Stacking Prudence; "She's the Queen of TMI"

This is a session from late last year with Prudence.  It took place the night before the events in this post occurred.  As in that post, dear Prudence may have had an adult beverage or two, so she was “on.”

She had arrived at BSC before I had, but was playing in a 2/5 game.  When I got situated at my 1/2 game, she joined me there.  I didn’t hear what prompted her to say this, but soon after she arrived at my table, I heard her tell one of the players near her, “I’m just here because I’m having sex with one of the dealers.”

I said to her, “What?  You mean right now?”

A bit later she contradicted that.  Again, the context, if there was one, was lost for me.  “Now that I’m married, I don’t have sex……besides, I’m on my period.”

I replied, “Thank you for sharing that,” but a at least two or three of the guys at the table said, “T.M.I., T.M.I.”  The dealer at that time was my pal George (for an earlier post featuring George, see here).  George the table, “She’s the queen of T.M.I.”  Hard to argue with that.

There was a guy at the table from Canada, and I must say, he didn’t represent his country well.  He was, in my opinion, a douchebag.  So we’ll call him CD, short for “Canadian Douchebag.”  He was sitting behind a huge stack of chips, something like $800-$900.  But that wasn’t why he was a douchebag.

He loved to comment on my play.  A few times, after I took a few moments to act and then folded, “I knew you were gonna fold there.”  Once or twice he added something like, “What took you so long?”  Once, when I didn’t fold, he said, “I was sure you were gonna fold there.”  This was after the hand was over, at least.  

Now, almost all of these times it was when he wasn’t even in the hand, although one time it might have been against him.  I should point out that I don’t normally take a long time to make decisions, and wasn’t taking a long time on this night.  What, did he have a bus to catch?

But the most annoying thing he did was, he kept calling me “Rob.”  Yes, I know, that is my name.  But I never told him that.  He never asked me my name.  He overheard Prudence calling me “Rob” and just took it on himself to keep using my name whenever he addressed me, even though he never told me his name.  Not that it would have mattered, I would still refer to him as Canadian Douchebag even if I knew his name.

There was actually something in the way he said my name that made it so grating.  There was a tone in his voice, almost like he was being sarcastic.  Or nasty.  Or just….something. He wasn’t addressing anyone else like this…not by name, not commenting on anyone else’s action—just mine.  I started thinking that he was somehow put off by my interaction with Prudence—or possibly because I was so friendly with all the dealers that came to the table.  But I think it had to do more with Prudence.  I don’t think he could figure us out.  We are an odd couple, for sure.

Prudence had the same reaction to this guy.  When I whispered to her that this guy was really getting on my nerves, she whispered back, “Yeah, he is kind of a douchebag, isn’t he?”  I could not disagree.  I considered suggesting that we change tables when CD beat us to it.  He picked up his big stack of chips and left for greener pastures.  Maybe his big problem was that I played too tight for him to make any money off of?

Anyway, a woman who didn’t really look familiar to me took his place.  I’m pretty sure that Prudence didn’t recognize her at all.  But being Prudence, and have consumed a few of those adult beverages I alluded to earlier, she greeted the woman with the comment, “I hope you’re not a douchebag like the last person who had the seat was.”

She did not act either shocked or upset at this comment, much to my surprise.  She took it well.  Then, pointing to me, she said, “Well, ask him if I’m a douchebag.  He plays with me all the time.”

I was a bit caught off guard.  I said something like, “Oh, have we played together before?”  She assured me we had and didn’t seem too insulted that I couldn’t remember.  She said something like, “I guess I’m not very memorable.”  We kept playing and she was very nice, friendly, a good person to play poker with.  In other words, she was indeed the complete opposite of the Canadian Douchebag.  As we played on, slowly but surely, I remembered this woman.  I really could remember playing with her only one time, but as I recalled, it was a real long session.  And even longer for her.  We had played together for hours and I recalled her telling me that she had already been at that same table for many, many hours before I showed up.

The more I thought, the more I remembered that session, and I even remembered her occupation.  I remembered her story about how she had dropped a friend off at the airport on her day off and decided to spend the day playing poker.  I remembered that before I had gotten a table change to her table that day, Steve Martin (yes, that Steve Martin, the actor/comedian) had been playing at her table for hours with her.  I moved there and he played one more hand and left.  That’s why the Steve Martin story never made it into a blog post.

The only thing I didn’t remember was her name, which she told me (and I won’t reveal here, of course).  She was calling me “Rob”, and I actually think she may have remembered it from our previous session.  In any case, she did not have the nasty tone in her voice when she said it, unlike CD did.

It’s weird that I didn’t recognize at all at first, but eventually remembered almost everything about that session we had together.  Hopefully she wasn’t insulted by my slow memory.

We got into one hand together and it did not end well for her.  I raised preflop with pocket Jacks.  Low flop and I bet out on it.  She shoved.  But she was short stacked and it didn’t cost me all that much more to call her.  So even though I suspected I was behind, it was an easy call.

We didn’t show.  The turn looked harmless but I was happy to see a Jack hit the river.  Sure enough, I needed that Jack; she had flopped two pair.    Prudence took note.  “That’s my move!”  I’ve mentioned here a couple of times Prudence has been all in with pocket Jacks, been behind a bigger pocket pair, only to hit her Jack on the river.  (I can’t seem to locate any of the posts, but I know they’re here, somewhere).

That wasn’t the most memorable hand of poker during the evening, however.  No, that came earlier, while CD was still at the table, though it didn’t involve him.  When I first got to the table there was a young Korean man sitting to my immediate left.  Prudence was two seats to my right.  The Korean guy was raising a lot, playing rather aggro, which did not please Prudence.  She made some comments to him about his aggressive play (as she tends to do when she’s had a few).

The Korean guy had over $200 in front of him, Prudence had, I think, less than $!00 at this point.  My stack was more or less between those two amounts.  On the button I was dealt a couple of Aces.  Korean guy and Prudence both limped, as did a few others.  I made a decent raise, and Korean guy and Prudence called.  

The flop came Ace-5-3, two diamonds.  I was pretty happy about it, obviously.  I was even happier when the Korean guy led out with a bet.  I was then thinking about how much to raise when I heard Prudence announce “all in”!

That was interesting.  All three of us apparently liked the flop.  But since I had the 2nd nuts at that moment, I had no choice but to shove as well.  Note, I did briefly consider that Prudence had played the Grump right there (ie, the deuce-four), but I didn’t think Prudence would have called my raise with that.  Korean guy called.

No one showed and two spades that didn’t pair anything filled out the board.  I showed my set and Prudence and the Korean guy mucked.  Korean guy said he had two pair.  Prudence took a brief break at that point.  I didn’t feel good about stacking Prudence, but hey, that’s poker.

I tweeted about it, and she replied via tweet.  She had King-10 of diamonds, so, she made a move against the Korean guy with the draw to the nut flush (the Ace on the board was one of the two diamonds on the flop).  She didn’t know, until I shoved myself, that the flop hit me so hard.  She probably thought I had pocket Kings and that the Ace killed my hand.

It was a fun night for me, as I ended up almost $200 ahead.  But I did feel a bit guilty about taking all of Prudence’s stack.  At least it wasn’t a suck out.