The Naked Poker Player, The Cigar Man, & The Possible Hooker

You must be used to the fact that I don’t post my anecdotes in chronological order, right?  This is the tale of my first night in Vegas last month. 

Got into a 1/2 game at BSC and was minding my own business when the fellow to my right suddenly said to me, “You play here a lot, don’t you?”

I figured it was because he’d seen me being friendly with the dealers but no, he said he recognized my “card protector”.  I talked about my card protector in this post.  Anyway this guy is a frequent visitor to Vegas and admitted that he didn’t really recognize me, just the card protector.  Wow.  Guess I would make a good bank robber if no one recognizes me.  Anyway, his wife was across the table from me and she was very memorable.  She had a terrific figure, a skimpy dress and was revealing some very nice “no limit cleavage”, a concept I mentioned, among other posts, here.

A bit later, the husband took off, quickly followed by his wife.  That left the table short-handed for a bit.  The wife’s seat had been seat 1, right next to the dealer.  I was in the middle of a hand when I saw out of the corner of my eye a completely naked woman walking behind the dealer to take seat 1.

Honestly, for a second or two, that’s what it looked like to me.  In reality, she was an extremely attractive woman wearing an ultra-tight dress that gave new meaning to the term “skin-tight.”  She had darkish skin (Hawaiian, perhaps?) and the dress was almost identical to her skin-tone.  At first glance she really did look naked.  I suspect that was kind of the effect she was going for.

 It was certainly attention-getting.  I mean, I’ve seen a lot of strange things in Vegas and in casinos, but a completely naked woman, that would be a new one.  Now, just last summer, while playing in the very same BSC, I did see two really attractive girls walking through the poker room wearing skimpy bikinis and nothing else.  No towel, no cover-up, no nothing (well, maybe some kind of footwear but my eye never got there).  At first I thought they were coming from the pool to exit the casino to walk on the strip, but later I realized there was sort of a back way to the rooms near there and they were probably just walking thru the poker room from the pool as a shortcut, ignoring all the signs asking people coming and going to the pool to wear some kind of cover up when walking in the casino.  I wasn’t complaining about their rules violation.

I wasn’t the only one who noticed these two girls.  Of course a lot of the male dealers saw them, and we discussed this later when they dealt to me.  But the best reaction was from Ginger, the very attractive dealer I first wrote about in the post here. She noticed the two bikini girls the same time as I did and I think her head snapped even more than mine did.  She saw me noticing the girls, looked at me and gave me a classic “WTF?” look.

There was another time a number of years ago, back when I played table games, not poker, that I was playing blackjack at the Hard Rock.  It was the middle of the day in the middle of summer.  I looked up and saw a girl in a very small, white bikini walk very slowly towards the table across from mine, where she started talking to a player—presumably her boyfriend or husband.  The bikini was ridiculously tiny. The girl’s figure was just plain ridiculous.  Seriously, she was unbelievably well built.  All of the players at my game saw her, and our jaws just dropped in unison.  We told the male dealer to turn around to check this out, but he said he couldn’t turn his had away from the—you’ll pardon the expression—rack that he was responsible for.  There was so much incredibly tanned, incredibly proportioned flesh revealed, and her walk to the player had been so slow, that it was pretty damn obvious that this body was god or Mother Nature given (depending on your religious views), and not store bought from a talented plastic surgeon.

But I digress.  The girl about to take seat 1 only looked naked. The dress was, as I said, very tight, I don’t know how she could breathe—or sit down—in it, but she did.  It was extremely short too, the amount of leg I could see before she took her seat added to the “nude” effect.  She was well enough endowed for the dress to stay put even though it was strapless. So there was some nice no-limit cleavage too.  It was pretty damn eye-catching.

Unfortunately, she didn’t play many hands, and didn’t stay long.  I didn’t see a guy with her, but it seemed she was just killing time waiting for someone.  Well, it was fun while it lasted. 

But you want to hear about the poker, right?  Right.  So a guy comes to the table and takes the seat on the other side of the dealer with a big fat cigar in his mouth.  Of course he couldn’t light it, but he kept that thing in his mouth and chewed on it the whole time he was there.  He bought in for the maximum, $300, My first impression was that he was going to be a tough player, but I was proven wrong.

First though, I lost some money to him when I was dealt pocket Queens.  He had limped in, or was the big blind, not sure which, when I raised to $12 and he called (one or two other callers too, I believe).  There were 2 8’s on the flop and nothing near as high as my Queens.  I bet it strongly and he stayed with me.  I ended up losing $100 to him because he had 10/8 and called my raise with that crap.  I gave him too much credit, I didn’t think he’d have called my preflop raise with a hand like that.  I was wrong.

So I figured out that he wasn’t nearly as good a player as I feared, and I used that information, plus a little bit of a screw up on his part, to get my money back.  In early position he tried to raise.  But he messed up and put his $2 out first and then said raise and tried to add more to it.  A classic “string raise” which is not permitted.  Since he had raised before without screwing up, I assume this was just a glitch and not a case of his not understanding the rules.  But I definitely kept that in mind when I looked at my hand, in late position.  It was Ace-King off.

