How Prudence "Discovered" My Blog

Here’s the story as to why I had a very good reason to believe that Prudence had read my initial blog post about her when I first saw her at BSC on this most recent visit.

Unfortunately, I have to be somewhat careful about this, because I don’t want to “out” either her or even more likely, myself.  So let me just say that soon after my return to L.A. after my December visit to Vegas, somehow, Prudence and I, under our real identities, came in contact with each other in cyberspace.  I can’t be more specific than that, sorry.  But we started exchanging messages even though initially we didn’t know each other’s real names.  But soon Prudence made it clear to me that she was the fun, “crazy” girl from the wild 1/2 game I described on my blog by dropping a piece of info that she could have only have learned from having played with me that night.  Similarly, I made a comment about her that I could only have learned from that night. So these two mysterious strangers exchanging messages across the internet figured out that they were both at the table that night in late December at the BSC.

The messages were about something else, not related, but knowing I was in contact with the women who was responsible for what I knew was going to be a sensational blog post that I hadn’t yet written, I decided to feel her out a little bit, as it were. In one of the messages I sent her, I said, “I hope to blog a bit about that crazy table we were at. No worries, I always use fake names. Much like you.”  The “much like you” reference was due to the fact that in meeting her on the internet, I discovered that the name she was using at the table back in December was not her real name.  What a shock!

Anyway, that was my way of both “warning” her that I was about to go public, albeit with a phony name (although I could have used the name she was using when I met her and still be protecting her identity) and also seeing if she was interested in learning about my blog. That cryptic message would have been the first she heard of my blog. I was a little bit afraid of getting a message back saying, “Don’t you dare write about me on some stupid blog” but I did take the risk, not sure what I would do if indeed that had happened.

Instead, she totally ignored my comment.  I didn’t pay too much attention to her ignoring that reference to blogging. She easily could have been reading my messages quickly and not really studying them, so it could have gone right past her.  But at least I could prove I had made an effort to “warn” her, if it ever came to that.

So I went ahead and published the story about that night, and in about a nano-second, that post became the most popular post I’d ever done, and remains so to this day. And yes, it sure did help that Tony gave my blog a nice plug in the comments section of his own insanely popular blog on the day that post debuted. But there was no reason for me to believe that Prudence would see it. 

OK, there was some reason to think she might have seen it.  First, she (or Tom) might have stumbled across my blog like many of you have, because of a mention on another blog.  Second, on the very night I first encountered Prudence, one of my dealer pals at BSC learned about my blog.  Remember Jack? Jack was the dealer who convinced me that night that Prudence had been Tom’s girlfriend long before I witnessed her throw herself at Tom hours earlier.  After Jack spilled the beans, the player to my immediate right, who had been sitting next to me for some time but joined the table after Prudence left, said to me, “Excuse me, but do the initials ‘AVP’ mean anything to you?”

I said, “Yes, of course, I’m on that website all the time and I post there.  Do you?”  He said he does and we exchanged our handles.  When I told him I post as “robvegaspoker” he said he was a fan….of my blog! Wow.  This was definitely a new experience for me.  I had never met a fan of my blog before, I mean, a fan who wasn’t already my friend long before I ever started it.  We talked about the blog and I was really kind of thrilled. At this point I really didn’t have a lot of readers, so the odds of running into anyone who know me from the blog were pretty remote. 

Anyway, Jack heard this and was surprised to hear that I had a blog.  He of course asked me the URL and I gave it to him but since he didn’t write it down (he couldn’t, seeing as how he was dealing and all), I strongly suspected that he wouldn’t remember it, and further that he might not even remember that I had told him about the blog by the time his shift was over.  And since this was my last night in town, I would be seeing him again to remind him for some time.

But there did exist in my mind the possibility that Jack would see my blog, and if he liked it, he might see the Prudence story when I posted it, and then of course he would realize who Prudence and Tom really were and he would tell Tom!  But I considered that unlikely.

But as already reported, I did run into Prudence in January and she said nothing about my blog, although by the time I had returned to Vegas the post had been up for a few days.  And when we chatted in January, we not only “reminisced” about Horace and the fun time we had at the table the prior month, but also about the messages we had been trading over the web since.  But she said nothing about the blog, so I was sure she had not seen it.

Now I did consider just telling her about it, right to her face.  But I have to admit, I just didn’t have the chutzpah to do it.  No way.  And in fact at the time, I was kind of relieved that she hadn’t seen it.  Furthermore, when I saw Jack this trip, he did remember the blog, but only because he said he had tried to find it on the web and forgotten it.  I again told him the URL but he again was not in position to write it down. 

So I got back to L.A. in late January and began to consider how and if I should let the cat out of the bag with Prudence.  I asked three friends, readers of the blog, if I should let her know about the post.  The first two said no, let it be.  The third one said yes, why not?  I went with the third one.

But how?  I could have used the same method we were exchanging messages to just come out and tell her, but for some reason, I didn’t want to do that.  I wanted to be a bit less “in your face” than that.  Now, in exchanging these messages with Prudence, I learned that she has a website (oh, I guess it’s more like a blog) that is dedicated to a rather unusual topic (what else would you expect from Prudence?).  It looks like it doesn’t get a lot of traffic (sorry if I don’t have that right, Prudence) and is mostly for the amusement of her and her close friends, and a couple of people who also contribute to it, one of whom I assume is Tom).  Comments are allowed on her site, but I didn’t see very many (or any).  But I could tell that I could post a comment as “Rob” with a link to my blog.

So I thought, why not post a comment on her blog, for sure she will check out the commenter if he leaves a URL to check out.  You can be sure I check the ID’s of every commenter on my blog who has a user ID I can follow back.  Why wouldn’t she?

And I had an ever better idea.  Rather than just leave a comment, I would actually give a link to one of my older posts, which, very tangentially mind you, could be interpreted as having some relation to the topic of her website. Sorry, can’t tell you which post it was, that would be giving too much away.  But I figured she wouldn’t be able to resist clicking on the link this mysterious commenter who came out of nowhere placed on her site. She would read that old post, and then……then…..even if reading that gave her no idea to who I was, could she possibly read my blog and not notice that on the right side there was a post at the very top under “popular posts” with a quote from her as the title?

So that’s what I did.  And because I have the “feedjit” app, I could see that very soon after I posted the comment on her site, someone from Las Vegas arrived on my blog, and on that old post.  Since the post was old, I was sure it was Prudence (or possibly one of her colleagues on the blog). From there, I could only assume, without being sure, she would find the post about her.

And then I waited.  Would Prudence be upset?  Would I get a message from her via the same service we had messaged back and forth before?  Nasty or positive?  Or would she leave a comment on the blog? 

Of course, as you already know, she didn’t react through cyberspace, saving her reaction for our next face-to-face contact following this revelation.  And thus, that’s the story about how Prudence “discovered” my blog.