Awkward!

This story is sort of hard to tell in a way that will both make sense and be funny, but I'll try. The main problem in relating it is that, even though it's about something I did, I have no recollection of it, and am relying on a secondhand report.


In the summer of 2009, Cardgrrl came to town for the World Series of Poker. She had fairly recently become a participating member of the discussion forum at allvegaspoker.com, and wanted a chance to meet some of the people with whom she had been conversing, so she put together a little social gathering at Rhumbar at the Mirage. A bunch of people dropped by to get acquainted in person. Zippyboy was one of those who stayed the longest, and we got to chat with him quite a bit. He had just left his job in the Pacific Northwest and moved to town to see about this whole poker thing.

Cardgrrl and I ran into him again maybe a week later in the Red Rock poker room. Then in November of last year he and I ended up as two of the five co-champions (due to a negotiated even chop) of the AVP tournament at Harrah's, which I wrote about here.

Given those three encounters, I knew who he was when we happened to end up in adjacent seats at yet another AVP tournament in March of this year, which I wrote about briefly here.

OK, so that's the setup. Now comes the part I don't remember happening. Zippyboy was in the big blind in an unraised pot against Clem, another AVP regular. They checked it down all the way. Clem showed some random hand first and won. Zippyboy flashed me his 2-4 before mucking it. I told him that he had misplayed his cards (or so I'm told, and it's perfectly believable). This ticked him off, though I didn't know it at the time.

Zippy and I had dinner Monday, and he told me about this. As I said, I remember the tournament, but I have no memory of this particular incident. Here's the key fact that I didn't know at the time: Zippyboy had never read my blog. (Fortunately, since then he has repented of his ways and become a daily checker-inner.) He had no knowledge of the special place that the Mighty Deuce-Four holds for me. Here's what he told me in a follow-up email a couple of days ago, after I asked his permission to tell the story here:

The ONLY reason I flashed it to you was as if to prove what a crappy hand
it was, and that I couldn't possibly have won anyway, and maybe get sympathy
from you (my co-champion at the previous meet). Then, when you snickered and
said "You didn't play 'em right!" (assuming that I read your blog, and that's
the reason I had showed), well, THAT just pissed me off! Like, how the hell
was I s'posed to play a crappy hand like this???

Of course, now I am in awe of deuce-four's obvious invulnerability and
never fold it.

I certainly don't automatically assume that AVP people (or anybody else, for that matter) reads my blog. But when Zippy flashed me the 2-4, I obviously assumed that he was doing so because he knew I was The Grand Poo-Bah of the Holy Order of the Deuce-Four. That also is why I further assumed that he wouldn't mind a little good-natured jab about having misplayed it.

I'm glad that we can now both get a laugh out of the awkwardness that (unbeknownst to me at the time) resulted from our bringing opposite sets of assumptions to that moment.