Poker With The Real Alysia Chang & The Imaginary TBC

Before I get started, I must first apologize to my fellow bloggers ~Coach and Pete P. Peters. No, I’m not apologizing for featuring them so prominently in this post—although perhaps I should.  But by all rights they should have their names featured in the title of this post. This is, after all, a night of Blogger’s Poker.  But honestly, this night at the MGM was dominated by two other people—Alysia Chang and Tony Bigcharles. Alysia was actually there, playing poker with us.  Tony was not there at all, except that his presence was felt every bit as much as if he was.  He was there in our imaginations—and our conversations.  Thus in the title I refer to him as the “imaginary TBC” even though he does exist—just like Alysia Chang.

You’ve probably already read PPP’s account of this night (here), and Coach’s account (here).  That’s the nice thing about bloggers getting together for a poker game.  Our readers get multiple versions of the same stories.  It’s the blogsosphere’s version of Rashomon.

There was actually a mini-version of Blogger’s Poker a couple of nights earlier when I played with PPP. I’ll get around to talking about that night one of these days. Coach was unable to join us then due to an illness.  He had had barely recovered enough to join us on this night.

I had been promising to treat both of them to dinner at MGM’s sports bar, Tap.  This pub opened right next to the poker room at the beginning of the year. I have enough poker comps stored up to cover pretty much anything on the menu. Note: both Coach and PPP used essentially the same joke in their posts…that I would be a millionaire if you counted my poker comps.  Unfortunately, they’re only good at restaurants inside the MGM, so my real net worth is a buck-ninety.

Just the three of us all eating, bullshitting, and playing poker would have been a great evening, but as we assembled, things started getting more interesting. Or weird. Or both.

First, PPP heard from the mysterious Alysia Chang.  It seems that, for some time now, a person using the name “Alysia Chang” had been commenting on Tony’s blog. This person had been, on occasion, critical of some of Tony’s posts, and of his poker play, and of his life decisions.  If you’ve read Tony’s blog, you know that what I just said applies to about 98.5% of the comments he gets. But Tony assumed that he had already met every single female poker player who read his blog, so he suspected something was amiss.  Perhaps Alysia wasn’t a Miss.  Or a Ms. Or a Mrs.  Perhaps Alysia was a Mister?  Or perhaps she didn’t even exist at all, perhaps Alysia Chang was one of Tony’s old nemeses—somebody he banned from his blog—using a phony name to get his/her comments on the blog.  Actually, I’m speculating to some degree.  I don’t read all the comments on his blog that carefully, they’re too repetitive. 

I just knew that there “Alysia Chang” had been commenting, and that Tony was questioning both her existence and her gender.

To the best of my knowledge, Alysia hadn’t commented on any other blogs, though I could have easily missed it.  She certainly hadn’t commented on my blog, I knew that for sure.

And then, after PPP did a post from about his first day in Vegas, Alysia showed up in the comments section, telling PPP that she was thinking of playing in the Aria 1PM tournament that afternoon and asking where he was playing.  But Pete didn’t respond, at least publically.

Then suddenly, the day we were all going to eat at Tap and play some poker at the MGM, Pete heard from her (him?) again.  Alysia left a comment on Pete’s blog that said, “Hey, I'm going over to Hakkasan for dinner tonight. I'm thinking around 7 or so.”  Note: Yes, Hakkasan is the nightclub that has created The Slut Parade.  But it also houses a restaurant that is open 7 nights a week.

Well, that was interesting.  The implication was pretty clear.  She was inviting Pete to join her (or am I wrong?). I texted Pete and asked if he was planning to abandon us and rendezvous with Alysia.  He assured me he was not.  However, he did want to let her know that the three of us would all be playing poker at the MGM later, since she was going to be in the vicinity (if you don’t know how close the MGM poker room is to Hakkasan, you haven’t been reading my blog for the past year).  Unfortunately, for some reason his expensive iPhone wouldn’t let him post comments on his own blog (what’s with that, Mr. Cook?).  So he asked me if I could post a comment/reply to Alysia and let her know that we’d be playing poker just a few yards from where she was dining.  We actually had no other way to contact her, so that’s what I did.

She commented back for us to let her know our table and seat numbers and she would try to stop by and say hi.

