Poker: The doorway to hell

Poker has opened many doors in my life. It’s put me in situations I wouldn’t have been in otherwise; introduced me to characters I would never have met otherwise (have you noticed in poker you never meet ‘people’, only ‘characters’); and exposed me to tales and stories that often took the hair off my arms.

One such story was about a seasoned poker pro who enjoyed himself while on tour by hiring a prostitute to travel round with him. She would keep him company, be his portable rail bird, and – of course – make sure he had something to smile about at the end of each day.

As the story went on, this particular player had a pretty bad run and ended up out of money. He managed, however, to find a hooker who was prepared to render her services for a percentage of his potential winnings. All it would take was 20% and she was onboard. And so it was that “John” took to the tables with a new kind of pressure weighing on his shoulders: if he didn’t get any action at the tables, he wouldn’t get any action off the tables.

Poor old John... He bust out of the main event, crashed out of a side tourney, and finally died horribly in a sit ‘n’ go he entered in one last desperate attempt to secure some poker-fueled jiggy-jiggy. And throughout each and every dreadful performance, his lady of the night glared at him from the rails, adusting her ample busom, applying gloss to her pouting lips, and eyeing up the guys on the final table...

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Not really big enough for a seperate entry, but another story was with a well-known figure in poker who declined a drink, explaining that the last time he had a drink (many years ago) he went out for "a few" down the Kings Road and woke up two days later in Dusseldorf. Lightweight...