"Pay attention to me!"

After I had been watching Cardgrrl play for a while Thursday night, this guy got moved to her table:





(That's Kathy Liebert in Seat 10.)

As you can see, he had a big headdress thing in a clear plastic bag on the floor beside him.

During a 20-minute break, he decided to don the whole outfit:






OK, I thought, so he wanders around, lets people take his picture, then takes the big flashy piece off again when he's playing.

Nope. He left it on for the rest of his time at the table:






I overheard pieces of a brief conversation in which somebody asked him what the deal was. He said something about his great-grandfather having been made an honorary member of some tribe. He said this with an accent that I believe to have been British, possibly Australian. (I usually don't have any difficulty telling the two apart, but the room was noisy so I was only hearing snippets.)

Of course, whether that story is true or not has nothing to do with the bigger question of why he is wearing it for a poker tournament. To which the only plausible answer, if you ask me, is that he wants attention. Yeah, I know, I have just given it to him. But I have taken a blood oath to bring to my readers all items of pokery interest that I come across.