Mystery Woman

This is one goes back to my October trip, taking place a few days before Halloween. I had taken the day off to play the Aria tournament. I played the tournament for about five hours, busted out 26th and didn't cash. There's nothing really to report from the tournament, I only mention it because some the people I ran into there turned up later in the evening.

After a quick dinner, I ended up at MGM for the evening. This was a Thursday night and they had their then current football promotion going on. This version was the poker parlay card where you had to fill up a card with five different hands in order to get paid.

I recognized Pokerkraut at the table I was sent to and said hello. This incident took place a few days after I had met him (see here) and recorded the opening for his vlog. But he had not used my opening yet and I had not written about our meeting yet either. He had been there for some time and had most of his card filled out. While I was there he got his fourth stamp and the football game was still going so he had a chance to fill his card out and get $400. If he completed the card after the football game was over he would only get $200. And if he didn't get his final stamp before midnight, he'd get nothing.

Well the game was winding down and Kraut made his final hand to complete the card. When he showed his hand to get the final stamp I looked up at the football game and it appeared to be over. The players were walking off the field and shaking hands. But it turned out there was still five seconds left to go in the game; it was one of those situations where there were no timeouts left, no way to stop the clock, so there was no need to run another play even though there was still time on the clock. Kraut completed his card with about five seconds to spare and got a well-deserved $400 promo payout.  He cut it about as close as you possibly could.

As soon as he got paid, he decided to take the money and run, and left game. I took over his seat because it offered a better view of the crowd that would inevitably be coming for the club later that night. I happened to look over at the podium while Kraut was cashing out and I recognized the guy he was talking to. It was a tall guy in a baseball cap who I had played with earlier that day at the Aria tournament. When he joined my table at the tournament, I knew I had seen him before, but I couldn't place him anywhere. But he was definitely somebody I had seen before. Was he a dealer from another room? Was he a player I played with before? I wasn't sure. I didn't think I'd seen him at the Aria before, but honestly, I couldn't be sure. In addition to the fact that he was tall, he stood out because he had a deep booming voice and he used it a lot, if you know what I mean.

While they were talking and while I was settling into my new seat, a woman took the seat directly across from me. She looked familiar to me as well. In fact as she sat down she even said hi to me. But I wasn't sure if that was specifically directed to me, or if she was just one of those people who says hi when they sit down at a poker table—there are people like that. I guess I was staring at her a bit trying to figure out where I knew her from, so she said to me “What?” As she said that, it suddenly hit me where I knew her from. She too had been at the Aria tournament with me earlier that day—in fact she had been at the same table with me and the tall guy that Pokerkraut was talking to. At this point I had no idea she and "Tall Guy" were connected.

So I said to her, "Oh, you were at the Aria tournament with me earlier today right?" She said yeah and said it with an inflection like duh, so apparently I was remiss in not recognizing her immediately. I asked her if she cashed and she said no, she had busted out 46th. Well I had busted out 26th, so I must have seen her bust. I pointed out Tall Guy talking to Kevin and said he was at our table too. She said yes and made it clear that they were somehow connected. So I asked if he had cashed and she told me he was the stone cold bubble. I said that sucks and she agreed. For a while I kept referring to him as the tall guy and she found that somewhat amusing. I eventually asked her what his name was and she told me, but I will not reveal that here. I'll just keep referring to him as Tall Guy. I saw that this woman was talking to another woman at a different table and I was pretty sure I recognized her as also having played the Aria tournament.

Then, while Tall Guy was still at the front talking to Pokerkraut, the woman said to me, "How about that, they're vloggers and you're a blogger." That really caught me off guard, because as far as I could tell the first time I'd ever seen this woman was earlier that day at the Aria. So I asked her, "How did you know I was a blogger?” She replied, "Because I'm smart." Well that was a little too mysterious for me and a little annoying, but try as I might I couldn't get her to tell me how she knew that I was a blogger. Furthermore, for the next hour or so she kept looking at me—not really staring but just kind of looking my way a little more than I thought you should have—and I was looking back at her, I guess because she was looking at me. So every now and then she would just see me looking at it and say, "What?"  I said, "Oh nothing," but I guess I was kind of looking at her to see if I could recognize her and try to figure out how that she would know that I had a blog.

The other interesting thing was her line, "They're bloggers." I assumed at the time she meant Kraut and Tall Guy. So maybe I had seen Tall Guy in a vlog—maybe he's a vlogger? As I mentioned before though, I don't actually watch too many vlogs. But I suspected that maybe that's how I recognize Tall Guy.

