The World's Coolest Mom

My first night in Vegas on my January visit, I had a flashback to the days when I was a regular 2/4 player.  No, it was not a drug-induced flashback.   It was just that the table I was at was just too much fun for a No Limit table.  But a NL table it was.

I got to BSC just in time to join a table that was just starting.  The three people in seats 1,2,and 3 were obviously together.  Seat 1 was a middle-aged woman, who early in the session said that she used deal poker in Colorado, where she was from.  It took awhile for it to be revealed that the two guys in seats 2 & 3, who were much younger than she was, were in fact, her sons.  And furthermore, one of the guys had just turned 21 that weekend, and his mom had treated him to a trip to Vegas for his big birthday.  They’d been there for the weekend and this was their last night in town.

My first impression of the woman was actually a bit negative.  She kept referring to her sons as “girls.”  As in, “Come on girls, let’s take our seats,” or whatever.  I thought this was a bit emasculating, especially after I learned that the two guys were her sons.  But my opinion soon thereafter.

The guy immediately to my right was probably a few years younger than the mom, and once he found out about the relationship, he started making jokes about the guys drinking.  The mom was fine with them ordering beer after beer, and in fact, seemed to be encouraging it.

But what got my attention was when she went a step further and said something like, “Maybe you girls can win enough money tonight to go to a strip club.”

That was pretty cool, a mom joking about her sons going to a strip club, but she made it clear she wasn’t merely joking.  She said, enough times to convince me anyway, that she meant it and if they wanted to go a strip club later, it was fine with her.  It was their money.  And they were adults.

Despite the “adults” comment, at one point, when she got in a hand with one of her boys, she said, “You know, you’re not too old for spanking.”  Hmmm…. My mind went to a very forbidden place but I kept my mouth shut.

Talking about the strip clubs got the guy sitting to my right’s attention, and he joked that maybe he would go with the boys to see the naked gals.  The mom was cool with that too.  And then she made it clear that she would not be going to the strip club with her boys (phew!), they were on their own.  However, she said that maybe she’d hit a Chippendale’s type show while they were looking at nekid women.  The boys were not embarrassed at this comment by their mom (I know I would have been, in their position, back in the day—although I can’t in my wildest imagination ever conceive of my mother saying something like that).  I thought about mentioning the male stripper that I knew who used to a regular player at BSC (haven’t seen him a good long while), who I wrote about here.  But I was a bit shy about it, and then she said she was just kidding about going to see male strippers—but not about her boys going to a strip club if they had enough money for it.

It was about this point that the guy to my right started telling the Mom how cool she was, and he said to me, “She’s the world’s coolest mom.”  I was beginning to agree.

Then the birthday boy won a pot, a small one, about twenty bucks.  It was his first pot of the night.  So the guy to my right said, “Oh, now you can go to the strip club.”

To my surprise, the dealer, an Asian female said, “Oh, you’re gonna need a lot more than twenty bucks for a strip club.”

I was surprised because this lady has dealt to me hundreds, if not thousands, of times and I’d never heard her say anything even remotely risqué.  How the hell did she know how much a strip club cost?

So I asked her just that, “How do you know that?”

She got a tiny bit defensive.  “Oh, just from hearing players talk.  I hear things…my cats didn’t tell me that.”  Did I mention that this woman is mother to several cats, and she knows that I know that?

It turned out the guy to my immediate left was the mom’s boyfriend (but not the father of her kids).  They were kind of far apart, but they weren’t shy about carrying on conversations in front of everyone. Also, they most definitely did not soft play each other when they were in a hand together.  Just the opposite.  They seemed to each take great pleasure in taking each other’s money.

There was a hand they had when it was just the two of them.  I believe Mom had a set on the flop, but the boyfriend went runner runner to get a bigger full house than Mom (they both had boats on the river, but she was ahead the whole way until then).  They were both all in, so Mom was felted.  The Mom was quite pissed initially, and made some nasty comments to him, that may or may not have been said in jest.  The boyfriend was especially happy about winning the hand from his girlfriend, it appeared. 

His comment, as he stacked his chips was, “Boy, if that doesn’t give you a woody, nothing will.”

So his girlfriend replied, right in front of her sons, “Dealer, give him the exact same hand again, please.”

The discussion of strippers made the guy to my right tell the boys, “Come on, you got see some tits.  You gotta get some tits in your face.  You’re old enough to like tits.”  Mom laughed at this.  So did the aforementioned female dealer.  I thought she might possibly be offended by the word “tits”—or might feel that was a word banned from the poker room.  But she seemed amused more than anything.  Anyway, about the subject at hand, she said, “Yeah, I think guys like boobs pretty much all their lives.”

I said, “Yeah, it starts at birth….” And the guy to my right added, “and when you’re 40, you still want them.”

Of course, the discussion of strippers just naturally led to talk of hookers.  The same guy said to the boys, “Well, you’re not going to paying for hookers.”  I’m not sure if that was a reference to the fact that they were losing at the table (and thus had no money for hookers) or that he thought they wouldn’t admit an interest in hookers in front of their mom.  Probably the former considering how cool we realized the mom was.  And Mom proved that again.  She said if they wanted to spend their own money on hookers, that was ok with her.

Again, she addressed her sons in unusual ways.  After the liquor started flowing, she started calling her sons “bitches” and “bastards”—which, if you think about, is especially funny coming from their mother.  Note tho, she never called them “sons of bitches” which would have been even funnier.  But the boys had no problem calling their mother “bitch” and she even referred to herself by that term.

At one point, within a couple of hands of each other, both the sons busted out.  Mom reluctantly gave them her ATM card so they could get some cash to re-buy.  Again….world’s coolest mom.  What was funny about this was that after, she had busted out a couple of times, she got money from her boyfriend to re-buy, not her own ATM card.  The boys were gone a seemingly unusual long time, leading the guy to my right and myself to joke that they had take Mom’s money, grabbed a cab, and headed to a local strip club.  But no, they came back not long after, and eventually lost their mom’s money as well.

Yes, there was actually some poker played.  Early on I had pocket Aces, and when I raised to $8, Mom made it $20.  Awesome.  I made it $38, and she called.  Jack high flop, I bet out $40 (probably too low, as I think about it now), and she called.  Turn looked insignificant, a low card, and I bet $50.  Again she called.

The river scared me, it was a second Jack.  I had considered the possibility that she was slow-playing a set of Jacks, but now I thought it was perhaps more likely she had Ace-Jack.  The paired Jacks slowed me down and I decided to just check.  She shoved for about $60 more. I really thought I was beat there, but I felt it was worth it to call. 

I was right.  She had a pair of Queens.  Nice double up for me.  At the time I thought she played the hand badly, but again, in writing this up, I’m not sure she could have played it much differently.

That was the beginning of a nice session for me, but really, what was as nice as the money was what a fun table it was, with the world’s coolest mom.  As I said at the outset, it reminded me of the 2/4 games I used to play in, everyone laughing, everyone having a good time, regardless of the cards.  No egos involved, no players gunning for other players, except in jest.  You know, the kind of games I used to get in that were somewhat the inspiration for this blog, when I played 2/4.  I wish more NL games were like this.