Las Vegas Weekly

October 11, 2011 · 1:45 PM

No broken jaws here

By Rick Lax

It's about $550. Bought in for $200. (Left with $380.) Doesn't always work like this for me...

The Mirage Poker room is messing with my head. In a good way. I’ve had 8 winning sessions in a row. When you win that much, you start thinking, Maybe I have what it takes to make it as a professional poker player, after all! Even though you don’t. I don’t, at least.

But, yes, I’ve been playing a lot of poker lately. And here’s the most interesting thing that’s happened at the tables this past week:

I was sitting next to a girl who works as a cocktail waitress at Surrender. We were talking about a nightlife story idea, and she asked me for my business card. Right as I was giving it to her, her boyfriend walked over.

Fast-forward twenty minutes. This girl has four dollars left in front of her, and she goes all in. I’m not in the hand, so I reach over and look at her hole cards. A playful gesture, but not really flirty. I’d do the same thing with a guy I’d been chatting with. Of course, the boyfriend walks over and sees me do this, too.

She busts out. And then, for the next half hour, the girl and her boyfriend are arguing in the corner, by the bar. One of their mutual friends is still sitting at the table with me, and I ask him whether he thinks they’re fighting about me.

“Uh…..yeah,” he says.

“Really? It didn’t seem like a big deal at all.”

“Well, if they come back, if I were you, I’d probably tell them you’re gay. If you don’t want to get your jaw broken, I mean.”

Nothing happened, in the end. They didn’t come back, just argued in the corner there. I cashed out my chips—$180 up!—15 minutes later. And then I walked to my car.

…But I’d be lying if I said I didn’t peer over my shoulder a couple times on the walk back.

Share This