Of course I knew there was a possibility that Pokerkraut had told her that I was a blogger, but for some reason I just didn't think that was the most likely scenario initially. As I mentioned earlier, I had just met Kraut a few days earlier and he hadn't known about my blog until I told him about it, and he hadn't published the vlog with my intro, so I figured he wouldn't necessarily even think much of the fact that I was a blogger.

At one point, seemingly out of the blue, she looked at me and said, "Don't write about me." I said to her, "How can I? I don't even know your name?" (as if that's ever stopped me!) She laughed and said, "Yeah, we're going to keep it that way." So any chance I of finding out who she was left the building. Actually I think this was all pretty much a game to her and she was just enjoying keeping me in the dark about how she knew what she knew. But since she was so intent on driving me crazy and also on not having me write about her, well obviously I have to write about her. That's why I'm doing this post!

So at one point during the game, a dealer pushed in who I barely recognized. I think I've seen him maybe one other time before. But the woman obviously knew the dealer and started telling him about this home game sheet runs regularly. Apparently she has a couple of poker tables in her house and they have a regular game every week or two and they run tournaments, with the eventual prize being a Main Event seat to next year's World Series. She was really talking this guy up trying to get him to commit to being one of their dealers at the game, talking about how much money he can make and how it's a great gig and she even serves food and she's a good cook and he'd really enjoy it and make a little money. He could even drink on the job. So then the woman took out a card from her purse and handed it to him while he was dealing and said to give her a call or send her an email. But she put the card on the table face down and said to him, "Don't let him (meaning me) see this card! I don't want him to know my name." I laughed at this and said, ”I'm just going to refer to you as 'Mystery Woman', but it'll be worse than if I knew your name."  She laughed.

Mystery Woman at least gave me a really good "woman said" at one point. As I mentioned, it was a club night and it was just a few days till Halloween. I was kind of hoping that people would start showing up in costumes. A few did, but not many. But at one point Mystery Woman said to the entire table, "Did you see that?" Nobody knew she was talking about, so she explained. "There was this girl in a babydoll nightie with the back totally rolled up and you could see her entire ass." She really emphasized the word "ass." Damn, how the hell did I miss that?

During all this, did I play any poker, I hear you ask? Yes I did, but it was a pretty boring session. There weren't really any noteworthy hands, and I had a slightly losing session. I got only one stamp on the parlay card, and I hung around until midnight but didn't get called for the drawing. Sorry to disappoint those of you who love my hand histories, but I don't have any for you this post. Basically I'm telling the story because I know Mystery Woman didn't want me to.

I never officially learned Mystery Woman's name, but I did manage to see it on the Bravo screen in front of the dealer because I was sitting next to the dealer. I won't reveal the name, but it didn't really help me identify her at all. I also heard her call her female friend (at the next table over) Christin. But I left for the evening not knowing how Mystery Woman knew anything about me.

It was driving me a little crazy afterwards that I hadn't figured out how I knew Mystery Woman or Tall Guy and how this odd woman knew me, or at least knew that I was a blogger.  By now I was assuming that she did indeed get this information from Pokerkraut, but I wanted to confirm it. I did in fact email Pokerkraut sometime later and asked him for some details.

However, before I heard back from him, I watched a couple of his latest vlogs and found out some info on my own.  I saw that friend of Mystery Woman, Christin, on one or two, and Kevin identified her as a vlogger from Ireland (although she is actually German). You can find her twitter account here and her Youtube page here.  I'm using her real name because I'm sure as a vlogger, she wants all the publicity she can get.  As a result of seeing her on Pokerkraut's vlogs, I checked out some of her videos and they are well worth watching.

And that explained Mystery Woman's line, "They're vloggers, you're a blogger."  By "they" she didn't mean Kevin and Tall Guy, she meant Kevin and Christin.

And in one of Kevin's videos, I saw Tall Guy.  He was with a woman whose face Kraut took great pains to cover with an animated smiley face. I assumed it was Mystery Woman.  She really does have a fetish about keeping her identity a secret!

When I did hear back from Pokerkraut, he wouldn't say much about Mystery Woman other than that she was actually Tall Guy's wife.  But he did tell me that Tall Guy used to work as a dealer in a certain poker room in Vegas.  And that finally solved that mystery.  The room he used to work, which I won't name, is one I used to play in a lot until a few years back.  And as soon I learned that, my brain immediately placed in that room—that's why he looked familiar!

In fact, as my memory finally kicked in, I could actually remember bits and pieces of a story Tall Guy had told us back when he dealt at that room.  Don't remember the whole story, but it had something to do with him getting involved in a huge traffic jam either coming back to Vegas from L.A or vice versa.  So strange how the memory works (or doesn't).

Anyway, that's the story of Mystery Woman. Still mostly a mystery to me…but then most women are.