We Interrupt This Poker Tournament to Take a Picture of Cleavage

I had hoped that my next blog post would be the story of Veronica (mentioned in this post here) the lovely blonde I encountered at the Aria tournament on Tuesday of what is now last week.  But that will be a long post and I just have to tell you what happened in today’s afternoon tournament at Binions, and it is best that I write it up while it is still fresh in my mind, and this post will be shorter and easier to write than the one about Veronica (that post is now up here.)

No, this post is not about a successful run in the tournament for yours truly, sad to say.  I lasted little more than two hours, getting hands to play that ended up second best, or what I perceived to be second best resulting in a lay down.  I was spewing chips left and right, and when I finally busted out, it was on a hand so unmemorable I can’t even recall it now, just a few hours later.

But I sure can recall one of the more memorable moments I’ve ever witnessed in a poker room.  I had seat 6 at table, um, let’s say 17, and sitting in seat 1 at the same table was a woman I’ll call “Maria.”  Maria was clearly a local and a regular, she knew all the dealers and they knew her.  Not surprising, most of the people in this tournament are both locals and regulars, the dealers recognize most of them.  But when the dealers called this woman “Maria” I started to think that I knew who she was.  Not that we’d ever met before, but I was pretty she was a known person in the Vegas poker community and I was sure I’d seen in her poker rooms around town.  If I was right, then based on her name I was pretty sure I was one of her many Twitter followers, I try to follow every Vegas poker-type person I come across for news on the goings on in the Vegas poker world, or in the poker world generally.

But even if I was right, I didn’t really know her and she in all likelihood wouldn’t know me from Adam, so introducing myself to her seemed weird.  I said nothing.  Then she noticed that several of her female pals were also showing up to play in this tournament.  One of those women I recognized.  Let’s call her “Kathy”.  Kathy works in a poker room I no longer play in very much—if at all—but when I first started playing poker, I played in her room a lot.  Kathy dealt me many a hand of poker in my first few years playing the game. I remember Kathy has having a personality that can best be described as “zany.”  I remember being very outgoing and quite outrageous.

So Kathy shows up and is at a table a bit away from where Maria and I are playing.  But there is still some communication going on between Maria and Kathy, some of it loud shouting across the room, and I suspect that there may be some texting going on between Maria and Kathy, but cannot be sure.  Maria is spending a lot of time fiddling with her phone, which could be texting, tweeting, playing games, whatever. 

At one point, a player at our table was eliminated from the tournament and the dealer shouted, “Seat open, table 17.”  Kathy shouted, “Oh,that must be Maria’s seat.”  Maria yelled back for Kathy to shut up.  It was good natured ribbing, to be sure.

Then when Kathy stopped by to chat with Maria for a second—during the tournament, not on break—Maria informed her that someone named “Alicia” wanted a cleavage picture.  Yeah, that’s what she said.  I swear.  I didn’t really hear Kathy’s reaction to this but she headed back to her seat at her table. I had to inquire about this.  Since it was said loudly enough for everyone at the table to hear, I boldly asked Maria what she had just said, and she was kind enough to repeat it.  “A friend of ours is requesting a cleavage shot.  She has great cleavage.” Then she added, with just a bit of embarrassment, and a bit of a chuckle as well, “Did I say that out loud?” The she was referring to was Kathy.  Thinking that the name I had overheard her say to Kathy was a feminine sound one, I asked if it was a male or a female who requested this. She said something to the effect of, “Strangely enough, it was a woman.”

I said something like, “Oh wow, that makes it a whole lot more interesting for me.”  And please note, that this "cleavage picture requester", whoever it is, is clearly "obsessed with bosoms", unlike me. I don’t recall Maria’s reaction to that, if she even had one.  I assume, but cannot be sure, that this may have had something to do with this being “National Cleavage Day”.

Now, I had noticed that Kathy was wearing a top that displayed zero cleavage (odd that I would notice that, I know), but it was a loose fitting top that was not cut anywhere near Kathy’s neck.  And despite that bizarre conversation, I certainly didn’t expect anything further to come of it.  But I was wrong.

A few minutes later, again, right in the middle of the tournament, not during the break, Kathy returned to our table.  She bent down (or got on her knees) and proceed to pull down her top in front of Maria.  Maria dutifully took a cell phone picture, shooting down Kathy’s top.  This took only a few seconds and Kathy returned to her tournament table.  They were both laughing at this. 

I said something to the effect, “Did I just see what I think I saw?” and then Maria, briefly turned her cell phone towards me and from across the table, I saw a closeup of the cleavage that Kathy had exposed seconds before for Maria to photograph.  Rest assured the picture was “safe for work”, no actual breasts were exposed in the “Janet Jackson wardrobe malfunction” sense.  But for the nanosecond I saw it, it did appear to be very nice cleavage.  When she flashed the picture, Maria said, “There….boobies” and then turned the phone back away.

Yeah, I knew this story was going to be blogged about right then and there, no two ways about it.  At this point, I so wanted to tell Maria, “It’s moments like these that make glad I have a blog.”  But I am still uncomfortable telling people about my blog in person.  More on this topic will be covered when I do the Veronica post (again, that post is now up here.)  I just couldn’t find the courage or the comfort to bring up my blog to Maria in this context, much as I wanted to.

Fortunately, I lasted in the tournament long enough to notice that Maria had sent out a tweet that she was playing in this tournament.  This was great. I thought it would be “cute” to send a tweet back to Maria with this message, “I’m the guy in Seat 6 at your table. Hi!”  So that’s what I did.

For the longest time, there was no reaction from Maria.  She either hadn’t seen my tweet to her or thought it was dumb.  But finally, I heard her laugh, say “Oh”, and look directly at me and say, “Hi there.”  Then she asked how I knew who she was.  I told her I had heard several dealers say her name and that I was following her, it was easy to put two and two together.  She said, ok, and that now she was going to be following me.  I liked that.

I didn’t last too much longer in the tournament after that.  As I got up to leave, Maria said goodbye to me, nice meeting you, etc.  Since I was then to be gone, and since she was now following me on twitter, I now found the courage to say something like, “You know, I have a blog, and I will definitely be blogging about today.”  I think it took her a second or two to remember the cleavage picture, but she did and said, “Oh.  The picture I took.  Right.”  Then I said, “Don’t worry, I always use fake names.”  I believe she indicated that she didn’t much care, they were just having fun.  I said just the same, I prefer pseudonyms. 

We exchanged final pleasantries and I left her with, “Really nice meeting you and playing with you.  And thanks for a great blog post.”  She said, with a bit of, I guess, resignation in her voice, “Right.”

I don’t have the picture of Kathy’s cleavage to post, so the picture below will have to do as a reasonable facsimile.  All in all, although I didn’t play very long, I don’t regret for one minute playing in that tournament. 

((Edited to add.....for further adventures of "Maria" and "Kathy"--who have since been identified as Jeanne & Suzie--and their friend Judy--please see this post here where they begged me to photograph....their cleavage.))