Olivia (She Wasn’t a Jack Off)—Revisited

Well, folks, I didn't get started on my next post last night until way too late to finish it for you today.  You can blame Steph Curry for that.  So rather than rush something out to you (or go without posting anything), I thought I'd "treat" you good people to a blast from the past--a re-post of one my very earliest blog posts.  In fact, this was the seventh post I ever made, back in late 2011, and remains one of my favorite stories from my days of playing 2/4 limit poker.

Reviewing an old post like this, I am always struck by how I feel my writing style has evolved over time (hopefully for the better).  I wonder if it's in my mind or if you folks can see a difference?

Anyway, one of the things I can do when I reprint an old post is spice it up a bit with a pic or two.  This post was so long ago it ran before I started putting graphics in my post.  To be honest, I wasn't even sure you could do that back then!

Since the star of the post is a young lady named "Olivia" (her real name, in fact), I've add a few pics of famous women named "Olivia."  So tell me, who is your favorite Olivia?

And now...take it away, Olivia...

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This story happened during a summer afternoon at BSC some time back.  I had been at this game about an hour and had noticed this rather young woman, barely old enough to be in a casino, playing at the 2/4 game.  She was cute and was there with her boyfriend, who was sitting at the other end of the table, and another couple.  The male of this couple was also playing at this game, but his girlfriend was elsewhere.  Although I didn’t know it at the time, the girl at the table was named Olivia.  And that’s her real name, and you’ll see why I didn’t change it when I get to the end of this story.

Olivia was a nice enough girl but was experiencing a run of extremely bad luck.  In the hour I was there (she was there for quite a while before I joined the game), I had not seen her pull in a single pot.  And she wasn’t even remotely quiet about it.  She was complaining quite a bit about losing so much.  She was bitching and moaning loudly and frequently about how unlucky she was.  No one likes losing but it can get to be annoying to hear someone bitch this much, and she was getting to that point.

She had just run out of money and had reached into her purse to get another $100 out for more chips.  Soon thereafter, in a hand I was mercifully not participating in, I noticed that on the turn, there were two Jacks on the board.  Olivia bet aggressively.  I assumed she had a Jack in her hand.  The river card as yet another Jack, and again Olivia bet aggressively.

No doubt to Olivia’s surprise (and delight), another player raised her.  That got me to look at the board more closely.  The last Jack was the Jack of spades, and the two cards on the board that weren’t Jacks were the King and 10 of spades.  So it was possible that someone had rivered a straight flush (if they had Queen & 9 of spades) or a royal flush (if they had Ace-Queen of spades).  From the betting I was convinced Olivia had the case Jack for quads.  This could be one bad beat if indeed the other player had a straight or royal flush.

The guy who raised was new at the table, he had only played about two or three hands before this one.  So there was no way to know what kind of player he was.  Perhaps he was as stupid as the guy who bet into my 4 7’s (although this story pre-dates my 4 7’s story).  It was too early to tell, but for sure I was paying attention….and so was everyone else at the table.

Olivia raised back, not a care in the world.  The new guy raised again without a second’s thought.  The betting round had started heads up so this was a legitimate instance of there being no cap…..they could keep raising each other until one of them run out of chips.

Which is what happened.  Olivia gleefully kept raising, and New Guy did the same.  On and on.  I had seen enough of Olivia’s play to be fairly certain that she wouldn’t keep raising like this if she didn’t have the fourth Jack.  And the more New Guy kept re-raising, the more I became convinced he had Olivia beat.  With three Jacks on the board, it would have been obvious to even the dumbest player that Olivia had the fourth Jack, and wasn’t raising every time with just a full house—or worse, a flush or a straight.  With trips on board, a full house isn’t a very good hand…..not one you would risk all your money for, anyway.

Although no one said anything, you could somehow feel the murmur through rest of the players at the table that this was a straight or royal flush vs quads, and someone was going down hard. Finally, Olivia ran out of money, and New Guy called her. of course.  She had put almost $100 into the pot.  When called, Olivia flipped over her two cards and literally sang, “I’ve got four Jacks, I’ve got four Jacks!”  In addition to the singing, she stood up and started dancing.  She was raising her hands and rocking her hips and slapping her ass as if some uptempo go-go music was being played.

Eventually all the other players’ eyes turned to New Guy, who calmly turned over his Ace and Queen of spades and in an unbelievably restrained monotone said, “I’ve got a royal flush.”  All the other players nodded, agreed that this is exactly what we were expecting, and congratulated the guy on the hand.  I even said to him, “A Royal Flush?  Wow. You don’t see those every day.”  In fact, in my over three years of playing poker, it was the first one I’d ever seen.  He replied, “Well I sure don’t.”

We looked back to Olivia.  She was standing there, frozen, having stopped her singing and dancing.  She looked at the board and his cards as the dealer pushed all the chips, all her chips, to the player with the Royal Flush.  I expected her to scream, or to cry, but she was totally silent.  After standing there frozen for a few seconds, she just took off.  I mean, she actually ran away from the table, and towards the front entrance of BSC, to the Strip.  She said nothing.  But we all noticed the look of absolutely horror on her face before she left.

The rest of the players were concerned for her well being but her boyfriend and his friend were actually kind of amused.  They were laughing.  Olivia left behind a sweater, some shopping bags and a half eaten bag of potato chips she had been working on.  Since she had no chips left and hadn’t said she was coming back, the floor person came by to clean up her seat so another player could replace her, giving her belongings to her boyfriend.

Some of the players, including myself, were concerned about Olivia.  “Is your girlfriend ok?  Shouldn’t you go after her?”  He scoffed, insisting that “she’s fine.  She’ll be ok.”  Eventually even the boyfriend’s buddy was worried, pressing his buddy to look for her.  But he insisted she was ok.

Finally, after about a half an hour, she did indeed return from the outside.  She came over to her boyfriend and I couldn’t hear what they said to each other, but she did get her belongings from him.  Then she bravely faced the entire table (and the guy with the Royal Flush was still there) and said to us, “I want to apologize to all of you.  I’m sorry I reacted like that. Obviously, I didn’t see the Royal Flush on the board.  I’m fine.”

We all kind of nodded and indicated we were glad that she was ok, and we offered our sympathies.

“Oh, and one more thing,” she added.  “When you all tell your friends this story—and you will—my name is ‘Olivia.’”  And with that, she was gone again.

Thanks, Olivia, for being such a good sport, and for such a good story.  Here’s to you!