The Bubble Bitch

Before I get started, I want to offer a sincere apology to a very nice, very classy, very good looking lady I met just yesterday.  I played over 11 hours of poker Saturday, all at the Binion’s 2PM Deepstack.  I had a great time and met this awesome woman who I played poker with on and off the entire day.  In keeping with this blog’s tradition, I’m need to give her a pseudonym, so I’ll call her “Liz.”

The one thing that prevents yesterday from being a perfect day was a tacky comment I made in front of Liz.  I won’t re-enact it for you—sorry, but that would only compound my indiscretion—but blog readers can probably hazard a pretty good guess as to the nature of the comment.  I certainly know better than to make such a comment to a woman I had just met.  It’s just that the people I’ve encountered lately—especially since I started blogging—have continually surprised me with how much they have let me get away with.  Recall that I was nervous as hell about the “ungentlemanly” comments I had made about Denise and my surprise that she was actually flattered by them (see here).   And just last week I played at a holiday poker party here in Vegas where the ladies present said some of the most outrageous things.  Thus,I had somehow gotten lulled into the notion that I could take the filter off permanently, and clearly that is not the case.

So I apologize to Liz, a lady of class and considerable poker talent.  I apologized in person several times, and my apology was graciously accepted.  But I want to do it in public as a permanent reminder to myself.

After the tournament was over, I gave Liz a card with the blog’s URL on it and I hope she checks it out.  Liz, this will not be the last time that you’re mentioned here!

Liz is just part of the story of yesterday.  There is so much to tell it would probably take my longest blog post ever.  As much as I know my readers are clamoring for longer posts, I will have to break it into several parts, over a period of time.  I cashed in the tournament, and not a min-cash, a significant cash.  I was one of the last three players (along with Liz).  I ran into someone who had been a star in a very recent, very popular blog post (the guy who asked, “Will you show if I fold?”), see here.  As such, my blog was much discussed at the tournament.  More of this to come, to be sure.

With all that poker, there are many poker and non-poker stories to write about.  But for this post, I want to discuss the “Bubble Girl”….or the “Bubble Bitch” as I am calling her.

The situation was this.  Eleven players were to be paid and there were 12 left.  One table had everyone agree to play the bubble.  But before they polled the table I was at, the tournament director announced that one player had secretly come to him earlier and said he or she would not under any circumstances agree to pay the bubble.  So the discussion was closed.  We played hand-for-hand.   For a discussion about how I feel about paying the bubble, see here.  

I had just been at the table I was at a short time as the bubble had approached and been reached.  Across the table from me was a rather aggressive woman.  When the bubble was reached, she stayed aggressive even as most of the other players tightened up.  She was not the chip leader at the table.  She had a big stack, but several were bigger.  I was not at all the short stack, but I was shorter stacked than many others.  We had already played about 6-7 hours and of course no one wanted to play that long and leave empty handed.

So on this hand, the lady raised, the chip leader called (he might have been the Big Blind, not sure).  I’m not sure of exactly how it played out, but I believe she shoved on the flop (it might have been the turn) and the chip leader snap called.  She had Ace-5 for nothing.  Really nothing.  Maybe she had a straight draw with the 5.  What she didn’t notice was that the chip leader flopped a straight.  She said, “I need an Ace.”  And sure enough, she got an Ace (either on the turn or the river).  She actually thought she had won (she must have misread the guy’s hand and assumed he had a small pair).  When she was told he had a straight, she was stunned.

Because all her chips were in $1K chips, she had a lot of them.  The chip leader had mostly $5K chips and fewer of them.  But when the count was done, his stack was considerably bigger than hers, and she was done, out on the bubble, the 12^th to last player out.  No money for her.  No soup for you.

I’ll point out here that when the T.D. had announced a player had already vetoed paying the bubble, she hadn’t said a word.

She had a significant stack and lost it all to a bigger stack.  She had played very aggressively and got burned.  If she was so concerned with getting paid something, she could have played a lot tighter and easily out waited one of the short stacks busting out first.  But she was aggro and paid the price.  She could have used that aggression against someone with a smaller stack than hers, but picked on one of the few players at our table who had her covered.

And thus, as she got up to leave, she went totally ballistic.  I wish I had a recording of her speech.  I’ll do the best I can from memory.  She said, “So, I play poker for all this time and don’t get anything or it?  Is that fair?  Is that nice?  Who didn’t want to play the bubble?  Who didn’t?  Everyone one but one person, and they didn’t even have the courage to say it openly?  Say it now!  Who was it, who screwed me over like this?  Was it you?  I’ll bet it was you.”

She was talking to the guy who busted her.  Since he was the chip leader, he was a likely candidate for having vetoed paying the bubble.  Plus he was very young, and from England, if that means anything.

He didn’t say a word.  She continued to rant and rave about how unfair it was, how terrible it was that she got nothing.  She caused quite a scene.  I expected her to start shouting f-bombs and the like, but to her credit, she kept her language PG-13 rated the whole time.  She went over to the other table, where they had all stopped playing and were watching her tirade.

“You all wanted to pay the bubble, right?  How about you all give me $10 for my troubles, since you all wanted to pay the bubble anyway.  That’s fair, right?”

They all looked at her like she had just landed from Mars.

She reiterated her demand that the bubble-vetoer show him/herself , which of course didn’t happen.  The T.D. said to her that the reason the person came to him privately was because they didn’t want to receive the venom we were now all hearing.

Finally she left.  Now ordinarily, the remaining players tend to feel bad about the bubble leaving empty-handed, even as they are happy that they are now in the money.  But this time, I’m sure that every single one of us was happy that she gotten zilch.  We weren’t just happy that we were in the money, we were happy she was gone and scoreless.  We all thanked the chip leader for busting her, more for the fact of being rid of such a sore loser than for enriching our wallets.

We all rehashed that moment several times the rest of the evening.  Players who had busted out earlier but who were still at Binion’s came over to see how we were doing and heard the tale from various sources.  Much later, when it was down to just 4 or 5 of us, I suddenly, out of the blue, said, “So now are we all going to give that lady 10 bucks each, right?”

That got everyone laughing again and the T.D. said that this was up there with the worst scenes from a bubble person that he had ever witnessed.  And he’d witnessed his fair share. Then he surprised us by saying that she is actually a poker dealer herself!  Not at Binion’s though.  And he said she is always poorly behaved and always pissing people off.

Some of the players were noting that her scene was no doubt recorded by the security cameras.  I said they should put on a DVD and sell it.  The kid from England said it should be uploaded to YouTube.  Great idea.

That’s your tease for this great day of poker.  Many more stories to follow.

(Edited to add:  The rest of the story of this great tournament day can now be found in the two posts that are here and here.  Enjoy!)