Five Card Poker Game

No Limit Game

It was sort of a graph down. Not a straight-line collapse. Ups and downs, but bigger downs. Football was just blowing me away. At the time it seemed almost supernatural. How could one man lose almost every bonus game? I mean, sometimes I’d be winning until the last few seconds and then.., well, it was plain hopeless.
Thinking back on that no-limit game in Stillwater, I realize that I made one very powerful mistake even though that probably wasn’t the reason I lost. The presence of Slim in the game had caused me to think mostly about what his reaction to my play would be, rather than letting my poker game play itself in a natural sort of way. You see this happen all the time when fairly decent players get in a game with big-name professionals. Their game just goes out the window
Fancy. They try to be as fancy and creative as they can, thinking the name player will reach over and give them some kind of award or something. You almost always see them leave the table busted, tail between their legs, so to speak, feeling miserable because they plavedfor the celebrity and not for themselves. And botched it up real good besides.
Pretty much, I’d made that same mistake. But driving home from the game, the cold hurt turned to warm anticipation. I just couldn’t stop thinking about Shirley. It was during this dark drive home that I really got my head together and said, “Well, look, Bobby, you’ve got to be a little more forthright in your approach. Don’t make her feel uneasy or fenced in, but make her know that you, it be interested.”
The next time 1 saw Shirley, she was talking about corvettes. Seems a friend of hers had one and she’d ridden in it and was very impressed. “Well, I’ve got a Corvette,” I said. Extremely blase, you know She said, surprised, “It thought you had a Thunderbird.”
I’d walked her to her car several times by now, and in the lot she’d asked which my car was and I’d pointed out the blue T-bird. “Well, I have two cars,” I said matter-of-factly. That was about all I had salvaged after the divorce. I almost never drove the Vette. Just didn’t like it. But now a bell went off in my head. She likes Corvette!
“Who’s the other one for?” Shirley wanted to know. “Well, it’s mine. I drive it almost all the time.” A lie, but it seemed like the right strategy. From then on, every trip I made to the Penthouse Club, I drove the Corvette. Certain things about me seemed to impress Shirley. My cars, online poker gambling my lifestyle. And I took advantage of that fact.
One weekend, Byron and I just took off for the Bahamas on the spur of the moment. I mean we were just sitting around talking and Shirley was listening. And Byron said, “Things are pretty slow. Let’s go to Nassau for a couple of days.”
I said, “Sure, why not.” Just like that.
Well, this really impressed Shirley. When we got back, she was just full of questions to ask me. We got to feeling pretty close. Not that we were ready to confront each other, but the feeling was definitely there. Then I got my chance.