Hmmm….it was obvious she was quite interested in meeting PPP, a lot more interested in meeting him than TBC.  It was almost as if she was a PPP-stalker.  If she was, she was the first of two PPP-stalkers he ran into this trip—at least that I’m aware of. We’ll get to #2 when I post about the TBC Invitational. Come to think of it, it would be fair to refer to Tony as a PPP-stalker himself, so maybe it’s three.

When we all got together, I asked Pete if there was some connection that he had made with Alysia that I didn’t know of.  He assured me that there was not.  He was as surprised as anyone. Hmm….

So there we were in Tap, enjoying our meal, and speculating on Ms. Chang. What would she be like?  Would she even show?  Would some guy come up to us and ask if we were friends of Tony?

When we weren’t speculating about Alysia, we were talking about sports betting, with a particular eye to the college football season, which was actually just getting under way the very next day.  Coach and PPP were comparing notes. We were also discussing the NFL, as Pete had to get his futures bets in so he could pick up bundles of cash when next he returned to Vegas.

And that would have been pretty much all we talked about until the mysterious Mr. Bigcharles made his presence felt in a very big way.  Now, from his blog, we all knew that Tony was up in Reno, doing very well, having worked his “roll” up to $10K, having found the games there to be very soft.  He was doing so well that he had rented an apartment for the month, even purchased a microwave and an A/C unit for it.  What could go wrong?

Suddenly, my celphone signaled me that I had been tweeted at.  I looked at it and saw one of the most bizarre tweets I’d ever received.  It was from Tony and it said, “get ppp to call vince, hes picking me up airport 910pm, dont tell ppp, but get him to call. Ive got $9800.”

This was strange on so many levels.  I should make it clear, this was not a private message, it was a public tweet that anyone could read.  So mentioning the $9.800 was kind of odd for someone is as concerned about getting robbed as Tony is.  Also, he was telling me publically not to tell Pete something. Of course, he did know that PPP is not on Twitter (an oversight he needs to correct, btw). 

Then there was the demand that I get Pete to call Vince (Tony’s friend that he often stays with when in Vegas).  Now, in Pete’s own blog post about this night, he talks about having been getting messages from Tony to call Vince and how he responded (or didn’t) to that.  You can read that for yourself. But if Pete wasn’t doing Tony’s bidding on his own, how the hell was I supposed to get him to do it?  Do I have some sort of magical powers over Pete Peters?  I think not. 

Of course, I did the only logical thing….I read Tony’s tweet to Pete.  In full, including the part I wasn’t supposed to tell him. I guess I’m a bad person.  But honestly, the way it was written, it wasn’t clear which part I wasn’t to tell Pete.  Was it that Vince was picking him up at the airport at 9:10?  Or was it the fact that he had $9,800?  Maybe he didn’t trust Pete not to rob him.  Or maybe he owed Pete some big bucks and didn’t want him to know he was in a position to pay him off.  Or….maybe he wanted Vince to have the fun of telling Pete that Tony was coming into town himself.  Yeah, that was probably it. I guess I spoiled the big surprise. Sorry.

We all began speculating on what this could mean.  But one thing it didn’t do was encourage Pete to call Vince, who had never met or had any contact with before. None of us could figure out why Tony was coming to Vegas because he was doing so well in Reno, as I noted a few paragraphs ago. But then, Tony has always done things his own way, for his own reasons.

So I suggested we play an elaborate joke.  I proposed we all head over to the airport, take the next plane to Reno, and then contact Tony and say, “Hey we came up to Reno to see you, where are you playing?” But we weren’t foolish enough spend that much money on a gag.  Since I couldn’t ignore Tony’s tweet, I did the next best thing and sent him back this tweet: “Can't reach him. I think he's on a flight to Reno now to see a client.”  Tony didn’t respond, at least via tweet.

But he was tweeting/bragging that his roll was now so large he could easily afford to pay $8 to get wifi on his brief flight from Reno to Vegas. He could now spend money with impunity. That gave him the ability to see all the comments on Pete’s blog about the three of us bloggers playing at MGM that evening, and of course he saw the comments from Alysia Chang—who he didn’t believe existed—and how she might be joining us.

