I woke the next morning headache free and loving the world. Everything felt right, from my usual breakfast at the Bellagio to my getting picked up by the girls in Susie’s old Ford Focus. I even had a nice laugh when Susie suggested I let them pay for admission to Wet n Wild. After blowing a fortune on people who only wanted more, it was cute to see how much Susie cared about $100. We had a blast sliding and floating and stayed all day. I even let Susie buy lunch as I saw it meant a lot to her. <READMORE>

The girls had plans that night, so I had Susie drop me off at the Rio. As I kissed her lightly on the cheek I felt a small pang of sorrow from her at my going off to play poker. I could see this was becoming a problem.

Susie’s reservations aside, I felt good and wanted to play a few one table satellites. I found Carl sitting behind a huge stack in a cash game and gave him a quick thumbs up on my way to the back where they held the satellites. I could feel some stares of recognition as I sat down to play, even though I left my new jewelry in the safe in the room.

I started off completely card dead and had to fold everything for the first two rounds. Then in the cut off I found pocket sixes and flat called as the table was very passive with few hands being raised pre-flop. Surprisingly, everyone liked their cards except the small blind and we took a flop nine handed. The flop came down 23K rainbow and I took a moment to mentally check on my opponents hole cards. The big blind bet the pot with A2 and everyone folded to the guy on my right who raised all-in with AQ clubs. I could tell that everyone else was willing to give him the pot, but I was not so sure. I did have an edge, small as it was, so I called and won when he got no help.

“Nice call,” said the small blind. “No wonder they call you Never Wrong.”

“Thank you very much,” I said quietly. I could feel a few of the other players interest rise. Apparently my story had spread to those who did not recognize my face.

I began to wonder if that would work against me and players would stop trying to bluff me. As it turned out though, it seemed that just the opposite was true. Every time I was in a pot they couldn’t wait to get their chips in. I folded when I was beaten and raised or called when I had the goods. By the time we got heads up I had about an 8 to 1 chip lead against the guy who had recognized me earlier. I could see he was scared and I felt a little sorry for him, so I offered him his money back to quit now and he took it.

As the floor came over to give me my entry chips, one of the railbirds walked over to the table. She was a beautiful blonde woman who was very well endowed. She stuck out her hand and I shook it tentatively. “I’m Jill Ann Spaulding, publisher of Top Pair magazine. Have you got a minute for a picture?”

She waved over a man with a very expensive looking camera and I held a pair of aces up and stood next to her while he took a few pictures. As I shook her hand again she gave me her card and told me she’d like to interview me for her magazine. I exhaled a big breath I didn’t even realize I was holding as she left. Beautiful women still made me nervous.

Strangely enough I wasn’t nervous at all when the three guys in suits came over to talk to me, even though I could almost smell the money coming from them. They were from Nike and they bought me dinner at Hamadas. Over dinner they told me that they were looking for a young poker pro to be a new spokesman/ambassador for them. As a fresh face and a WSOP bracelet winner, I had the inside track on the job. They would pay me five hundred thousand dollars to travel the country and play promotional poker games against local contest winners. They would even make sure the schedule more or less followed the big buy-in poker events and they would also pay my way into all of them.

I swallowed the final piece of sushi. “You mean all I have to do is play poker all year and you will not only pick up all my expenses, but also pay me half a million dollars?”

The suits laughed in chorus. It was almost spooky the way they did that. The tallest one said, “Well, you also have to wear Nike apparel while you do it. But, yes, that’s the gist of it. One more thing. If you win the main event next month we will double your salary to a cool million.”

I went back to the poker room and won a few more entry chips in a couple of satellites as I waited for Carl. He finally quit his game and cashed out ahead over 10k. He was all smiles as we drove back to the MGM. He told me that I was on my way now and that having a sponsor, especially one as well respected as Nike, was the best thing that could happen to a poker player. He even joked about how this deal would finally make poker players seem more like athletes.

We stopped at the front desk so Carl could check his messages and I was shocked to find a large envelope for me there. Inside was a piece of parchment paper with Chinese calligraphy on it. Carl suddenly looked like a professor again. “That’s very beautiful,” he said. “What does it say?”

I shook my head slightly sadly and sighed. “Susie wrote it. It’s a very old form of Chinese poetry, similar to the Japanese haiku. It literally says:

Rose petals lying
On bare wood floor
Are easily swept away.”

Carl furrowed his brow, “What does it mean?”

I smiled a weak little smile and clapped him lightly on the back. As we walked towards the room I said, “I don’t know. But I am fairly certain it has nothing to do with flowers.”
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