sure I was paying attention….and so was everyone else at the table.

Olivia raised back, not a care in the world.  The new guy raised again without a second’s thought.  The betting round had started heads up so this was a legitimate instance of there being no cap…..they could keep raising each other until one of them run out of chips.

Which is what happened.  Olivia gleefully kept raising, and New Guy did the same.  On and on.  I had seen enough of Olivia’s play to be fairly certain that she wouldn’t keep raising like this if she didn’t have the fourth Jack.  And the more New Guy kept re-raising, the more I became convinced he had Olivia beat.  With three Jacks on the board, it would have been obvious to even the dumbest player that Olivia had the fourth Jack, and wasn’t raising every time with just a full house—or worse, a flush or a straight.  With trips on board, a full house isn’t a very good hand…..not one you would risk all your money for, anyway.

Although no one said anything, you could somehow feel the murmur through rest of the players at the table that this was a straight or royal flush vs quads, and someone was going down hard. Finally, Olivia ran out of money, and New Guy called her. of course.  She had put almost $100 into the pot.  When called, Olivia flipped over her two cards and literally sang, “I’ve got four Jacks, I’ve got four Jacks!”  In addition to the singing, she stood up and started dancing.  She was raising her hands and rocking her hips and slapping her ass as if some uptempo go-go music was being played.

Eventually all the other players’ eyes turned to New Guy, who calmly turned over his Ace and Queen of spades and in an unbelievably restrained monotone said, “I’ve got a royal flush.”  All the other players nodded, agreed that this is exactly what we were expecting, and congratulated the guy on the hand.  I even said to him, “A Royal Flush?  Wow. You don’t see those every day.”  In fact, in my over three years of playing poker, it was the first one I’d ever seen.  He replied, “Well I sure don’t.”

We looked back to Olivia.  She was standing there, frozen, having stopped her singing and dancing.  She looked at the board and his cards as the dealer pushed all the chips, all her chips, to the player with the Royal Flush.  I expected her to scream, or to cry, but she was totally silent.  After standing there frozen for a few seconds, she just took off.  I mean, she actually ran away from the table, and towards the front entrance of BSC, to the Strip.  She said nothing.  But we all noticed the look of absolutely horror on her face before she left.

The rest of the players were concerned for her well being but her boyfriend and his friend were actually kind of amused.  They were laughing.  Olivia left behind a sweater, some shopping bags and a half eaten bag of potato chips she had been working on.  Since she had no chips left and hadn’t said she was coming back, the floor person came by to clean up her seat so another player could replace her, giving her belongings to her boyfriend.

Some of the players, including myself, were concerned about Olivia.  “Is your girlfriend ok?  Shouldn’t you go after her?”  He scoffed, insisting that “she’s fine.  She’ll be ok.”  Eventually even the boyfriend’s buddy was worried, pressing his buddy to look for her.  But he insisted she was ok.

Finally, after about a half an hour, she did indeed return from the outside.  She came over to her boyfriend and I couldn’t hear what they said to each other, but she did get her belongings from him.  Then she bravely faced the entire table (and the guy with the Royal Flush was still there) and said to us, “I want to apologize to all of you.  I’m sorry I reacted like that. Obviously, I didn’t see the Royal Flush on the board.  I’m fine.”

We all kind of nodded and indicated we were glad that she was ok, and we offered our sympathies.

“Oh, and one more thing,” she added.  “When you all tell your friends this story—and you will—my name is ‘Olivia.’”  And with that, she was gone again.

Thanks, Olivia, for being such a good sport, and for such a good story.  Here’s to you!

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