That Was Almost Exciting!

This is part 2, the final part. Part 1 can be found here. And also, you can find Vlogger Will’s vlog of this session here. Check it out.  I believe you can see my hands quite a bit.

While we were on the subject of my name, Emily mentioned she lived in or near Nottingham.  Of course, I made a Robin Hood reference and she decided she might start calling me Robin, because it was close to “Rob.”  Then she said that Lightning could be “LittleJohn.”  Lightning said his wife would dispute that.  Emily thoroughly enjoyed that and said, “Yes, of course, of course.  We’ll call you “BigJohn.”

Since Emily was immediately to my right, it was inevitable that we would eventually come to a blind vs. blind situation.  Now, new to the MGM since the last time I played there, they no longer allow chopping the blinds.  So we had to play it out. She hadn’t looked at her hand but I had, it was Ace-Queen, a monster two-handed.  She just completed without looking and made a point of saying she hadn’t looked, she would only look if I bet.  Well, it was a friendly game and we were unlikely to win or lose much anyway so I checked behind.  We checked it all the way through, and thus she never looked at her hand.  Nothing hit my hand and at showdown she flipped over Ace-Jack, which she was seeing for the first time. There was no Jack on the board either so I won.  But she noted that we both had big hands for heads up play. “Oh wow, if I had looked, that could have been something, that could have been a heckuva hand.  That was almost exciting.”

I responded, “Yeah, I hear that from women all the time.”  That got a few laughs.

Emily got involved in a hand with Will and Seat 9.  Will raised; the other two called.  On the flop Will led out for $25 and Emily shoved for $55.  Seat 9 called Emily’s raise.  Will shoved and succeeded in getting Seat 9 to fold.  Emily was unhappy, she had obviously hoped her raise would steal the pot.  She nervously watched the turn card and got super excited when it was a 6, immediately showing her pocket 6’s which was now a set.  She was very happy, even more so when the river was another 6!  She was delighted but couldn’t believe it.  I mean she really couldn’t believe it.  Will showed his unimproved pocket Aces.

Emily was saying, “That’s not possible.  I can’t believe it.  Count the deck, count the deck!”  She was laughing but honestly, she was almost “complaining” about getting so lucky.  She spent a few minutes talking about how crazy that was and almost suggested someone was cheating for her.  But she gladly accepted the pot and then the $150 bonus they gave her for the quads. By the way, if you watch Will’s video, this is the last hand on it and he does his less than perfect vocal impression of Emily.  But his take on the hand is funny.

There was a hand with Lightning vs. Emily, and he got Emily to fold with a big bet.  She showed her hand and Lightning said it was a good fold.  That didn’t satisfy Emily, but he didn’t show his hand. “I think you’re lying, you were bluffing, weren’t you?”  Now I’ve seen Lightning do this before, but never quite like this.  He started acting totally indignant that Emily was accusing him of lying.  He got super serious and appeared angry. “You’re accusing me of lying at the poker table?”  He gave her the silent treatment and Emily actually got concerned that she had pissed him off.  She asked me if he was really mad at her.  I insisted that he was just having fun with her.

But man, Lightning kept up the act.  I had never seen him give this good a performance.  Eventually I actually started to believe he was pissed at her and asked him about it.  But he wouldn’t break character.  Was this the Lightning I had known all these years?  Finally, he did relent and cracked a smile and told Emily he was just having fun with her.  She was relieved. But that was some performance he gave.  He missed his calling. He should have been an actor.

As we were chatting, Emily asked what I did for a living.  I told her I worked for PokerAtlas. Well, never had I gotten such a positive response when I’ve told someone that.  She started raving about how much she loved PokerAtlas and how much she uses it every time she comes to Vegas. “We always think it won’t be accurate, but you know, it’s always right. Always.  It’s just great.”  I said, “Will you tell my boss that?”  She said sure, give me the number, I’ll call right now.  I told her, “You know all the gazillion tournaments that are running right now in Vegas? (This was in the middle of the WSOP).  I entered every single one of them into our database.”  She was impressed. (So am I, truth be told).

By the way, I had lunch at the office the next day and told them this story, they loved it.

Then there was Lightning's big hand.  He’s already blogged about it (here) and it is featured prominently in Will’s video I linked to above.  Will was one of Lightning’s victims.  It is the second to last hand he covers, and you can see my hand pounding the table when the winner is revealed. It was a rather benign hand until the river when there was now 4 to a straight on board.  Any one with a Jack had a straight, but if one fortunate soul had King-Jack that would be the stone cold nuts. 

First to act led out for $100.  Will tanked.  I heard him muttering something about pot odds to chop.  Finally he called.  Then it was on Lightning, who really Hollywooded it up.  He talked and talked and worried and fretted and put on a show.  Remember how I told you how good an actor he was when he convinced Emily he was mad at her?  Well, he wasn’t quite as good an actor this time.  I thought he went overboard. But the thing was, he only had $141 left.  So it didn’t make much sense for him to just call.  He was trying to convince the other players that he really wanted to fold, but not sure he sold that.  Anyway, he finally shoved.  The guy on Will’s right instantly called but Will went into the tank again.  I was pretty sure he just had the Jack, and even though he had to believe at least one of the others had King-Jack, it was just not enough of a bet to get him to fold.  Not for $41.  I was sure Will would call and eventually he did.  Of course, Lightning was the only one with King-Jack and made a really nice profit for the session with that one hand.  

Emily had been telling all of us about the differences in poker etiquette in England vs. the U.S.  But somehow she wanted to bring up a difference between the two countries that had nothing to do with poker.  She suddenly turned to me and said, “I just found out that people are allowed to have guns here.”  That took me by surprise.  I said, “Yes, we have the second amendment.  The right to bear arms is constitutionally protected.”

She told me no one has guns in the U.K.  She went on and on about how different that was and she had a hard time grasping it.  She said, “Everyone here at this table could have a gun right now?”  I said, “Different states have different rules.  In some states it’s very restricted and you can’t conceal carry.  But in other states, it’s more lax.  I mean, in Texas you are required by law to have a gun on you at all times.”  

I think she almost believed me when Seat 9 piped up.  “That’s the way it should be.”  She and seat 9 got into a bit of a discussion about it with Seat 9 very much in favor of easy gun access.  She never did seem to understand it.  So finally I said to her, “You know why we have the second amendment, why we are all allowed to own guns?”  She said no.

“Well,” I said, “Hundreds of years ago, America was ruled by an evil country, led by an evil tyrant, who wanted to control everything about the way we lived.  And that country was called ‘England’.”  “No, no, I never heard of it, never heard of it…”  she was laughing as she said this.  “Yeah, you heard of it.  When we threw that country out of here, we put in the second amendment so we’d be armed in case any other country ever tried to control us again.”  Emily was still pretending she never heard of England, “No, no, I know nothing of this, I had nothing to do with it (she was laughing the whole time).”

“King George?  You never heard of King George?  Or George Washington?”  She laughingly denied every hearing of those two Georges.

Eventually we had to leave, albeit reluctantly. I told Emily I was definitely going to blog about her, and when I do, I wanted her to leave a comment. She said, “Oh, I hope you won’t be too mean to me, this crazy English girl you met.  I’m really pretty wonderful.”

I said to her, “Emily, are a total delight.  I had so much fun tonight.  You’re fantastic.”  She seemed touched. 

I left up over $400 but you couldn’t put a price tag on the fun I had.