Classic Stories: Don’t Make Your Girlfriend Watch You Play Poker

Since we’ve got a lot of new visitors at Thinking Poker, and probably a lot of people who haven’t read my more monolithic trip reports (understandable), I’m going to start reprinting select stories that are buried in much longer narratives but that I consider among my best. This article is part of that series, so apologies to those who have already seen it. If you have suggestions for other stories that deserve to be reprinted with their own dedicated post, please leave a comment!

Excerpted from my WSOP 2007 Trip Report:

I am sitting in a 5/10 game at the Rio when this giant tool takes a seat next to me. He’s got the sunglasses, the hair gel, fashionably unbuttoned shirt, and a ball cap that reads “Philly” in what I guess was supposed to look like graffiti letters. He clearly thinks he’s hot shit as he takes a fat roll of bills from his pocket and peels off twenty. Then, in completely unballer fashion, he thinks better of it, puts half the bills back, and buys in for $1000.

Meanwhile, his girlfriend is pulling up a seat slightly behind him and to the right. Note that this still takes up some space at the table, as the guy is sitting considerably closer to me than he otherwise would be, and because he is lefthanded, he jostles me several times as he stacks his chips.

The girl didn’t have to be unattractive. She had blonde hair, blue eyes, and large breasts. But she was a thickalicious girl in a very short skirt that highlighted her thunder thighs. Her plunging neckline revealed quite a lot of cleavage, but her completely unsupportive bra gave her a bad case of pancake boob.

I was not happy with this guy for depositing his stubbly face and his busted girlfriend in my peripheral vision, and I resolved to make him regret it.

He posts $10 in the CO, and another new player at the table has already posted $10 as well. Action folds to the tool, who raises his post to $50. I resolve to pop him with any two from the button. I find 72o, but a deal’s a deal, so I make it $150. He glances at my stack, ponders a moment, and calls.

The flop comes 444, and immediately he asks me “Did you make a full house, too? I made a full house. I check.” I hate it when people run their mouths during a hand. After a few moments of thought, I bet $180, and he calls.

Turn is a T, and he checks. Fucking Zeebo Theorem can I really get this tool to fold whatever shitty full house he has? If I really had a big pair I’d just price him in on the turn and river since he’s only got a pot-sized bet left in his stack and probably no understanding of what “pot odds” actually means. But that’s exactly why I can’t run a bluff that way, and if I just shove now, he’ll probably put me on AK like the live “pro” tool that he is. So after much thought I check behind.

The river is a K, and I get as excited about this as I would if I really had AK. “Damn,” he says with deliberately, conspicuously bad acting. “I let you get there. You got AK. I should have bet the turn, huh? OK, I check.” As I am pondering, he keeps mentioning AK, and every time he does, I have to wait a few more seconds before I can bluff. Finally he shuts his stubbly mouth long enough for me to announce a bet of $350. Dickface turbo-mucks and sneers at me with an intolerable air of superiority, “Do you think I’m an idiot?”

I flip my 72o, and his face drops like a rock as the implications of this hand become clear to him. Here he has taken his filly to come watch him own this “high stakes” poker game, and not only has he lost, not only has he been bluffed, but some kid took one look at him and decided that it would be profitable to play the worst hand in poker against him. It’s not like I missed a flush draw and had no choice but to bluff the river. Having never played a pot with this guy in my life, I took one look at him and decided to run a multi-street bluff from scratch with seven-deuce off-suit.

His girl starts consoling him with thigh stroking, but of course her pity is the last thing he wants right now. She is supposed to be in awe of him, not feeling sorry for him. “I wish you had flopped two pair. I would have taken all your money,” he tells me. 77 I guess? Yeah, if the case seven and a deuce had flopped, you probably would have stacked me. Congratulations. I kind of half shrug but still have not said a word to him.

Now he puts $1000 more in bills on the table and is on mega-tilt, limping into every pot, calling any raise, and firing at lots of flops. Amazingly, the table is letting him get away with it, and I can’t pick up anything to play against him. Finally a nice guy on my left cold calls a reraise from the kid with A’s in the SB, leads a rag flop, and shoves over the kid’s raise. The kid calls but mucks when the dude flips his hand on the river and storms away from the table with his woman tripping after him in her skinny heels.

7 thoughts on “Classic Stories: Don’t Make Your Girlfriend Watch You Play Poker”

    • I agree it’s reprint-worthy, but it already has its own post. The reason I reprinted the others is that they were good stand-alone stories buried inside of much larger posts. It was hard to link to them, and I imagine a lot of people never even knew they were there. Thanks for the suggestion, though, and I’m glad you liked the story!

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