Side Bet Bluff

*** This story has also been posted on another site under the pen name Hal C. Rex. Hal and Stat are the same person. ***

Part. 1 -- The Poker Game

"Zack's not coming," I said angrily while putting away my cell phone. Damn all women and their meddling, controlling, and manipulating ways. "His new fiancée has better things for him to do."

Our once regular weekly poker game of eight guys had slowly whittled down over the last few months to four. Now we only had three, and that just didn't sound appealing at all. I wondered, not for the first time, if I had finally outgrown my gang of college buddies. One by one they had bought in to society's delusional path to happiness of settling down and getting hitched.

"Oh goodie," said Susan turning to her boyfriend Aaron. "Now you can spend the evening with me!"

"I think you've reached your twelve hours of Aaron quota already today," growled Hannah, beating me to the punch.

Susan had been about to walk out the door with Hannah and Jaycee to see a movie, an infrequent group outing since Susan had started dating Aaron. Jaycee looked exasperated while Hannah looked pissed off. I had seen that expression of Hannah's more than enough for one lifetime.

Hannah was my ex-girlfriend. She was pretty, curvy, very smart, and also performed a great impersonation of a parasite. Our break-up had been the worst I'd ever had, which I guess was to be expected considering our three year relationship exceeded my previous record by two years and seven months. Hannah and I had been tolerating each other's presence for the last ten minutes for the sake of our mutual friends, and it had been the longest we'd spent in each other's presence in well over a year. I will admit that she was looking a heckuva lot better than when we were dating. Scratch that. I'll admit it generally to my friends, but not where she can hear.

"Oh, gosh, Hannah, Jaycee, I'm sorry," apologized Susan. "But the only reason I had agreed to go out tonight was because Aaron had his silly poker game that he insisted on doing. Now that it's not going to happen, we can be together. Maybe he could come with us to the movie?"

Aaron grimaced at the idea of being dragged to the chick flick. I didn't know why he put up with Susan's overbearing possessiveness. Sure, they were a cute couple. Both had that shiny, high glossed, preppy All-American look straight out of a teen clothing ad. I had no doubt that Susan fit Aaron's physical ideal of the perfect girlfriend. But she had been glued to his side for three months now, ever since Jaycee had set them up on a blind date, and I knew for a fact that the goodie two-shoes still hadn't slept with him. Aaron whined about it on the phone to me at least once a week, including last night when I had called to verify that he could still host the game. They were hot for each other, but their energetic make out sessions only added to Aaron's nightly case of blue balls.

"Poker?" asked Jaycee. "And we weren't invited?"

Jaycee was Hannah's long-time roommate and she was different from most women. She was very attractive, with a great body but one she had to work hard to maintain. But it was her personality that was ideally suited to attract guys. She could walk into a nightclub wearing jeans and a baggy sweatshirt and would still know every guy's name within fifteen minutes. Within thirty, every woman would be pissed off at her. Jaycee was extremely outgoing and uninhibited, and a great conversationalist. She could discuss anything you were interested in and make sharp, insightful comments and questions without resorting to the vapid cliché's or overused fallbacks used by most people. Jaycee also enjoyed bringing up subjects that usually weren't appropriate - as I said she could discuss anything. She was also the type to avoid relationships, leaving a trail of broken-hearted suitors in her wake. If I hadn't already been dating Hannah when we met, I would have joined the long line of sad-eyed men I'd seen pining for her over the years.

"Why would we?" asked Tim, the last of our group. "Girls don't play poker." As soon as the muscle-bound idiot said that I knew what the girls' reaction would be.

"What?!?" "I can't believe you said that!" "You're just afraid I'd take the shirt off your back."

Leave it to Jaycee to make her comment laced with sexual innuendo. I won't bore you with the challenges, put-downs, and wrangling that went on for the next five minutes. I'm sure you could see where this would end up as soon as Tim opened his mouth. Except that he was right, at least concerning these girls. So we spent fifteen minutes teaching the three of them how to play Texas Hold'Em. It's a pretty easy game to learn the rules of, but most of the time was spent teaching them how to be conservative with their bets so they didn't blow through their chips too fast.

