I may be a little too set in my ways

Just as I was leaving the Venetian last night, a guy who had been playing at my table stopped me. He asked if I was the Poker Grump. I confessed. I've posted my mug here a few times, so it's not too surprising that occasionally a reader recognizes me in a poker room.

This was different, though. He introduced himself and said that he had friends that were blog readers--former Hilton dealers who knew me. OK, that's cool. Nice to know they're checking in on me from time to time.

But then the oddness of this dawned on me. How did he recognize me, if he didn't read my blog himself and therefore hadn't seen my photo? He hemmed and hawed a bit, but then said that his dealer friends had described me pretty well.

Wow. Barring some really remarkable physical feature (a big scar across the face, maybe, or a Van Gogh-esque missing ear), could you describe a friend in such detail that a person who has never met him before could pick him out of a crowd, especially if that person has no advance warning of where or when he might run into the subject of your description? That's quite a task--or so I thought at first. I'd like to think that I'm pretty average and unremarkable, and that I basically vanish into the background. Norman Chad says of Allen Cunningham that you don't even notice he's at the table until your chips are suddenly being shipped over to him. That's exactly the effect I try to achieve. So I have an image--perhaps an illusion--of myself as not standing out in any way, sort of hidden or camouflaged at the table. It's a bit unnerving to hear that I could be spotted so easily from just a verbal description.

Then I got to thinking about it. Here's what the dealers could have said about me--and probably did: He's about 5'7", 145 pounds. Really short, thinning hair. Wire frame glasses. No hat. Always wears blue jeans and a dorky fanny pack. Almost always wears the same style of collarless, long-sleeve, crinkly cotton shirt. There will be a pen and a folded-up sheet of paper (for note-taking) in the breast pocket. Always carries a sweatshirt in case the poker room is overly air-conditioned (which they often are). Expect to see some stubble, because he's too lazy to shave more than once or twice a week, and doesn't care that everybody knows it. Sometimes uses an MP3 player with ear buds, though not consistently. Usually occupies either Seat 1 or Seat 10 next to the dealer, and will be the quietest guy at the table, playing a classic tight-aggressive game. There will be a silver dollar in use as a card cap.

But here's the part I didn't anticipate. The guy didn't give me any details (which is why I have had to surmise what they must have told him), just saying that his dealer friends' description of me was good enough that he thought he had me spotted, but the clincher was that they had told him I always keep my chips in meticulous stacks of $50 (i.e., ten chips high). Oh, man, that is me all over. I don't do any chip tricks, but I confess that I do tend to simultaneously assuage my boredom and satisfy my craving for order in the world by working on making those stacks as neat and precise as possible. Why stacks of 10 instead of the more common 20? Simple--I'm a klutz, and I tend to knock them over if they're any taller.

I guess I hadn't realized that it had become something of a trademark.

But put all of those obsevations together, and it no longer seems especially remarkable that somebody who has never seen my photograph could pick me out, even at one of the biggest, busiest poker rooms in the city. In fact, given that information, if he couldn't nail me within a few minutes, his observational skills would have to be so weak that he wouldn't make it as a poker player.

Sigh. I guess I'm not as camouflaged as I thought.

This is all tongue-in-cheek, by the way. It honestly doesn't bother me if people know who I am. In fact, it's quite flattering. If you're a reader and happen to notice me at the table, feel free to speak up about it if you want. I occasionally even mention this blog to people I'm playing with, if there is some reason to (such as I'm going to write about them, or some topic of conversation arises that I've written about and I want to point them to it), so it's not like I try to keep it a deep, dark secret.

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By the way, not that I really needed further evidence that my recent losing streak was over, after the straight-flush incident, but I got it last night anyway. In six hours of poker, I had aces four times, kings one time, queens one time, jacks one time.

Not.

Cracked.

Once.

All praise be to the poker gods, for surely they are good and wise (most of the time).

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The interesting bit of artwork above is from Ann Huey. See her web site here.