Thread: Miss Gloria: A Poker Story by Passive Harry

This is the first of a series of poker stories I will be writing for Poker These stories are all true, even if some seem unbelievable. They are taken from my last 40 years of playing poker and stories that I have verified to be true. All have been written in the first person to protect the identity of some players.


Miss Gloria

To play a marathon poker session is nothing new. Most of us have played for 2-3 days straight without sleep at one time or another in our poker life. It just comes with the territory. When you find a good game and your hands are holding up, it is really hard to leave. When you see your chips multiplying faster than the rabbits you raised as a kid, who needs sleep?

Not long after they opened the casinos along the "Redneck Riviera" in Mississippi, I entered the Isle of Capri on a Friday evening. The poker room was packed with pretty long waiting lists so I just put my name across the board for whichever game came open first. Hey, I just wanted to play and could always switch as other seats came open.

The first seat to come open was a 6/12/24 Hold'em game. I had been rail birding the game and knew that the action was pretty loose. 5 and 6 callers each hand before the flop and usually 2 or 3 bets. Pots big enough to hide a moonshine still.

I bought a rack of red and sat down in the 8 seat. The line up at the table was right out of a Tom Sawyer novel. Casino poker was pretty new to this area and the players were mostly farmers and local business owners coming in to have fun, drink and most importantly of all, GAMBLE!

Sitting on my right, in the 7 seat, was this "Great-Grandmother" looking lady. You know the type. Snow white hair, wearing a dress right out of the 1940's, she might have weighed 100 pounds if she was weighed in a wet tow sack. As she welcomed me to the game I couldn't help but notice how out of place she looked and also just how many chips she had in front of her. To my estimate, she had about $2500 sitting in front of her, in all kinds of different size stacks.

As the game progressed, I noticed that all the dealers and cocktail waitresses knew her. Everyone called her Miss Gloria.

Miss Gloria was an extremely sweet person. Just like a Great-Grandmother should be and, without a doubt, the worst poker player I have ever run across. The first hand dealt after I sat down, I discovered just how she accumulated all those chips. I watched as she cold called 3 bets before the flop, 3 bets on the flop and 4 bets on the turn with a Heart 4 flush on board. The ugliest deuce of clubs came on the river. She had flopped a pair of deuces, made 2 pair on the turn and the full house when her deuce paired on the river. I knew I was going to like this game. I could see the steam rising from all the players she had run down with her 9/2 off suit.

The teachings of Sun Tzu say to keep your friends close and your enemies even closer. I immediately struck up a conversation with Miss Gloria.

The game was awesome, Miss Gloria and I got to talking and I completely lost track of time. It was kind of like a time warp. As Friday passed into Saturday, I learned that Miss Gloria was a widow and played poker just to have something to do. By Saturday around noon, Miss Gloria and I were real good friends. She told me that she had started playing poker late Thursday night because she had trouble sleeping and thought a couple of hours would tire her out. By Saturday evening, I knew all about her kids and their kids. Sunday morning brought a revelation that this lady had been going for 3 days!!! She also told me by whispering in my ear that she was 82 years young. By Sunday night, I knew most of Miss Gloria's life story and she knew mine. We were almost best buddies.

When the sun came up Monday morning I could feel our game breaking up. We were down to 7 handed and dwindling fast. We had many players over the weekend, but none like Miss Gloria and I. She had played an amazing 105 hours of poker. Me, being the lightweight of the two, had put in a mere 91 hours or so.

Oh, by the way, Miss Gloria ended up buying another 4 racks of red chips during the weekend and I had to color up 5 different times because I had no room for all the chips. Miss Gloria did not care about the money. I guess it really is hard to when you are worth 10's of millions as she was. As I later found out, she played these marathons about every 10 days or so. She did this for a couple more years until her health worsened.

When you find a good game and your hands are holding up, it really IS hard to leave.