"Alright," I said in trying to bring the training to a close. "Since y'all are beginners, we'll keep it to low stakes tonight. Shall we say twenty five dollar buy-in?" Tim and Aaron shrugged their shoulders at me, signifying this seemed like an acceptable amount.

"Um, how much do you normally play for?" asked Hannah.

"Two fifty to start, with another hundred dollar re-buy if you run through that before eleven o'clock," I answered. Of course I had to follow that up with an explanation of what a re-buy was.

"You spend up to three hundred and fifty dollars a week on this?!?" Susan demanded of Aaron. I momentarily grinned at that. We thought we were such high rollers when we had originally set that amount.

"Whoah, whoah, whoah, Susan, settle down." Aaron tried to mollify the leach. Sorry, I mean, the overly attached girlfriend who not only wanted to monopolize Aaron's time but now apparently his money as well. "I haven't lost the max in over a year. We're all pretty evenly matched players so usually at the end of the night we're pretty close to even, and lately I've been on a hot streak which has allowed me to take you out to some really nice places."

That last line was bullshit, but lying is perfectly acceptable when it comes to trying to get into a girl's panties. Tim and I did our wingman duties and immediately backed him up, and through our combined efforts appeared to calm Susan.

Then Jaycee surprised me. "I don't think you should cut us any slack. Once again you're saying that we can't hang. Well fuck that. I'm good for two fifty."

Hannah and Susan just goggled at her. Hannah was incredibly tight with her own money (mine, not so much). At the same time, though, she's a strident feminist who is quick to anger at any perceived slights to her gender, so a big part of her wanted to agree with Jaycee. I assumed Susan could afford it, she was the type that wore designer everything. But from the training session it was apparent that she was going to be the worst player and could just kiss that money goodbye.

"Umm, Jaycee. Could we speak to you a moment?" asked Hannah. The three girls sequestered themselves into a far corner of the room. They looked like they were having a very animated discussion, with the main conflict between Hannah and Jaycee leaving Susan trying to mediate. If I knew Hannah, there was no way she was going to agree to this.

They soon returned and surprisingly announced that Susan and Jaycee were going to make a quick run to the ATM before we got started. I couldn't believe they were going to play for those amounts. Now us guys would have to go easy on them and, oh joy, I first had to endure more alone time with the ex.

I parked myself in front of the idiot box instead.

By the sound of it, Hannah was flirting with Tim. I didn't know whether to cringe or laugh my ass off. I had heard plenty of women talk admiringly about Tim's physique, but no one ever called him a good conversationalist. He was an old frat brother of Aaron's and thus a semi-permanent member of our crowd, and I seem to recall him being on some kind of athletic scholarship when he was in school. He was an o.k. guy, I guess, but I learned long ago that I shouldn't bother even trying to have a conversation with him about a subject other than sports or women. It was a huge effort to pull more than two words from him about any normal subject. I have a deep love (some say unhealthy obsession) with all things football, but eschew almost all other sports. So I always tried to steer any conversation with Tim to pro football, especially the recent success of the local team. But Tim always made a point to brag about his latest conquest, or denigrate the woman who just turned him down, or even the ones he had 'bagged.'

Tim and Hannah would not be a good match. And Hannah knew this, which meant she was only interested in using him to either make me jealous or get laid. The former wasn't going to work -- I didn't give a crap about what she did any more so long as it didn't affect me -- but the latter may just affect me through Tim's bragging. If those two hooked up, I would have to avoid Tim for a month minimum.

Finally the other girls came back and the six of us set up at Aaron's round dinner table. We collected the bank and divided out everyone's chips while once again reminding the girls how the blinds worked. If you're reading this with little to no familiarity with Hold'em, don't worry. I'll say some things that might confuse you but I won't go into too much detail here. You'll be able to follow along so long as you know the general ranking of hands. And if you're a poker expert you'll probably get a good laugh at my dumb moves. Like I said, this was a friendly game.

We ended up sitting guys on one side, girls on the other. Aaron and Susan sat opposite each other. I was to Aaron's right and next to Jaycee. Tim was on Aaron's left and next to Hannah, who was directly across from me.

