I Paid $200 For This Blog Post (part 2)

This is part 2 of the post that appears directly below this one, you can find it here and you should read that first if you haven’t already done so, as this post picks up right after that one.

So there I was licking my wounds and feeling humiliated and a lot lighter in the wallet.  At that point if I didn’t have anyone to talk to I think I would have settled into an unrecoverable funk, but as I indicated, as long as there were conversation going on with Prudence, grrouchie and Grump, I was ok. In fact, I was enjoying it.  I suppose there was an hour or so where I wished we had all left the poker table and just went somewhere to have a drink or two together, all four of us.  But the conversation was good, and it was great to finally meet Grump (no matter what Josie says about him).  I was also flattered that he was so familiar with my blog.

He commented on a recent post where I credited him for an excessive amount of blog hits and for making a certain blog post (this one) the most popular post here, even surpassing my introduction of Prudence to the blogosphere, the previous most popular post (found here).  He mentioned that other bloggers have told him that—that their pageviews increase dramatically whenever he links to them.  He doesn’t really keep track of how many pageviews he gets, because he gets so damn many he doesn’t really care.

Sometime before he demonstrated the “the most powerful hand in poker” as he mentioned in his version of the night here, he and I discussed the word “twat” and my surprise that it was allowed to be used in a game of Words With Friends he played with Josie (see here)   I of course had told Prudence about the “Dirty Words With Friends” version that Josie & Grump had played, and she was quite interested in that particular version, so I did have to point out to her that she had just met one of the participants (creators?) of that game.

He asked me when I started blogging and I did the same.  He is a very nice guy and just like grrouchie is no grouch, Grump is no grump.  After a while—at least 15 minutes after he had arrived and we had shaken hands to meet each other—I remembered something I knew to say to him from an old post of his.  This was when he was still sitting one seat away from me.  So I got up and whispered to him (or at least I thought I had whispered to him) “You're that Internet blog guy, right?"

He was caught off guard but eventually he remembered an old post of his where he told the story of someone recognizing him from his blog at the poker table, saying that to him, and then claiming that was his preferred way of introducing yourself to him at the poker table.  He was surprised that I knew the bit since it was such an old post but I reminded him that he had actually posted a link to that particular post of his in a comment he made on this post of mine here.  The post of his where he told that story can be found on his blog here.  His post his well worth reading but I do warn you that, in addition to that story of meeting a blog reader, Grump also talks about witnessing two woman rubbing each other’s breasts right in front of him (and everyone else) at the poker table.  The warning is because I fear that most of my readers would be offended by such a story.

Oh what the heck. In that post, he links back to another story, one that actually took place at the WSOP in 2008, wherein Karina Jett went over to Heather Esquin, who was playing in the tournament, and rubbed Heather’s breasts for good luck! Yeah, that’s what I said.  You can find Grump’s version of the story here.  My main reason for mentioning it now, aside from the fact that it is a great story (and a great visual) is that I recently was introduced to Karina Jett by a regular blog reader of mind, who told Karina I was the guy who wrote the story about the cleavage photo that she had taken at the Binions tournament awhile back.  So it’s possible Karina has read my blog, at least that one post. Anyway, that regular blog reader of mine is Jeanne and the story of the cleavage photo is told here..

I hear some of you asking why I used Karina Jett and Heather Esquin’s real names.  Well, because the story has already been told on Grump’s much more popular blog and also in Poker News, so that shipped has sailed.  And Jeanne “outted” herself right here on my blog after I tried to call her Maria.

Sorry for the lengthy digression.  Back to the night at hand. It seemed the guy next to Grump had overheard me say “internet blog guy” to him and started asking him all about his blog and his poker playing.  I realized that was not what Grump wanted, why call attention to the fact that you are a good enough player to make a living at it and warn them not to get into any hands with you?  I apologized to Grump but he was cool about it…..not sensitive at all.  I don’t think they guy he was talking about his blog about stayed very long anyway, and nobody else was paying attention.

But then, this was the night of bloggers poker, and anyone paying any attention at all would have soon realized that the three of us all blogged about poker, although certainly in my case, that sure didn’t mean we were any good.  They might have been scared of grrouchie though since he was taking down pot after pot.  He was having the night of his life, poker wise.

At one point Prudence remembered it was a good time to settle an issue we had been having.  I remembered a story where someone—I thought it was grrouchie—had pocket deuces.  What was unusual about this was that as the cards were dealt, one of his cards was accidentally flipped and had to be used as a burn card.  The card was also a deuce. So this person—who I believed to be grrouchie—had pocket 2’s and knew that one of his only two outs was out of play.  Despite that, he called a raised, hit his set on the flop (literally, a one-outer), and won a nice pot.