It had been limped around to me and ordinarily that’s a sure raise. 

But I had gotten the impression that Cigar man had wanted to raise big, and I thought if I raised, he might 3-bet me.  I really didn’t want to invest much money in a hand that is just a good drawing hand preflop.  So instead of raising, I limped.  No one raised and we saw the flop really cheaply.

There was a King on the flop.  When he bet out, I just called.  I put him on a pocket pair.  Sure it could have been Aces, but my gut told me it was not.  I thought my pair of Kings were good, and if I raised, he might fold, I wanted him to stick around.  Sure enough, as two harmless cards came on the turn and the river, he bet each street.  Finally on the river, fairly convinced he couldn’t beat my Kings, I raised.  He called.  My read was dead on.  He had pocket Jacks.  I took all my money back from him and a lot of his own buy in as well.  It was very nice.

Cigar man lost the rest of his chips soon thereafter, and regrettably, didn’t rebuy.  But his brief visit to the table ensured a profitable session for me, if not hugely so.

There was one other interesting woman at the table, and she was there pretty much the whole time I was.  No cleavage.  She was wearing a big sweat shirt that said “Cougars” in large letters.  Since she said was from Seattle, I assumed the shirt was referring to the sports teams of Washington State University, whose nickname is The Cougars.  She was cute and young if you think late 20’s/early 30’s is young (for me, it sure as hell is).

She was a fun girl, and it was great that there was always at least one nice looking woman at the table, and as mentioned earlier, sometimes there were other females as well.  She was joking and laughing with the guys at the other side of the table, unfortunately, she was too far away from me to hear a lot of what she was saying.  I don’t think she was saying anything too salacious though.  I don’t think I missed hearing any great “woman-saids.”

Because she wasn’t saying anything raunchy, I just couldn’t screw up the courage to say to her the one line I had going through my mind looking at her “Cougars” sweatshirt.  And Prudence was not there that night either.  So I had to wimpily admit to Prudence the next night that without her there to get me in the proper, uninhibited frame of mind, I didn’t have the guts to say to the gal, “You know, you look much too young to be a Cougar.”

I left the room with a small profit and headed to my car.  I noticed that the area of the casino where I’ve often seen ladies of the evening ply their trade was being torn up.  There was a lot of remodeling going on.  I wondered where the ladies would be working since their normal area was not accessible.  But I assure you, based on what happened to me in this post here, I was not even looking for them.  Really.

But I couldn’t help notice an extremely attractive blonde girl in the vicinity. She had either very short shorts on or a very short skirt.  She was really tall, extremely high heels, and a purse big enough to hide a small child.  Her top was rather modest, as far as I could tell.  But I walked right by her and she didn’t say a word to me.  So I assumed she was not a hooker, since I am usually the exact demographic these girls are looking for.  Besides, I got a good look at her face, and I thought she was way too beautiful to be a hooker.  She was really quite lovely.

Well, I wasn’t hanging around there waiting to find out.  I learned my lesson, officer.  So I tried to take my normal route to the parking lot and found it was closed off due to the construction work.  I had to retrace my steps and take an alternate route. When I did this, she had made the same mistake, we passed each other and again she ignored me (she was obviously alone, and like most hookers, talking on or looking at her cell phone the whole time).  So she was kind of following me, apparently to the parking. 

At this point I decided to stop just to see if she would say anything to me or if she was indeed headed out. Sigh. Old habits die hard.  She walked right by me, but then surprised me by heading toward the self-parking and not the valet.  I had observed in the past that most hookers use the valet parking.  From what I’ve seen waiting for my own car when I do use the valet, I think they tip the valets to keep their cars right there in the driveway and not actually park them so they can make a hasty exit if they need to meet a client elsewhere.

So when I saw the gal going to the self-parking I was again convinced she was not selling happy endings.  She was now way ahead of me and I continued my way to the self-parking, where it was necessary to take an escalator.  But as I got near the escalator, suddenly she stopped before getting on it herself.  She was looking down at her cell phone. 

And then I was surprised that as I was about to walk by her, she suddenly looked up, gave me a big smile and said “Hi.  So….where ya headed?”  I remembered the incident with the cops.  I just said, “Home” and kept walking and got on the escalator.  So indeed she was a hooker.  And I noticed her top, when you looked at it straight on, was indeed not as modest as I thought.  It was very classily revealing.  This was definitely the classiest, best looking hooker I can recall seeing.

But I was a little uncomfortable when she followed me on the escalator, and then on the long walk to my car.  But she said not another word to me, she didn’t harass me in any way, and she apparently headed straight to a car, which was on a different level than mine.  No further hooker encounters that night, or I believe, the rest of the trip.

Note:  I was really mad at myself as I started writing this post.  I almost instantly hit upon the perfect name for this post.  It should have been called, “Naked Came The Poker Player.” Just one problem.  I have already used that title.  Yeah, just threw it away, thinking I would never be able to do a post where it would be so appropriate, so I blew that title on my entry for “hooker week.”  You can find that post here, even though there are no poker players, naked or otherwise, in it. Damn, I wish had older post to do over, title wise.