The first few hands went by with small bets and nothing out of the ordinary happening. The third hand though, Susan won by completing her gut shot straight draw on the river, a horribly bad beat for Tim. Her betting completely showed her lack of understanding and she would have lost her money nineteen of every twenty times playing that hand. Alas, Tim's two pair lost him a big seventy dollar pot. The girls all loudly celebrated Susan's win, while Aaron and I commiserated with Tim, but only through murmurs and facial expressions.

It was the next hand that was a little wonky. Jaycee bet into me pretty aggressively. Normally I would have backed off, but I had Ace-King as my hole cards, a very rare, outstanding hand. I put her on a high pair with her lead out betting and quick raises but I matched her. The flop was King-Ten-Two rainbow (meaning all different suits). I now had a pair of Kings. It was possible that she had been dealt a pair of Aces, and still had a better hand than me. But that was really unlikely and I was ahead of any other hand that she could have been dealt. Nevertheless she bet strongly into me again. I raised, and she quickly re-raised.

These were relatively small bets, as us guys were still going easy to start in the hopes that we could make this game last a while. I worried that if one of the girls lost a good chunk of her money early then the other girls wouldn't want to play any more. So I called Jaycee's new raise, whereas if I was playing normally I would put out a big bet trying to take the pot now rather than risk my opponent getting lucky with a low probability winner on the final two cards.

The "Turn" (the fourth community card, also nicknamed "fourth street") was a nine of clubs, so now there were two clubs in the community cards. But I wasn't worried. If she was going for a flush draw she never would have been betting so hard after the flop. Again Jaycee bet out, though she was acting very cute tilting her head at me while twirling a finger through her hair. This time I just called, trying to minimize the pot as much as I could. Mostly for her sake, though there was still that small chance she had pocket rockets.

But that chance evaporated for her on the "River" as the final card was the suicide king, the King of hearts (take a look at it, he's sticking a sword through his head). I now had trips Kings. There was no realistic combination of cards among her hole cards that with the community cards could beat me. I guess technically she could have had a pair of tens or a pair of twos as her cards and now had a full house, but that was extremely unlikely considering her betting so far.

Finally, she checked. What I should do is make a big bet, forcing her to fold. But either betting or checking, she wouldn't be putting any more money into the pot. So instead I checked, just to see what she had. Jaycee turned over a Jack-Nine of hearts. After totaling up the pot, she had thrown away almost a hundred dollars. Was it that she saw Susan hit the gut shot straight draw the previous hand and decided that it could happen to her as well? But Jaycee was making strong bets pre-flop. I didn't get it.

Jaycee's intermittent and erratic betting would continue for the next half hour. Her next big loss was when she folded after the river to clueless Susan, who was suddenly the chip leader. Three hands later she was going heads up against Aaron when she asked for the Re-Buy in order to make yet another raise. After our futile attempts to slow her down, she tossed another hundred dollar bill into the bank for its equivalence in chips, and then lost twenty of them to Aaron.

After that, Jaycee seemed to calm down. She limped in as the big blind to see a flop but folded afterwards, then folded the next five hands. She was down to forty-five dollars in chips and was about to be hit with the big blind again. One more hand like the one's she'd been betting into and she'd be done. I had won a few hands here and there and had overtaken Susan as the chip leader, especially thanks to a couple bone-headed bets on Susan's part. Really, it was tough not to take money too quickly from her. Most everyone was doing well, though, since we were all feasting on Jaycee's mistakes. All except Tim, who had received another bad beat, this time to Hannah.

This game had a very different feel to our previous poker nights with the girls present. Sure they weren't the best players, but that hardly counted. It was mostly the topics of conversation. With a bunch of guys together, we'd mostly talk sports, or reminisce about old times. Occasionally we'd talk about work, especially if one of us was facing a situation that he was unsure how to handle and wanted advice. But with three girls, they dominated the conversation. You'd think they'd have gotten it out of their system from talking to each other on the phone fifty times over the previous week but apparently not. When the topic veered towards celebrity antics I started making snide remarks about the insipidity of those people's lives only being surpassed by those who thought celebrities' lives were worth caring about. Jaycee smirked at me but you'd have thought Susan had never been so insulted.