I had told this story to Prudence once, sure that grrouchie had told me the story and also sure that I had only heard about it, not witnessed it.  But when I told her about this (weeks, or months, ago), she insisted that it happened to her, that she was the one who called a preflop raise with pocket deuces knowing one of the other two deuces was out of play.  I said that is some coincidence, it must have happened to both of you.  And the truth is, both of them are just crazy enough to have done that.  So Prudence wanted to check with grrouchie to confirm that he had pulled the same crazy stunt that she had once, or if it was just a matter of my memory being faulty.

Well, it turns out my memory was faulty to an extreme.  Grrouchie said he never did that, but he saw someone do it.  That someone was Prudence.  He was at the table when he saw Prudence pull that stunt—and so was I!  And not only that, the dealer who was currently dealing to us was in fact the dealer of that particular hand, who confirmed that I was there watching the whole time.  And all I remembered about it was hearing about it, not actually being there watching it.

It was nice to get that story straight.  I was (once again) embarrassed that I couldn’t remember witnessing such a great poker story that three people remembered happening right before my eyes!  I said something about having a terrible memory.

So Prudence said to me, “That’s what happens when you get old, Grandpa.”

Ouch.  I kinda said “oooooowwww” and I think she apologized.  But it was all in good fun.

Somehow the Crazy Pineapple game came up.  No, not the story I told about here.  A new one that had happened just a few days before.  Why haven’t you read about it yet?  Be patient, I’ll get to it.  But for now, all that’s important to know is that I started out on fire and then went like forever without winning a hand.  So someone asked me how I did and I told them exactly that.  I think I estimated I went four hours (of a total nine hour session) without winning a single hand.

I believe it was grrouchie who said, “Wow, that’s bad.  You should have taken a bathroom break.”

I said, “Well, it was like four hours.  I picked a bad time not to get diarrhea.”  That line got a few laughs, but grrouchie said I could have faked it. 

Of course, three bloggers, all with twitter accounts, couldn’t sit down together at a poker table without alerting the twitter-verse of the happenings.

Grump was ready at the start with this tweet:

“Playing at table with @grrouchie and @robvegaspoker. We are not, repeat NOT talking about @veryjosie and/or @sevencard2003.”

Of course, Josie responded right away, talking about how she wished she was there to get all that “easy money” and demanded to know what grrouchie and I look like.  So Grump asked if it was ok to take my picture to send to Josie.  I can only assume that she has seen the pic and as a result, is now absolutely dying to meet me in person to see if I can possibly be that good looking in person.  And if so, she will forget all about James Woods. He also took a pic of grrouchie for her, which I assume is currently hanging on her dartboard.

Speaking of pictures, although we did not discuss Josie, as Grump tweeted, we did discuss her blog and her cleavage.That’s because on this very day, Josie had posted cleavage pics  of herself on her blog.  So how could we not discuss that?  I am too much of a gentleman to repeat what we said about her cleavage, but it was juicy, you can be sure of that!

That led to an idea—I think it was grrouchie’s—that since Josie wanted pics of us, or at least of grrouchie and me, the two she had never met—we should all pose together, the three of us, pulling down our shirts, showing off our “man cleavage” and making sure there was a roll of toilet paper in the background of the picture. You have to read Josie’s post, linked above, to understand the toilet paper reference.

Unfortunately, we forgot to do it.  If we had remembered, who would we have gotten to take the pic?  Especially since it should ideally have been taken in the nearest Men’s Room since we needed the toilet paper in the shot?  I’m guessing Prudence would have loved to have taken the picture.  And it wouldn’t have been the first time I got a story about a woman in the Men’s Room, you can be sure of that.  Check out this post here.

Oddly enough, we never heard from Tony.

But we did get tweets from other friends/bloggers.  Damn, I am pissed at Twitter.  Sometimes I don’t get emails telling me when I have tweets mentioning me, and this was one of those times.  So I didn’t see tweets from Carmel, LightNing, and Stump.  Stump wanted us to know that although he identified us he was keeping his distance.  LightNing was curious was to why grrouchie was bragging about his man boobs instead of the size of his dick. And Carmel volunteered to judge the three of us in that particular department.  But I never saw their tweets until the next day when I looked at Twitter from my PC.

Because I was having so much fun chatting with everyone, the memory of the nightmare hand faded.  I was able to put it out of my mind.  And I started having some better success at the game itself.  There is only one hand I remember, and that was because I didn’t play it.  Grrouchie already mentioned it in his version of this nite.  I was in the big blind and was dealt absolute garbage.  I honestly don’t remember what it was but it was somehow worse than even 7-2 offsuit.  Someone in early position made it $7 and everybody with a five mile radius called—including several people playing blackjack and one person playing the slots.  Back to me and I thought about calling with my crapola because there were so many in the hand but I looked over at grrouchie, who was just begging me to call.  He pointed out that I had pot odds to call with anything, anything at all.  Hell, even if my hand had been mucked and I had no cards, it would have been worth calling just to see if the board played and I would get a chop.

