Tao of Poker

Hot Chicks Don't Buy Poker Books... Or Do They?

I was killing time at the Barnes & Noble on 23rd Street, waiting to meet a friend of mine for lunch. I already had a few noon beers and with a steady buzz and a semi-runny nose, I wandered over to the Games section. NYC is filthy today. The day after snowstorms are the worst in the big city, with slush and salt and puddles and ugliness everywhere you step. My feet were soaking wet after I stepped into a small lake of melted snow trying to cross the street. I could hear myself "squishing" as I walked through the mega-bookstore. I thumbed through a book on Omaha for a few minutes and picked up Al Alvarez's masterpiece The Biggest Game in Town to read while I waited. Out of the corner of my eye, a very tall and elegant woman appeared as she made her way down my empty aisle. Without taking my eyes completely off of Alvarez's gripping words, I sensed she stood right next to me. Her eyes darted back and forth on the shelves and she pulled a big book off of one of the middle shelves. It was the Bible. She turned over Super System and read the back cover before she put it back and took another copy, two or three deep in the vertically stacked pile of Super Systems. She was beautiful. She looked like Catherine Zeta Jones but the younger, healthier, before-she-got-knocked-up-by-Gordon-Gekko version. I was buzzed. I was shocked. I had to say something. This was every poker player's dream! If only this were Penthouse Forum, my next few words would be... "I always read about random sexual encounters in your pages, and I thought they were all made up... until one day, while reading poker books at the bookstore..."

Alas, I started sweating like someone holding pocket Aces under the gun late in a tournament with a small stack. All I could mutter was... "Ahh, the Bible." I'm retarded sometimes.

"I've been looking for this for months. Everytime I look for it... it's sold out," she calmly said.

I wanted to say... "I've been looking for you for years! But everytime I look..."

"Worth every dollar you spend," I assured her.

And with that, she nodded, smiled and glanced at what I was reading. She turned around and left. And like a million other New Yorkers, she blended into the cloudy mixture of consumers and I returned Alvarez's words.