Bad Player Wins!

Well, last night I had the pleasure of meeting, and playing with, The Poker Meister.  Had a great time shooting the breeze with him at the poker table.  He apparently brought me some good luck, as I ended up having one of the best cash game sessions of my life.  I would like to tell you that my good results were all due to my brilliant poker play, but a) I don't want to lie to you, and b) no one who reads this blog would believe that anyway.

No, last night I turned into a luckbox.  TPM and I had a great discussion of one of my hands and I think it will make for great discussion here on the blog.  I can't wait to blog about the entire session.

Except that's not true....obviously I can wait, since I'm about to go out and play some more poker rather than sitting here and writing that post.

In the meantime, that intro really segues nicely into this current post, which I wrote a little while ago while still in L.A.  Yes, the title of this post doesn't refer to me last night, although perhaps it could!  So......

I’ve been writing my column for Ante Up for over a year now.  And some of the folks I see all the time at MGM are just now finding out that I write for a poker magazine.  At least once a trip, a dealer or a floor person will come up to me and say something like, “I didn’t know you wrote for Ante Up,” or some such. Of course I’ve been doing this blog for some time longer than that and have over 400 posts to show for it.  But since my posts are so short, it would be more like 150 or so for any other blogger.

And except for people I’ve explicitly told about the blog, I’m often surprised—and sometimes even embarrassed—to find out when this person or that person knows about my blog.  There are people mentioned in this blog (with the standard “robvegaspoker” pseudonym, of course), that I’d just assume not know about this little corner of the web.  Because it might embarrass them a little.  And thus, embarrass me a lot.

This is from the night I learned that one of the recurring characters to have appeared on this blog knew I did some writing, and it surprised me.

As I approached the table I was sent to, I noticed two familiar faces—and voices.  They were loud, and appeared to be having a good time. Sitting next to each other (or possibly one seat apart) were Isabel and Faith.  Isabel is dayshift dealer, who I most recently blogged about in the post here.  If you want to read a more salacious post involving Isabel—and really, I can’t imagine why you wouldn’t—you can find one here.  If you read that first link, you’ll see that in it, I mentioned I was telling one part of the story from that night and that I hoped to blog the rest of the night eventually.  Sadly, eventually hasn’t yet happened, and it may not.  When I recently reviewed my voice notes for that night, I found that the evening wasn’t nearly as scandalous as I had hoped it would be when I sat down there that night.  As for the poker, it was an awful night, and the most interesting hand was the one I’ve already discussed. 

Isabel’s partner in crime on this particular evening was Faith.  Faith is not a poker dealer, but she is very much a regular in the room and a good friend of Ginger, one of the dealers who earns a lot of space here.  You’ll read more about her if you click on the links in the previous paragraph. One story involving Faith is here and another is here.  In the second link, I don’t mention her by her blog name but she is the non-dealer player I mentioned (and of course, Ginger is the dealer).  Oddly enough, since she’s friends with both of them, Ginger doesn’t appear in this story.  I believe she was actually dealing this night, unable to take an early out.

As I was taking my seat, a hand was in progress, and the final two players were Isabel and Faith.  I didn’t note the details except that the board paired deuces on the river.  Faith bet and Isabel called.  Isabel showed her hand—top pair, I believe.  Faith flipped over deuce-rag for trips.  Oh wait, usually when you say “rag” you would mean a deuce right?  It was some fairly big card. It was a hand that you shouldn’t really play.  But Faith had played it, called a bet on the flop and/or the turn, and hit her suckout on the river.  This, by the way, is very typical of Faith’s play.  She plays bad cards and is a bit of a luckbox.  Maybe more than a bit.

Isabel was a bit upset, and exclaimed, “Terrible player wins.”  Then, to my surprise, as if a lightbulb had just gone off over her head, she looked at me and said, “Oh, put that in your notes.  Write about that, write about that.”

Uh oh.  Did she know about the blog?  Had she read it?  Here we go again (see here).

Isabel continued.  You write for Card Player, right?”  A lot of people make that mistake.  I corrected her.  “Well, no, it’s Ante Up.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah….there’s an article for you.  Put that in your notes. ‘Bad Player Wins.’  There’s a column for you.  ‘Bad Player Wins.’”

I laughed.  “Yeah, I suppose I could write about that.”

Heh heh.  I knew I couldn’t write an article called “Bad Player Wins” for Ante Up. Not exactly what they’re looking for.  But could I think of another venue where such an article could appear?  Why yes…yes I could.

I don’t know what possessed me to say what I did next.  But for some reason, I said to Isabel, “But I’d need a picture.  I’d have to have a picture.”  I had no intention of taking Faith’s picture, or of posting such a picture anyway.  I guess I was just having fun, trying to see how far they would take this.

Isabel said, “Sure go ahead….take her picture.”  Faith refused to have her picture taken, at which point Isabel tried to convince her that she should go with it.  And to my astonishment, she finally agreed.

Damn.  I said, “No, I can’t do it.  You can’t take pictures in the poker room.”  Isabel said, “Give me your phone, I’ll do it.”  And I refused.  And after a few seconds, the subject was dropped.

But a few other times, when something odd happened, Isabel would turn to me and say, “Write that in your notes….write that in your notes.”  One time, we all heard a passerby shout one word.  It was the f-word.  As soon as the word had left his lips, with impeccable timing, Faith added, “you.”  It was very funny.  And so Isabel again told me to put that in my notes.

Hmm….Well, ok it’s at least conceivable that a poker mag would want an article about bad players winning.  But surely she knew I couldn’t tell the “F…U” story in Ante Up.  Maybe she does know about the blog?  Probably not.  But then, I was surprised she knew about my column for Ante Up.  She doesn’t strike me as the poker magazine-reading type.

Later in the evening, the girls of the Slut Parade started walking by.  When a particularly attractive group walked by, all smokin’ hot with awesome figures, Isabel started complaining.  “That shouldn’t be allowed.  That’s not right.  That’s not fair.”  It’s just not fair for the girls to have such great bodies, she felt.  I beg to differ.

There was a guy at the table for awhile who claimed to be a boxer.  He said his nickname was “Quick.”  That’s not my name for him, that’s what he told us.  He claimed it was because he was really quick at throwing punches.  But Isabel and Faith were joking that a guy being known as “Quick” wasn’t really a good thing.

Isabel and Faith were surprisingly well-behaved for the evening.  Damn.  Don’t they know this blog relies on drunk women giving me material?  Though now that I think about it, it may have only been Isabel that was drinking.

The poker was pretty much of a bust this night.  I lost a little, and the closest thing to an interesting hand (other than the one that illustrated “Bad Player Wins,”) was when I had Queen-7 in the big blind.  The flop was Queen-high.  The rest of the board was innocuous. I called three fairly small bets; it was just two of us.  The guy flipped over the dreaded pocket Kings to take the pot.  He hadn’t raised preflop with them.  I see that quite a bit, players slowplaying KK.  And often they win that way.  Maybe I should try that?

I left with a little less money than I started out with, but at least I had a blog post title courtesy of Isabel.