And thus Tony left this comment on Pete’s blog:  “vince will look for u at the mgm after he picks me up at the airport, im currently on the plane.”

Well of course we had to digest this.  What exactly did this mean?  For the uninitiated, Tony is not allowed to play at the MGM.  So he couldn’t join us there.  Was Vince going to play with us while Tony waited in his car in the parking lot?  This is why Tony flew down from Reno?

Or perhaps Vince was going to try to entice to all join the two of them in his car and we’d play some poker right there in the parking garage?  That sounded like fun. 

So as we finished dinner (and thanks to PPP for picking up the tip, which the comps don’t cover), we now had two mysterious people to anticipate showing up and possibly joining us.  Alysia Chang, who Tony didn’t think existed, and Tony’s pal Vince, who Tony presumably did believe existed, but who none of us ever met.

This had all the makings of a magical night. All we could do was wait to see if Alysia and/or Vince showed up.  Or if somehow, Tony would sneak through the security at MGM and add another blogger to our table.

When I picked up my comp to pay for dinner I had them put the three of us all on the list for the 1/2 game.  Of course, because of my stature, they put us right to the top.  No, that’s not true, they gave us the same treatment as everyone else. As luck would have it, Pete and I were sent to the same table in short order.  They wanted Coach to go to another table, but he didn’t like where he’d be sitting there so he just waited until a spot opened up at our game.  And so the spot immediately to my right opened and Coach took it.  Pete was one player away from Coach in seat 3.

I will say this for Coach’s play.  He plays tight.  As he pointed out in his version of this night, he makes me look like a maniac.  I doubt if he played more than three hands the entire nite.  Seriously, I’ve sat next to players who were away from the table who played more hands.  He must play AA, KK, and maybe, maybe, if he’s feeling crazy at the moment, AK.  I’m pretty sure he throws away QQ and JJ instantly. After a couple of hours, I would have fainted if I ever saw him raise.

In order to keep tabs on everyone who might make an appearance, I had to keep checking my phone…Twitter, Pete’s blog, Tony’s blog.  As soon as we were at a table, I posted our table number and seat numbers on Pete’s blog so that Alysia, if she existed, could find us.  We kept waiting for someone to show up, not knowing what he and/or she might look like, And then, finally, it happened.

An Asian woman, short in stature, came over to our table and immediately approached Pete.

And she said to him, “Are there any Inner Circle members here?" And I guess Pete asked if she was Alysia Chang (I was really too far away to hear) and she said she was.  By good fortune, a seat had just opened at our table, there was no list, and she went up front to see if she could join us.  And so she did, taking seat 1, with only an aggro maniac sitting between her and Pete.  Coach and I introduced ourselves to her, of course.           

One thing I will say about Ms. Chang—she was never a loss for words. And she was really funny. She was more than willing to rehash every debate she’d ever had with Tony, and asked us questions about him.  And of course, we had to bring her up-to-date on his curious whereabouts this evening.  For awhile we were expecting Vince, and possibly Tony, to join us.  I kept checking my phone. I found that Tony had done a blog post from the plane and read it for clues about what he was up to—either on this night, or in the future.  That post included this classic line about a girl he ran into at in a Reno casino who was “offended i wanted her to be a hooker if she wanted $100.”  I cracked up and had to share it with the group.

And so Alysia replied, “I’m too old to be a hooker.”

As Alysia was talking about her battles with Tony, she kept expressing her amazement that he didn’t believe she was a woman.  So at one point, a guy at our table—not part of our little group, a total stranger—said, “I’d be more than happy to prove that you’re a woman.”  She didn’t take him up on his offer.

Then I read the startling news….neither Tony nor Vince would be joining us this night.  He posted a comment on his own blog that said, “i hate to say it, but vince and i went to the poker palace since he wanted to play BJ there, and i lost $215. not the best way to start off.”

I was afraid that this might make poor Pete suicidal, knowing that someone (Vince) would rather go to the Poker Palace than meet him.  But somehow, he survived.

Alysia also survived the disappointing news that she would not be meeting Tony (or Vince) this night.  She suggested we all go to a Strip Club.  She offered to buy Coach, Pete and me lap dances. Was she serious? Who can say?  But here I was, once again running into a woman who apparently likes going to Strip Clubs (see here).  I guess I should get used to it.

