I listen to Pete (my husband) talk about poker the same way he listens to me talk about Harry Potter. I have no clue why its so important to him, I just know it is. Very, very important. Therefore, just like he sits there and nods his head, making sure he keeps eye contact with me, so’s I don’t catch on to how bored he is when I say things like, “Dementors,” “Dumbledore” and “Diggory,” I return the courtesy when he repeats certain phrases endlessly, such as “down the river,” “on the button,” “the flop,” “bad beats” and my personal favourite, which I even put in my new book, giving hubs credit for the quote, “Because in poker, sometimes stupid wins.”
So far, only that last one makes any sense to me. The others, after several years of hearing them, are juuust about starting to sink in. I don’t get it, but it doesn’t matter, because Pete loves poker and I love Pete. So much so, that when he told me that his dream was to go to Vegas and play in the World Series of Poker main event, I told him, “You should go, then.” I even booked him a room.
This is bigger than you might think, if you know even less about poker than I do. The main event of The World Series of Poker costs ten thousand dollars to enter and that’s without the expenses of room, food, transportation, etc. Even though I booked the least expensive room I could find (at Circus Circus, which these days has degenerated to pretty much the equivalent of sleeping out on the main strip) and even though Pete can quite happily live on one meal a day, you’ve got at least another two thousand in expenses. So ‘twelve g’s’ at least and of course, there’s no guarantee that when you’re in, you’ll get, to use more card player lingo I’ve picked up, “in the money.”
Still, I booked the room and told him, “Listen, you’re fifty-two and not getting any younger. It’s time to do this now, if it’s what you want. You’ve worked hard all your life, you deserve this. You’re a good poker player. So, you’re going. No arguments.”
Pete said, “Wow. Wait till I get there and tell everyone that my wife forced me to play in The World Series of Poker.”
Yeah. Right.
But you don’t know Pete. About two months later, on Father’s Day, no less, during the time all the boys are ringing up to say, “Hey, Dad,” and chat with him a while, I hear him shout. I jump up and go barrelling to his office, but he’s already on his way out to me. We stop dead, staring at each other. He’s got a beaming smile on his face and the last time he gave me such a bone-crushing, jubilant hug was the day I said I would marry him.
He’d won a seat. He’d been playing in an online poker tournament sponsored by Poker Stars with almost 7,000 other people. He’d needed to knock out all but 219 of them. Only 220 out of 7,000 got an all-expenses paid ticket to play in the main event of the World Series of Poker and Pete was one of them. He was over the moon.
Last week was an exciting week for my husband. He flew to Vegas, called me every day and regaled me with tales of where he was, what he was doing, what else was happening around him and who he saw. (Jamie Gold and Toby McGuire, just to name two. I had to Google that first guy, but I’d seen the Spiderman movies. ‘Spiderman‘ plays championship poker, in case you didn’t know it.) Another thing that thrilled him was that Poker Stars gave all their tournament winners free t-shirts. Getting a free t-shirt is, in my husband’s opinion, right up there with playing poker, watching baseball and eating graham crackers and peanut butter for lunch every day.
Then the tournament started. A lot of people love poker, apparently. Over 12,000 people had entered, from which the organisers had collected over 100 million dollars in cash. Pete needed to get through three days of 14-hours-a day of poker at least. The heat in Vegas at this time of the year is excruciating and the interiors of the casinos are at any given time, 30-50 degrees colder than what it is outside. You get three bathroom breaks, a lunch and a dinner break. Like I say, I don’t know why over 12,000 people think this is worth ten thousand dollars, but…okay. It must have something to do with the millions of dollars you win if you make it to the final table.
Pete isn’t going to be one of those nine people. He was out by the end of the first day. All day long yesterday, I’d willed the phone not to ring. I knew if it did it would be him, saying he was out and I just couldn’t take it if that happened to him. At six o’clock in the evening, I went out and came back around ten. Sometime between six and ten, Pete had left me this message: “I’m out of the tournament. I played like crap and I just want you to know that because I don’t even want to mention poker when I call you tomorrow.”
The part you need to pay attention to is the, “I played like crap,” part. After marrying Pete and getting four extra sons as a bonus, as well as having one of my own, I’ve learned a thing or two about the ‘testosterone set.’ They don’t sit around drinking apple martinis and cosmos with their friends, commiserating and sympathising when something goes wrong. Sympathy is anathema to them. Especially if they’ve screwed up. I’m not joking. It’s bad enough losing, but if you’ve lost because you think you didn’t do your best, it’s absolutely worse than being maimed. And the last thing they want to hear is what I and all the females I know want to hear when we screw up, “Aw, honey, come on – you’re usually so good. You’re the best to me, you know. You’ll get another chance.”
F*** that. Do that and they’ll spit tacks at you. No, the best thing you can do to show them your support, respect and love when this kind of stuff happens; in the case of my husband and boys, when they’re playing baseball, poker or music, is to do nothing at all. If you feel you must say something, you just get to say three little words and they’re not the three words you might be thinking.
You can say, if it’s your husband, “that sucks, hon.” Or, if it’s one of your sons, you say, “that sucks, kid.” Then walk away and leave them alone, to lick their wounds by themselves. I know its hard to imagine, yet that’s just what they want you to do, just what they need.
But there’s something that I need. I need to say that I think Pete is great. He is a star and he should have won. Failing that, he should have at least made it through the first day, not just because he really is a great poker player, but because I love him and I wanted him to.
“I love you,” are the three words I can’t say to Pete today because today, they just won’t hit his ear as well as “that sucks, hon.” But I needed to say them, just because he lost and wanted so much to win. So, I hope you won’t mind that instead of saying them to Pete, I’m saying them here, to you.