Finally, we got an exciting hand. I was dealt a pair of fours, clubs and spades. I was the first to bet and made a small pre-flop raise just to create a little bit of action. Everyone quickly folded around the table, but Susan in the small blind called me. Hopefully I'd be able to take a little bit more of her money.

"All in," Jaycee announced, pushing her remaining chips into the pile. The pot was now $95, and it would cost me $20 to call. I thought that was worth the risk for a pair of fours and threw my chips in. Susan also tossed in another $20, which really shouldn't have surprised me. The pot was already the biggest of the night.

The flop came Ace of spades, Queen of diamonds, Two of spades. No help from me here, and probably a very good flop for either of the girls. Susan was the first to bet in this round as she was to the left of the dealer. She checked. Jaycee couldn't bet and I was all set to say "check" when Jaycee surprised us.

"I want another re-buy," she announced.

"Sorry," responded Tim. "Only one re-buy per evening. House rules."

"Surely you can make an exception for me," said Jaycee. "Not only am I good for it, but this is likely the only time we're going to play poker together. So it's not like you have to set a precedent for your regular game."

"No," Aaron responded. "This is really for your own protection. You probably think you have the best hand, and who knows you may be right. But a lot of crazy things happen in poker. That's why they call it gambling. Tim has already lost a couple hands tonight that he had big odds in his favor. This is one rule we don't dare change."

I was glad that the guys not involved in the hand were being so firm, since I was a little biased. I was now convinced that Jaycee had an outstanding hand, a sure winner. I was also pretty sure that she'd been intentionally losing up until now, kind of like in that movie Maverick. Maybe she was a really good player and now knew all our tells. Maybe she was an overconfident player and was being an idiot. Who knows? I decided I was going to have a little fun with the situation anyway.

"Well, maybe if she was paid with money already at the table it would be ok," I ventured.

"You mean, someone loaning her the chips from their own pile?" asked Aaron. "No way. You should know better than that."

"No, I wasn't thinking of a loan per se. But maybe payment for a service, or in exchange for an item like a sale" I answered.

"Like what?" asked Jaycee, more intrigued than hesitant, which is what I was counting on.

"Well, earlier in the evening you did say something about taking the shirt off someone's back," I said with a leer on my face.

Tim and Aaron launched into laughter. Hannah groaned "I should have known" while Susan started calling me a long line of invectives, beginning with male chauvinist pig and continuing with several more things which I ignored. Jaycee just smiled.

Tim called out "her bra's not worth much. Has anyone here not seen Jaycee's tits?" producing even more laughter from Aaron. Did I mention Jaycee's proclivity to flash people? I did say she was uninhibited.

"That is very true," I concurred. "This would be for a small amount."

"Oh come on. Breasts as great as mine are don't just come around every day. That's why you want to see them again. Fifty bucks?" Jaycee asked.

"I was thinking more like twenty. After all, I've been over to your place and seen them dozens of times."

"Forty?"

"Twenty-five."

"I won't go lower than thirty."

"I think you'll take any amount I offer, but I'll give you thirty."

"I don't believe this," Susan gasped as Jaycee quickly started stripping off the clothes covering her torso.

"Goodness," I said, "I didn't think we were done negotiating."

"We weren't?" Jaycee said, freezing with one arm twisted behind her back searching for the bra clasp.

"You're so confident that you're going to beat me that you haven't even considered what's going to happen when you lose," I replied.

"Oh, I'm very confident," said Jaycee, as she resumed taking off her bra. Her breasts came into view, and they were glorious. Hey, there was a reason why she flashed people all the time. She was rightfully proud of her tits. They were probably a C cup, maybe a little larger, but stuck out proudly with virtually no sag after being removed from the bra. I once asked Jaycee why she even bothered with a bra since she obviously didn't need the support. She said it was actually to hide her nipples, which tended to harden at the most inconvenient times. They were hard now. And stuck out a good inch from the dark pink aureole. Ok, maybe half an inch. But still, longer than any I'd ever seen in person.

"Fine," I responded with a brazen leer on my face. "Then you won't mind being our permanent dealer and cocktail waitress if you lose instead of running home in shame and embarrassment."