Being a TBC blog reader, Alysia knew how much Tony likes mashed potatoes.  She said that in his honor, we should all go somewhere and have some mashed potatoes. She knew just the place—the steakhouse at Treasures Strip Club! How did Alysia know that Treasures has a steakhouse? I can only guess. She whipped out her phone and was disappointed to learn it was too late to make it to the steakhouse—they close at 10PM.  Of course, we could still make it to Strip Club at Treasures, that was still open. But we never did. (Nor did any of us have mashed potatoes.) It actually seemed that of the four of us, Alysia was the most interested in the Strip Club.

There wasn’t much serious poker going on from my standpoint, I was having too good a time laughing and joking.  I wish I had audio recorded the session—if I had, this post would be at least 10 times as long, and funnier than hell. Alysia was a riot. But I do want to discuss two hands from the night, the first one happened soon after Alysia joined our table, and I had no read on her whatsoever.  But then, I still don’t.

In late position, after a few limpers, I looked down at the dreaded pocket Kings.  I raised to $14 and had two callers, one of whom was Alysia. The flop was 10-high, two clubs (I didn’t have the King of clubs).  I bet $40 and Alysia snap-called, the other player folded. The turn card was the Ace of clubs, the worst card I could possible see.  This time Alysia led out for $45.  What to do, what to do?

Against a player I knew next to nothing about, what should I have done?  She could easily have an Ace, not to mention clubs.  It seemed like there were too many cards that beat me there, and besides, it was my cursed hand.  I folded, and she didn’t show her hand.  If she had a flush, she could have/should have shown it to get a drawing ticket.  But she hadn’t been there long and it was possible she didn’t know about the drawings.  In fact, we explained it to her later when she had a qualifying hand and was handed a drawing ticket. So, I wondered the rest of the night if I had made a good fold. I never asked her, but I got my answer the next day when she commented on Pete’s post.  She said it was a total bluff!  Really?  Did she mean that or is just messing with me for the next time?  Good question.

I got down to $79 and decided not to add on.  I was having too much fun laughing and joking to be paying proper attention to the poker. so I thought I would try to minimize my risk. I was dealt pocket Aces in early position.  First in, I raised to $8. Remember Jan from my last post (here)?  Well, she and her husband were both at this table. I’m going to call her husband Dean. He called my raise. Dean plays a different style than his wife, more aggressive, raises more, trickier. I also know he’s an excellent tournament player and likes to play some of the bigger tournaments during the summer.  Two players behind him called as well.

The flop was Jack-4-2. I bet $20 and only Dean called. The turn was a 5, giving me a gut-shot in addition to my overpair. I shoved the rest of my chips ($51).  Dean took a long time. That was good.  I figured if he didn’t snap-call, I was ahead. Dean’s played enough against me to have a pretty good feel for what I could be shoving with there, so I expected him to fold.  After tanking, he finally called. The river was a King or a Queen, I showed my Aces and Dean was surprised.

“Wow, that’s a gorgeous hand.  That’s a really good hand.  You fooled me with your small preflop raise.”  He just mucked but said he had a “pretty good Jack.”  Then he said, “Well played.”  I didn’t really play it any differently than I normally play Aces, but I didn’t tell him that. I’d glad I fooled him.  It’s not easy getting money from Dean.

That got me close to my buy-in.  I hung around for awhile cuz we were having so much fun, but as I had to work the next day, I had to be the first one to leave. I ended up down $20 or so for the night and I certainly got more than $20 entertainment value.

I missed the great bag lady picture that is on Pete’s blog and explained on both Coach’s and Pete’s blog. I do recall that Alysia said she had a bag with her for a photo for Tony, tho!  Yes, that’s why she had it.

And now that I know that Alysia bluffed me off my dreaded hand (assuming she’s telling the truth), a rematch down the road is desired—and inevitable, I’m sure.

(Edited to add:  Poker Grump has left an interesting comment pertaining to my Aces hand, below.  He links to an excellent post of his from years ago about preflop bet-sizing.  Unfortunately, there's no line break in his comment and it may be difficult to use the link in some browsers, so you can click here to get to it.  And that post links to a Mike Caro which no longer exists at the location in the post, but I believe I found it here, also worth checking out.)