Voy Por Ustedes

I like this place. I still don’t quite get what they were trying to achieve with the décor and the staff outfits though. The Isle of Capri is an Italian island right? In the Tyrrhenian Sea, yes? Off the coast of Naples, Si? Yet this place is decked out like an Island in the South Pacific. The Waitresses have Parrots on their outfits for crying out loud. Is there another Capri I’m confusing this with?

They are nice outfits though and with each waitress’s bouncers loosely harnessed in their haltered tops it requires a puritanical focus to keep ones concentration on the poker. Speaking of which, it was all a little disappointing. With a swift blind structure, some creative strategies and only 40 runners, most of whom were physically deformed it was an ugly affair on many levels.

I don’t mean to bitch; I’m not Robert Redford myself, but what is it about the West Midlands and the gruesome appearance of the vast majority of its population? If the guy in seat two of my table didn’t have the plague and some hideous boils in his armpits I’d lay two to one on if you scanned his DNA you’d find traces of vulture.

Back to the poker; I won a couple of pots early and then nothing. The best hand I saw after my early successes was Ace-King with which I made a standard three times the big-blind raise from UTG+1 which was subsequently called by everyone I think even one of the waitresses and a guy who’d only wondered into the poker room looking for the toilets. The flop was perfect, just not for me. One of the creatures from the land that time forget hit trips and grinned showing at least three layers of teeth and a split tongue as it raked in the pot with its webbed hands.

Bereft of cards my interest in the game started to wane, not helped by the continuing presence of Beth the waitress. For the next twenty minutes at least, while I was dealt utter garbage, poker was engaged in a full-contact bout of trollop-wrestling; the tournament versus Beth, with my full attention as the prize. Beth was certainly winning the early entanglements as she appeared over my left shoulder with her starboard poont almost within suckling distance. Only restraint beyond the call of duty prevented me reaching round for a cheeky nibble.


Poker eventually won out though and wrested my focus away from waitress Beth as finally I was dealt a couple of hands, although I only managed to steal the blinds and unfortunately I was posting them at the time too and with the sky-rocketing antes gobbling up the short stacks Pac-Man stylee I was gone soon after when my massive 7-6 was dwarfed ever so slightly by a relatively normal looking chap two seats to my left who held pocket Queens.

Not a very productive evening, and I'm still to make any real progress in a tournament at this venue, but there was nothing on telly and the sandwiches were quite nice. I’m definitely on a poker hiatus now. My Dalai Lama patience book arrived today so I shall read it and renew myself from within. Ironically patience was the last thing I needed tonight; I showed a stoical composure Terry Waite would have been proud of, but without cards in a game like that it was a pointless virtue as little use to me as make-up to some of the “women” players in attendance.