No one answered. When I looked at the pot, it was easy to see why. There was over $300 in there—possibly more, but I stopped counting the red chips after $300—and four people were on the action. And they hadn’t even gotten to the last round of betting.
Half the table had a drink in front of them, including three of the players in this hand. The smallest stack looked like it had just over $200, and I was the second smallest stack at $300. Everyone else had at least $400. The chips were flowing like water down a rock-free, crystal-blue river, and the transparency of the players was equal to said river.
Everyone checked, and the river brought the king of clubs. My kind of card, I thought. Once again, everyone checked. Someone flipped over two pair with kings and sevens, and—kings and sevens! Holy shit. If people are playing hands like king-seven, I thought, the question was not how much I was going to win, but if I were going to set personal winning records.
One other person flipped over queen-nine, and I had to stifle my laughter.
This might have been—no, it was—the juiciest, ripest table I had ever played at. You couldn’t get this much action with eight stoned and drunk college friends on spring break.
Six of the players were men in their mid-40’s sat. All but one had a drink, and they all looked like they knew each other. That was promising.
“You came to the right table if you’re looking for action.”
My eyes, which had been slowly scanning left to right, skipped directly to my right. A gorgeous woman, deep-tanned, likely of Middle Eastern heritage, with two golden bracelets and long flowing hair smiled at me. She had on narrow sunglasses. Her lips drew attention, but not ridicule, with their red hue. She was no older than her late 20’s.
“How’s it going?” I said.
She nodded her head confidently, like someone nodding to the beat of their favorite hip-hop song.
“Rockin’ the table, you know how it is.”
Amateurs never spoke like that. Amateurs would say something like “just getting the night started” or “waiting on my wife to finish shopping.” If they did talk about taking a table down, they did not say it with the unmistakable confidence the woman did.
“I take it this isn’t your first rodeo at the poker table,” I said.
She pursed her lips out and slowly chewed her green gum. I could see through her sunglasses she was eyeing me up and down. She was trying to figure out, I thought, if I were a giver or a taker.
From the poker perspective, it mattered little to me. I had position and, more importantly, I had her figured out. Her clothing gave her away.
She wasn’t dressed provocatively like you might expect a girl at a nightclub to dress. That would have been too obvious. But her royal blue long-sleeve shirt showed just enough skin to make a man curious, but not so much that it aroused him. Out of my peripheral vision, I could see she had a tight black skirt on. A woman who was that conscious of her looks at a table was not there to have fun. She was there to pick off men who figured she was naïve and didn’t know the game because of her gender.
But from the personal perspective, I couldn’t help but hope and wonder if those eyes weren’t measuring my worth as a poker player, but as a man.
“It’s not mine, I’ll put it that way,” I said, giving her a look that said, “we can crush this table if we stay out of each other’s way.”
She could have also taken it as a look that said “I know what you’re thinking, and I can play that game too.”
She nodded in agreement, chewing her gum at an accelerated rate.