Note: This post also published in HS Radio e-magazine and will be excerpted in the upcoming, “The Diva Doctrine” (Cedar Fort Press Spring 2010)
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Poker Part II : Nurses, Pimps, Prams and Rita
So I flew to Las Vegas to be with “Poker Pete” for the last few days of the WSOP. Las Vegas is a perfect spot for an ‘A’ type personality like myself to go on a short holiday. There is nothing else to do except relax and have fun. After all the work the past mon
The first day, I hung out by the pool and just soaked up the sun. I had one of those frozen drinks that they stick a fresh strawberry in, so that you can let yourself be deluded into thinking that you’re only having fruit. But I didn’t let myself worry about the calories, or how much it cost (twelve dollars for a tiny little cup, which is ridiculous) because I was on holiday.
I also went for a nice long swim. In between laps, I met this very nice couple who were just hanging out by the side of the pool, Steve and Janelle, from the east coast. We got to talking and they declared they’d had a midlife crisis, up and quit their high-paying, high-stress jobs and were now both training to be nurses. I was impressed. How much guts does it take to do something like that? I did comment that I thought nursing could also be stressful and Steve said, “Yes, but at least it’s worthwhile stress.”
Good point. Anyway, we talked for so long that I didn’t realise my sunscreen had washed off. Now I have a nice toasty feel to my skin on only the left side of my body, the side that was not under the water whilst I was chatting with Janelle and Steve. As my skin peels, I’ll think of them and hope that their schooling is going well. Steve also said he writes poetry and I invited him to join VOX, which I hope he does.
Another person I met on this little getaway, was Rita Rudner. There she is in the photo with me and Pete standing next to her. But I have to say, she doesn’t look like she does in that photo at all. I only posted it, well… because it’s the only one I have of her with me in it, which is obviously the point. You’re supposed to be standing next to the celebrity in the photo, so you can impress your friends. And if they’re good friends, they’ll say, “Wow, is that you standing next to Rita Rudner?” So that’s why it’s posted. I’m giving you all the opportunity to be good friends and ask me that. But as I started to say, this is not a good photo of Ms. Rudner, because Ms. Rudner is actually stunningly beautiful in person. She definitely needs Ross Pelton to be her photographer. I’ll have to tell her that, next time I run into her, since she and I are such good friends now, as we’ve had our photo taken together.
The reason I went out of my way to meet Rita Rudner, is because she is also quoted in my new book, along with my husband, Pete (As I mentioned in my last blog) and a few dozen other people. Many of them, apart from Pete and Rita that is, are long dead, so they probably won’t mind if I quote them. I’m pretty sure Pete doesn’t mind, either, because I’m his wife and he gets certain benefits from me that predispose him to being amicable to it. But Rita gets no benefit at all and just because I am a fan of hers doesn’t mean I shouldn’t at least ask her if its okay. So that’s what I did and I’m waiting to hear what she has to say, after she finishes reading what I gave her. If you see her quotes in my book, you’ll know she was cool with it. She seems like a nice enough person.
In addition to that, she and I certainly share some similarities. For example, both of us are very curious to know why people bring infants into the casinos in Vegas, when it’s so clear that that’s the last place they belong. In her act, Rita asked, (see now, I’m quoting her again) “do they let you cash them in for chips?”
Brilliant question. I’ve got a few others to add to it along the same lines and maybe some of you know the answers. Why is it that that the socio-economic levels of the patrons of Vegas are so clearly marked like this: The less income the patrons have, the more infants they have with them, the more they play the slots, the more they eat at the buffets and the more they weigh?
Conversely, the rich, particularly the women, who hang out at the high stakes blackjack tables and at The Bellagio and the Forum shops at Caesars, are just the opposite – gut-wrenchingly, ‘wince-inspiringly,’ painfully thin. Why? Is all their money going straight to costly card games and retail-priced jewellery? Some of their diamond rings weigh more than do. They are so thin and so weighted down by necklaces, earrings, etc, that they have to clutch onto their husbands, just so they can stay upright and take steps.
I know I sound terrible, but it’s what I observed. The more expensive the hotel, the skinnier the people are in it. The cheaper the rooms are, the heavier the clientele. And I want to know – are the rich keeping skinny so that, instead of being envious that they get to stand in the VIP line at the cafes, we’ll feel sorry for them and want them to not have to wait in a long queue for breakfast, like the rest of us? As for the poor, is the money they’re saving on their hotel bill going straight to feed them? Are they storing up food like squirrels do, in case they’re in for a tough winter?
The poorer and heavier clientele have the most children in strollers with them, too. Even if I wanted to get near a buffet or a slot machine, I couldn’t. My way was blocked by prams, babies and very large people. And they never put those babies to bed, either. Here’s what happened on this trip:
Poker Pete and I were walking outside on the main strip one night very late, so late it was early morning, in fact. On the main strip, of course, you’ve got those blokes who hand you the little cards with the photos of the naked women on them. (Rita mentioned them in her act, too.) In other words, what they do for a living is hand out cards that have names and phone numbers of prostitutes on them. One of those guys, just as he’d handed me one of those cards of all things, shouted this out to yet another large couple who were walking with their three, tiny, exhausted children, “Hey – know what time it is? Be parents, why doncha and get those poor kids to sleep!”
I’m not joking, this really happened and so I have one last question to ask:
Ladies and gentlemen – if a pimp in Vegas starts criticising our parenting skills, do you suppose maybe its time for us to rethink a few of our priorities?
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