Sunday, October 27, 2013

Scent of a Woman

People ask me why we haven’t heard much from my pal Prudence lately.  Prudence is fine and doing well.  It’s just that for reasons I won’t go into, she hasn’t played very much poker lately.  At least live poker. I believe she’s taken full advantage of the fact that it is now totally legal to play poker online in Nevada.  I think she actually prefers playing online to live play.

Another change she’s made recently is to greatly curtail her consumption of alcoholic beverages.  So the most recent times I have seen her and played poker with her, she was not drinking.  Oddly enough, she doesn’t say nearly as many outrageous things when she’s not drinking as when she is enjoying the demon rum.

So for this one, perhaps the last time I played with her when she was drinking, I have to go back to late March.  One of the reasons I haven’t blogged this sooner is that it was a pretty miserable night of poker for both us. It wasn’t even bad in a memorable sense, at least for me.  No great suck-outs to report on; no $400 pots lost.  I was actually luckier than she was.  I was so card dead, I couldn’t even lose my entire buy-in, I just didn’t get anything to play all night.  OTOH, she frequently was getting the second-best hand and you know how devastating that can be to one’s bankroll.

There was one hand when a bunch of us had limped in, including both Prudence and me.  But once the flop came, no one seemed to have much interest in the pot.  I don’t think anyone bet the flop or the turn.  Finally, on the river, when again no one bet, Prudence said loudly, “Wow, we’re all just showing our vaginas there, aren’t we?”  I don’t remember who won that pot.

The only time I got pocket Aces, Prudence raised to $10 in front of me.  Another player at the table called and I made it $40.  Prudence tanked a bit and then folded.  So did the other player.  She told me she had pocket Jacks.  Prudence has quite a bit of success cracking Aces with pocket Jacks (see here), so I’m glad she decided to fold there.  I believe that was the biggest pot I won all night.

When we got to the table, there was an older Asian gentleman there who had one of the biggest stacks I’d ever seen at a 1/2 game.  It was at least $1800.  Since the maximum you can buy in for there is $300, he was having a very good nite.  Actually, he was really having a good day.  He explained that he had been playing for about 10 hours, and had gotten lucky on a few big hands early in the session.  During the time we were there, he was playing pretty tight, and he never really took advantage of his stack to bully us around.  If he bet or raised, you knew he had a good hand.  He worked up the stack a few hundred more while we there.  No big dramatic hands as I recall, just small-to-medium pot every so often. 

At one point a person walking by the room did a double take when he saw this man’s stack, and stopped to watch for awhile.  He asked us, “Is this a tournament table?”  No sir.  This is a cash game and that’s his money, we explained.

Prudence somehow figured out that this gentleman was the father of one of the room’s regulars, who had only recently taught his dad how to play.  He learned well.  Obviously, a father can learn a thing or two from his child.

Now that morning, I had somehow come across a story on the internet about something that happened—or was about to happen—on one of the Kardashians’ reality TV show.  I say “one of” because I assume there’s more than one—is there?  I really don’t care.  I don’t pay any attention to them at all, but somehow, this one story came to my attention.

You can read all about it here.  It’s old news of course now, but the sweet young girls had decided to have a contest.  Two of the sisters each claimed to smell better than the other one.  The third sister would be the judge of which one did in fact smell better.

In case you didn’t click the link and haven’t figured out exactly what I’m talking about—well, it was a very specific scent from a very specific area of the body that was to be judged.

Or, as Khloe, the judge of this contest said herself, in the story, “But we're sisters - If I can't smell their pussies what else am I supposed to do?”

Well, you could not smell them, Khloe, for one thing.  Yes, that is actually an option.  But I guess that wouldn’t get the ratings you’re looking for.

Anyway, when I came across that story, I emailed the link to Prudence that very morning, thinking that might be of interest to her.  We shared a good laugh over it and she said that this was too much even for her.


So, a female dealer came to the table who is “Extra-board”—basically not a regular but on call.  She doesn’t deal there often.  I recognized her from another poker room.  So did Prudence.  In fact, I can’t go into the details but she and Prudence had had a rather awkward encounter at another poker room awhile back.

There likely was still some lingering hard feelings between the two of them.  But they said hello to each other cordially when the dealer pushed in. 

After exchanging pleasantries, Prudence said to the lady dealer, “Did you hear about the Kardashians?  They going to have a contest on their reality show to see which one of them has the best smelling pussy.  Khloe is going to be the judge.”

To her credit, the lady dealer didn’t act at all shocked by this out-of-the blue (but very blue) comment.  She acted as if Prudence had just given her a weather report.  “That’s what’s wrong with reality TV.”

Prudence followed up with an observation.  “I can’t imagine smelling my sister like that.”

Indeed.  Who, besides a Kardashian, could?

Prudence got along swimmingly with the dealer after that.  It wasn’t until after she left that Prudence explained to me that she had an unpleasant experience with the dealer.

So I said to her, “Oh, and so you just opened up the conversation with her by telling her about the Kardashian contest?”

“I thought it was a good ice-breaker.”

When we called it a very unsuccessful night, I had to wonder, did the cards we were getting smell worse than the Kardashians’ private parts?

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