But I knew what he was doing.  The way his night was running, he was gonna win that pot no matter what. Why not? He won every other pot that night.  They were bringing him pots from three tables over, for gods sakes.  I figured that if I called with this crap, I would flop second best hand, he would flop the nuts and once again stack me.  That was clearly his plan, and he knew it would work.

You see by now I had worked up my second $200 buy in and I had enough chips in front of me to make it worth his while to take me down again.  So, it was a case of “Fool me once, shame on you.  Fool me twice, shame on me.”  I folded.  To my utter surprise, the flop missed me completely (despite how grrouchie reported it) and I don’t even think grrouchie won this pot (probably only the third pot all night he didn’t win).  So all my calling would have cost me was five bucks, not my entire stack.

Of course, grrouchie had a field day with this, saying it was such a bad play on my part that he couldn’t wait to go home and make fun of me for it! And Grump heard that and of course he tweeted about it.  To grrouchie’s credit, he made a bigger issue out of my so-called bad play on this hand—which cost me nothing—than the hand where I contributed mightily to his retirement fund. Grrouchie's version of this can be found here.

But somehow, someway, without really having any hands that I can remember being memorable, I managed to chip up and chip up and chip up. I suddenly remembered how to play decent poker again, after that early disaster.  Eventually, I had won back all the money I lost to grrouchie and then some.  I actually left the room $40 ahead for the nite.  That’s nothing to brag about, but considering the night started with me playing the worst hand of my life and just handing a full buy-in to my blogger buddy, that was a great turn around.

Let’s see, I seem to forgetting something.  Oh yes, I almost forgot something big.  Ok, two somethings big.  Two really big somethings.

At one point during the evening I was minding my own business, trying to concentrate on the poker and the pleasant conversation, trying to see if I could actually see grrouchie under the huge stacks of chips in front of him, when I suddenly felt an elbow jabbed into my side.

Wha?  It was from Prudence and she saying, “Rob!  Big breasts alert!”

Huh?  I looked up and just barely over the top of grrouchie’s stack of chips I did notice a girl in a purple and black dress.  She was just turning away from us as I noticed her but I managed to get a quick glimpse of what appeared to be a huge chest and a lot of of cleavage.

Is it any wonder I like Prudence so much?  Imagine your average woman pointing out another girl’s enormous juggs to a guy.

The woman in question was headed to a table a few rows down and a row over from us.  So Prudence quipped, “Table change for Rob.”

I realized the woman was headed for the 2/4 limit game, my old haunt.  “No, she’s playing 2/4, I’ll stay here.”  Of course, we were both kidding.  But it did remind me of the fact that I do sometimes miss the higher percentage of women that seem to play limit as opposed to the 1/2 no limit games I play these days.  Of course, I wrote about that here in my lead up to introducing you to the very same delightful young lady I was sitting next to and who had kindly called my attention to the big tits woman with the rather large breasts.

I actually didn’t get a good look at her at first, so I said, in total ignorance, “Oh, she’s not that big.”  But when she took her seat at the 2/4 game, I usually had a pretty good look at her, she was facing Prudence and I and only rarely was she obscured by another player. She was indeed quite big in the breastal region.  Never did I get a close enough look to make any judgment of the possible organic or synthetic nature of her huge bosom.  This despite the fact that there was an extreme amount of cleavage on display.

Now there was a time when I saw her walking away from the table and I got a slightly better look. I pointed this out to Prudence and said something, “My god, you were right.  She’s got tits out the wazoo.”  She laughed and agreed.

I kept glancing over there and finally noticed that Prudence’s boyfriend Tom was dealing at her table.  I pointed this out to Prudence who seemed totally unconcerned.  But as luck would have it, Tom’s next table was ours.  Of course I had to take advantage of such good fortune.

But I think it was actually Prudence who first mentioned the large breasted woman to Tom.  She just made some off hand comment, and of course Tom had to pretend that he hadn’t even noticed.  But I pursued it.  “While you were there, did you do a rack check on seat 10?”

He was stone-faced.  “You mean a rack count?  There were two.  They were pretty big.  They were…..magnetic.”

That was pretty much the end of it. Her game broke and when she moved to another table, she was pretty much out of sight.  And soon thereafter, the game started breaking up.  First Grump left, then grrouchie, and I don’t recall whether I outlasted Prudence or vice-versa.  But all in all, it was a very fun night, and not that bad after all, poker wise.  Great conversation, fun company, met a blogging legend, actually left with more in my poker bankroll than I came in with, and got a blogpost for the bargain price of $200.  A fun night indeed.

And despite everything, I’m still speaking to grrouchie.

((Edited to add:  Maybe not on that last line.  It was written before I saw grrouchie's latest post, which can be found here.))